What If Everything You Know Is Fake?

The extraordinary coincidence of Donald Trump and Jussie Smollett both being “cleared” of significant “crimes” last week provides a remarkable vantage point for asking “What if everything you know is fake?”

The ability to discern what we used to quaintly call “truth” from out of the information matrix that surrounds us is undoubtedly the primary survival characteristic of the next generation. With so many competing and contradictory sources of information — and an education system that devalues logic and critical thinking in favor of political correctness — only the most persistent and skeptical news consumers can be confident that they have an understanding that approximates “truth.”

That’s where the stories of Donald Trump and Jussie Smollett become instructive counterweights at either end of the Media Matrix. On one hand, we have a two-year investigation into whether the president of the United States “colluded” with Russia to steal an election. On the other hand, we have a two-month investigation into whether a Hollywood actor “colluded” with two Nigerian brothers to manufacture a hate crime against himself. In one case we had a supposed criminal who was really a victim, and in the other case we had an apparent victim who was really a criminal.

Last week, we were told by Attorney General William Barr that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation against Trump had found no collusion with Russia. This should have come as no surprise to anyone who had the ability to filter out the blathering background noise of the heads that are paid to talk incessantly.

The insistence on sticking with a false narrative when the evidence overwhelmingly points the other way is a symptom of delusion, which is what Trump has dubbed the Russia collusion hoax.

But the situation for consumers of news is different. In their case, you have to consider that sticking with the facts in the face of overwhelming insistence on a false narrative by the media and your peers takes extraordinary courage. Confronted with a cognitive dissonance between what you perceive to be true and what everyone else tells you to be true, it is psychologically predictable that most people will choose to reduce their stress by going along with the crowd. That has been the case for the majority of Americans over the last two years as they have been continually assured by “respected” voices that Trump is guilty.

The opposite situation prevailed in the hate crime of Jussie Smollett. Here, we had a horrible attack that made Trump supporters look like monsters.

He invented the entire plot, hired two hulking black men to portray white racists, sent them off to purchase the props to be used in the fake lynching, and then employed his magisterial acting ability to cry on cue when being interviewed by Robin Roberts about the maudlin play within the play.

If you want to know the truth, you will have to find it on your own.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/01/what_if_everything_you_know_is_fake_139906.html