Informed Knowledge, Common Sense and Independence of Thought

Have We Lost Informed Knowledge, Common Sense and Independence of Thought In This Country?

It was (still is, I think) that two plus two equals four. The first time I saw that equation in first grade, the teacher spoke the words representing the numbers out loud, as she read the number sentence. It was there for me to see and read, in black and white. I could see the statement was true using my deductive reasoning. It made sense. I accepted it as fact.

I would assume that most people in this country learned arithmetic and how to make sense of what they read in the same way. Informed knowledge tested against one’s common sense, independence of personal thought and acceptance of fact. So why is it when Americans read the September 11 Commission’s Report they still can’t read what is written in black and white, use their own common sense, know and accept what it says. I am referring to the statements on pages 61, 66 and 134, whereas the September 11 Commission specifically reads of the “connections” which existed between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Al Qaeda network.

There are no ifs, buts or maybes about it, the September 11 Commission makes this clear. Yet Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the Commission had to repeat the assertion by saying “There were contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq going back clear to the early 1990s, when Osama bin Laden was in Sudan, then when he was in Afghanistan. I don’t think there’s any dispute about that.” to make the point once again. Still a senior senator from Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln was recently quick to claim there really wasn’t much of a connection between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda in challenging a statement by Vice President Dick Cheney that such a connection did exist. As a senior senator of her state, she should have read the bipartisan report and used some common sense to connect the dots that are created in the report. And she should read the quotes in the report of Richard C. Clarke, the former counter terrorism chief of the Clinton and the Bush administrations attesting to the connection.

Yes, it is the same Richard C. Clarke, who was claiming there was “no connection” between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Now Clarke is sited in the report as having testified that if the US had apprised the Pakistanis of a U-2 flight to track down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis had warned bin Laden, bin Laden might “boogie to Baghdad” and once there it would be “virtually impossible” to track him down. Clarke also warned that bin Laden, once in Baghdad, would put his terrorist network at Saddam Hussein’s service. In his testimony Mr. Clarke was able to make two plus two equal four, the Commission was able to do the same, so why can’t many Americans and the American media use some common sense and accept the facts.

For years now it appears that many of us in this country will believe only what we want to believe. We are fed carefully selected news by our favorite choice of media. We read or hear from them that “the emperor (metaphor for any hot topic in the news) has new clothes” and we believe it, even if our own eyes and common sense tells us otherwise.

It is astounding that we Americans have become so willing to give up our own sense of what we personally can distinguish as good or bad information. Our innate sense of our own truth should be telling us in our own hearts and minds what are the real and true facts. But we have allowed ourselves to succumb to the fuzzy and the multiple shades of gray presented to us by the media, and we have let it cast a cloud over our common sense.

We have even relinquished our individual independence of thought on which we base our thinking, our beliefs, and ultimately our decisions. We now unquestionably tow a party’s prejudices, a party’s biases, and a party’s line. We are blind to the reinforcement by what we read or hear in the media or newspaper of our choice. And we accept limited knowledge as the whole truth.

We are in grave danger of losing our greatest ability in the country, exercising free thought. Given the freedom of the press and free speech, we have the opportunity and ability to be well and roundly informed, so we can make good, sound judgments.

Ask yourself seriously do you really want someone else telling you what to think? When we limited ourselves to one-sided knowledge, we have handed our minds, our decision-making, and ourselves over to the dictators of that knowledge or news.

Lastly, we are in the gravest danger of becoming a deeply divided, weak and almost brain-dead nation of sheep, each herd led by their wisdom meistered pied pipers who play only the songs we want to hear as we are lulled off into the deep dark woods of a national future in a very dangerous world.