On Honesty & American Denialism

My sense of the world that you and I live in is that folks want to believe whatever they believe and are very quick to turn away if what someone else has to say disrupts that belief in any way. I can count on my fingers the number of folks I know who consider content more important than tone, and I think when push comes to shove, tone is ultimately critical to them as well - myself included. But I don't think that makes us all equal in this regard. Even the intention of putting content first - at looking through the ephemeris of the message to its core is important. It's a philosophical point of view that I hold dear. I suppose it's a belief I have: That attempting to understand what is true is more important than making everyone feel good to maintain the peace. I don't hold the belief that there is only one truth, however. Understanding what is true is more of a process of eliminating those beliefs that simply cannot be true. That are at odds with reality, insofar as we can actually say with some degree of confidence what some part of reality is. That doesn't mean that I feel the need to require everyone to believe a certain way - but it does mean that I don't respect a person's beliefs that are in conflict with known facts, especially when those facts are readily available to them - that it is a matter of wilful ignorance, not a matter of innocence. I can and often do empathise with people's desire to believe things that are demonstrably untrue, or radically unlikely. And I have a basic empathy and respect for everyone wherever they're coming from even if they're deeply wrong about any number of things - as far as I can tell or know. Again, It's not that I believe I have some special line to "objective" reality - but I don't find that there are that many in my spheres of experience who give a flying tomato for what is true over what they wish or were brought up to believe is true. The point being, I would just like to have more folks who are willing to look for what we can know to be true (or at least not demonstrably false) and have the conversations that flow from that starting point or minimum adherence to reality. A friend recently put it thus - that all truth is human truth - subjective - because at best we approach what is potentially objectively true by continuous refinements - it's an asymptotic relationship. All of science is like this. As a hypothesis is well tested and shown to be predictive and useful it becomes a theory, but theories are still conditional - they can still be modified and over time usually are. Not discarded whole - rather updated or modified to better encompass additional understandings that were poorly or incorrectly handled by the previous incarnation of the theory. Newtonian physics being expanded and deepened and corrected by Einstein's theory of gravity and spacetime. Newtonian physics didn't cease to exist - it's explanatory power didn't end with Einstein's discoveries - rather it was given context and its limits better understood and we achieved through Einstein new insights on how to go beyond those limits (but the new limits are still limits, and I have no doubt that we will come to modify our understand of reality again and have new insights that allow us to understand more deeply than either Newton or Einstein did, continuing the refining process, or the expanding understanding process). Again, my sense of talking with people about politics or social theory is one of constantly running into people's emotionally held beliefs and anger at having those beliefs thrown into question. It's like the reaction of the Catholic Church to Galileo. His ideas upset their beliefs and that was intolerable to them. Not that they were interested in refining their understanding of the world - just that it was upsetting and they wanted the upset to go away. Not, mind you, that I am comparing myself to the genius of Galileo! Rather, that even my meager desire to be truthful and honest and refine my understanding of what is true - to apply science to my own understanding of life as I live it - leads to analogous encounters. I am constantly bombarded by former friends and family who want me to stop questioning their beliefs. I am told that it's how I say it, not what I'm saying. But no matter how nicely I say a thing - I'm still asking them to question their beliefs which is a fundamentally painful experience - and as far as I can tell - that's the real issue. As such, it is impossible to avoid the pain and the backlash (or would you like to point out the scientist who was a greatly beloved member of his or her society and brought about great insights into the world without upsetting folks around him or her?) Learning ugly truths about Hillary when Hillary was our best chance for a female to rise to President of the United States thus far is not going to be welcome news to anyone for whom having a woman hold the highest office in this land is a strongly held desire. Everyone has the ability to do the research - to look a few things up about her - to discover "is she often a good person and in alignment with my personal values or is she often what I consider to be a bad person - out of alignment with what I value and believe others should value?" (Or, perhaps being a moral person is not a virtue for you?) The same is true for Obama. Or democrats as a whole. Or the United States domestic or foreign policy as a whole. These things aren't hidden if you simply look beyond the immediate surrounding veil of surface information. Listening to CBS evening news certainly isn't going to challenge the predominant narrative that America is great. Listening to NPR isn't going to give you one shred of evidence against the righteous democratic and glorious nation of our motherland. Talking to your friends, coworkers, and family - who also only go by these same sources for their information - isn't going to challenge anything you've been taught to believe your entire life by a culture that is intent on having you be a supporting member of its cast. America wants you to see America as a great, good, just, righteous nation. That - is - at - its - core - for its own survival: your allegiance, your faith, your cooperation and participation. And other Americans in power wish to keep their power and so they also work hard at generating this sense of positive messaging about America. Because it makes them powerful. Your allegiance makes them powerful. Whatever America is doing has made them very powerful, so it is insanity to question it. The higher a person is on the economic ladder in America, the more they're going to be a true believer in America - regardless of any objective ethics - because it is working for them very well, or very, very, very well. It is not a failing on my part to ask you to go beyond your inculcation - your programming - your illusions and your jingoism. That push-back, that desire to denounce me, that feeling of anger and unhappiness is a desire to kill the messenger - perhaps it is a sign that I am actually on to something and at that point it is up to you to figure out what is true: Is your understanding more correct or not? Do you have supporting evidence from reasonably neutral, reliable sources, from disparate sources, which bolster your understanding and creates a holistic view of what's going on to give context to my concerns that render them no longer upsetting because in the larger deeper context you know their place and their place is small? Or, are you simply not interested in what is real - what is true - not even interested in approaching reality as best we can - but perhaps your real desire is to be left in peace with the beliefs you were given as a member of society and leave it at that? Stepping outside of the accepted norms of society is scary. It's potentially deadly, it's potentially very bad for your social and economic positions. In fact, it directly means coming to terms with the fact that you and I and everyone we know owes their economic surety to the life's work, sweat and tears of enslaved peoples. A vast cruelty that is hard to imagine in depth and scope. The enslavement of 12.5 million black Africans captured as if they were but animals, all rights stripped, all decency, all empathy, all humanity unilaterally stripped for the immediate benefit of our great great parents - but which almost certainly benefits you and me to this day. Many of my black brothers and sisters speak of reparations. Reparations that they are owed. I agree. America is one giant spoils of crime. Of a genocide of many native peoples who existed here before my European ancestors did, and murdered them en masse. Whether genocide was better or worse then racially based mass slavery is impossible to know, and probably pointless to debate. Both were crimes against humanity. Both were as monstrous as Auschwitz and the other ethnic pogroms of the world. Yet we don't talk about it. Yet I am attacked when I point out that these United States of America exist entirely upon the blood of millions in genocide and in human chattel. When I attack Hillary's record - when I attack Obama's record - when I attack the DNC's record - when I question this nation's goodness and history and righteousness and lack of justice - I am directly asking you to step out of your comfortable lies and illusions that allow you to ignore the reality that all you have exists only because your forefathers stole it or beat humans into creating the conditions under which it was created for them and for you. We Americans owe a debt to the world that in all reasonable conscience we can never repay. How can we un-murder millions of native peoples? How can we un-enslave millions of black people? How can we restore the hundreds of millions of children never born to those people? How can we restore the dignity we robbed? The lives we destroyed through poverty or incarceration? The suffering we administered on people... on humans - on our brothers, our sisters - for our greed? America is one big circle-jerk - one big amalgamation of the children of crime lords arguing about how just and righteous and honorable a people we really are. We have the audacity to claim exceptionalism - a right to stand above international law and ethical norms - to do as we please through might and extortion and war and assassination and global theft - and we claim it's because we are better than the rest of the world. We are just that exceptional a peoples. And folks get angry at me. Americans feel upset by me. They have their feelings hurt by me pointing out that our leaders are all of those things - that if you bother to pay even a little attention to what is actually true - and not the Disney story of America - but the factual record of one Hillary Rodham Clinton - you see all of these crimes and more writ in plain English in our very own public records within OUR lifetimes - contemporary crimes against humanity occurring NOW! Not in some comfortably far off yesteryear, some blameless place remote in years from our existence. But in the here and now and - not even becoming less criminal! Instead, accelerating and becoming more criminal! More heinous, more cruel, more inexcusable while we American citizens argue over which of the insanely unworthy crime lords propped up for our perusal we should have elected as the face of the global war crimes machine. I try - I really try to be gentle. To deliver this information to folks in small bites, in easy to understand pieces backed up by articles by good journalists who've done their homework to bring you and I some insight into the world. But y'all don't listen. Y'all just want to shoot me, the messenger, and gaslight me, and tell me I'm the crazypants, the tinfoil wearing nutjob who will believe any old conspiracy theory. I hereby formally reject that lie. I am - to the very best of my ability - a discerning person who does his honest best at determining whether the information is true, fits the scenery, connects with other information, and genuinely fits the whole. I am also - to the very best of my ability - willing to change my mind when sufficient evidence is found or presented that refutes a point I used to believe. I am willing to refine my hypothesis and theories and learn from my mistakes and work with you if you you're but willing to be brave enough to work with me, unflinchingly honest and in integrity with what is actually to the very best of our ability to understand or uncover to be true. I am looking for allies, friends, brothers, sisters of the faith in honesty, integrity, and virtue of becoming a better people for the greater good of all humanity. If there is any way to restore balance on this planet - I believe that it is to renounce our criminal ways of the past - and to work as TRUE EQUALS with all HUMANs everywhere on this blue marble. It is our spiritual salvation. Our ecological salvation. Our material salvation. Our one true road forward to a time when we can be honest about who we are AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT. Please stop participating in the theft by hiding from the ugly truth of human history - especially of American history - and work together to put an end to the violence, the thievery, the gaslighting, and the small-minded self-destructive greed that we are all complicit in by staying silent or by defending the very politicians and political systems - including our police - and military - which continues to execute those same crimes here, there, and almost everywhere around this earth. I'm not claiming to be perfect or know all of the answers. But I am eager to discuss any and all of this with you if you're willing to be intellectually honest with me towards refining an understanding of truth instead of obfuscating it on behalf of fears. We can take responsibility for who we are and where we are and who we owe for that. For me, that must be grounded in honesty. A commitment to the truth and a real process of reconciliation in which we admit that our very way of life as Americans is predicated upon global theft, and we stop it. We. Stop. The. Evil. Machine. Together. First, by simply being willing to realize that this is the situation, and no longer being willing to be a defender of it out of our own shame or fears. We can create a future worth existing in. One that can sustain humanity. But it cannot be one whose foundation is not firmly set in love, integrity, and peace. Please, help.