Climate of fear
"Totalitarianism on both the right and the left is deadly and destructive."
Climate of fear
As social critic Mark Twain said, "whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
In other words, you should be wary of group-think and the human tendency to let deep-seated tribal instincts overwhelm your ability to think critically. Being “skeptical” shouldn’t be considered a bad quality, especially at our so-called institutions of higher learning.
My own 43 years in the news business taught me that objective truth is elusive as a desert mirage, and you should never be too proud to look in the mirror and acknowledge if your opinion turns out, in fact, to be wrong.
One of my first assignments in British Columbia was reporting on a particularly disturbing fatal car crash, and it was amazing how the eyewitnesses I talked to viewed it so differently from each other.
More often than not, there is no single, unchallengeable truth in such tragedies. People’s perceptions vary depending on where they are standing, how they are feeling … and even how they have been raised.
Or take climate change. I’m skeptical about it being caused mostly by humans. That’s because it’s always changed, we are told, throughout its 4.5-billion-year history. Also, I’ve grown to be mistrustful of echo-chamber doomsayers in academia and the “mainstream” media who appear unwilling even to consider a minority view.
I am prepared, though, to admit that one day I could be found to be mistaken about this divisive issue … and that eco-crusaders Al Gore and David Suzuki, bless their many houses, may have been right all along.
Politically speaking, I started out as a lefty. I now lean right. But that doesn’t mean I love Trump, as I sense that totalitarianism on both the right and the left is deadly and destructive … and leads to the kind of public derangement all too prevalent these days.
Above all, political extremism strips us of one of the best parts of living in a modern democracy, namely the freedom to hold a minority opinion – and still live free of a climate of fear.