Arthur Camins salutes teachers as the front line warriors in the battle to restore truth, facts, and evidence against the onslaught of the Trump war on reality.
Yes, Virginia, there is objective reality in the world. No, Virginia, there are no alternative facts. 2+2 really is 4. It is 4, today, tomorrow, and into the future.
We count on teachers to teach students to care about reality and evidence.
Politicians and their corporate sponsors who unabashedly lie with impunity are ubiquitous. Citizens who believe or cynically dismiss the lies are alarmingly common. As a result, truth telling is now the essential citizen attitude and ability without which democracy, justice, and any semblance of equity are doomed. The nation desperately needs teachers to be leaders in a truth offensive.
Every day in every classroom, students offer explanations and claims. Some are true, while some are not. Teachers’ critical follow-up response is, “How do you know that?” That applies whether it’s a mathematics solution, an analysis of a historical event, a scientific explanation about how the natural world works, or an interpretation of a piece of literature. The essential expectation is that students’ reply to, “How do you know that?” should feature relevant and sufficient evidence. Most important is helping students develop the disposition that truth matters.
“I just know it,” “It’s what I think,” “It’s my opinion?” “It’s what I read somewhere,” “You/He/She/They told me,” and “I saw it on Facebook, TV News, etc.” are all insufficient. Students can and should develop the habit of mind to search for reliable data, learn how to interpret that data to establish evidence to justify, reject, and revise conclusions. They need to develop the inclination and skills to do so across multiple disciplines. Unless that happens, we cannot hope to reverse the alarming dismissal of evidence in the public arena. This is job one for every teacher.
More than ever, citizens must be armed with the tools to combat lies, propaganda, fake news, and hoaxes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
On of my favorite cartoons shows Bruce Banner bursting out of his T-shirt and carries the label “The Credible Hulk: He Requires Evidence and Documented, Reliable Sources.”
Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.
Uh, no. Some opinions are warranted. Some are IQ45 making it up as he goes along.
In other words, some are a Sharpie mark on a weather map.
Thank you, Arthur, for this reminder! So important now.
Andre Comte Sponville does and excellent job of discuss truth/fidelity to truth in his book “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues”.
Lacking a fidelity to truth attitude one is left with jibberish and hogwash.
For thousands of migrant children, Christmas this year will take place in wire cages, separated from their parents, thanks to Donald Trump and his Minister for Propaganda, Stephen “Goebbels” Miller. But hey, Be Best!
Evidence, schmevidence. (Sarcasm, folks.)
The American mainstream media has been complicit in laundering Republican and Russian lies — which now are virtually indistinguishable. Republicans and the Russians KNOW that. Which is why Republicans pushed the phony Benghazi “scandal.” And why Trump and the Russians pushed the Hillary Clinton email “scandal.” Republicans lie, Russians and Republicans spread Russian-created propaganda, and the mainstream media “reports” the stories.
Readers can can likely recall NY Times stories from the 2016 campaign. We know The Hill has published lots of phony “stories” by John Solomon. [Note. Republican crank C. Boyden Gray had a piece in Real Clear Politics four days ago claiming – falsely – that the recent media articles revealing that Solomon coordinated his Ukraine conspiracy stories with Sean Hannity and Republicans was an “attack” on a free press.] And did anyone see that god-awful “interview” that Pete Williams conducted with Bill Barr? He just let Barr spew nonsense and lies, and then NBC congratulated itself on this “scoop” on an interview. Journalism at its worst.
Meanwhile, in Finland,
“Finland’s critical thinking curriculum was revised in 2016 to prioritize the skills students need to spot the sort of disinformation that has clouded recent election campaigns in the US and across Europe…”
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/?fbclid=IwAR10K8KBDp_VqE3ezveSBu8liXrDPyxW1_14WKleEAlTG6FpTkIedgSM5QE
Let’s take a peek at what’s happened recently in the “news:”
The Guardian reported:
“A bewildering array of fake news, warped facts and conspiracy theories have been propagated in the past week by conservative media, Republican politicians, White House officials and Trump…The entire US intelligence community has found no evidence to support the claim of Ukrainian interference in 2016. Fiona Hill, formerly top Russia expert at the White House, has warned that to spread ‘the fictional narrative’ is to spread Russian propaganda and do the bidding of Vladimir Putin. Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, said this week there was ‘no indication’ that Ukraine interfered… No matter how outlandish, Trump’s assertions are amplified on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News network.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/15/donald-trump-impeachment-defense-republicans-fox-news
The Washington Post had a piece noting that
“Trump’s most ardent supporters have fashioned alternative realities for themselves…Trump’s word is truth…the federal employees who question his version of events are ‘scum’…they dismissed sworn testimony and insisted on notions with no evidentiary basis…discussions became flooded with conspiracy theories and racist vitriol….others included crude threats against Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), suggesting the black lawmaker and former law enforcement official should be gassed… and calls for Hillary Clinton to ‘suicide herself’…”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fact-based-impeachment-cant-penetrate-the-pro-trump-web/2019/12/13/6319317c-1db8-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html
Will Saletan at Slate did a piece on Bill Barr, point out that
“Trump nominated William Barr to be his attorney general. Trump wanted Barr to bury the Russia investigation, and in April, Barr did just that. Brushing aside the evidence compiled by special counsel Robert Mueller, Barr decreed that Trump wouldn’t be prosecuted. Now Barr is trying to erase the truth from public memory. He’s claiming that the investigation found no evidence against Trump.”
“When Barr scrapped Mueller’s findings, he asserted that Mueller never pressed for an interview with Trump, that Trump fully cooperated with the investigation, that Trump never tried to fire Mueller, and that Trump’s cover-up attempts were directed only at the press. Barr claimed that Trump ‘did nothing wrong,’ that the investigation found ‘no evidence’ against Trump, and that suspicions of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign were ‘without a basis.’…Every one of these claims was demonstrably false..”…At first, Barr seemed to be an ordinary liar…in recent months, he has displayed a fanatical streak…Barr’s propaganda is completely false…he’s a liar.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/barr-doj-ig-russia-report-erase-truth.html
And again, The Post:
“not one GOP member of the Judiciary Committee was ready to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with Trump’s demand that a foreign government pursue false charges against one of his most likely Democratic opponents in the 2020 election… Instead, they ignored or misrepresented the evidence against him…Some served up gross distortions and falsehoods…they [pushed] the Russia-propagated allegation that Ukraine and not Russia hacked the server of the Democratic National Committee in 2016., debunked by multiple U.S. officials and by the U.S. intelligence community.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/impeachment-exposes-the-widening-gap-between-republicans-and-the-truth/2019/12/12/ba5fadb0-1ced-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html
Yes, there has been some good reporting. So, why do people (conservatives )still believe Trump’s lies and Russian-created propaganda? Partisanship. Power. The opportunity to stack the federal courts with hacks. Stupidity. Religious blinders. And naturally, Fox.
From Wired:
“The lies and obfuscations forwarded ad infinitum on Fox News pose a dangerous threat to the national security of the United States… there’s conclusive and consistent evidence that Trump pushed Ukraine to concoct dirt on a domestic political rival to affect the 2020 presidential election…Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the FBI was proper to investigate Trump’s dealings with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign…But on Fox, facts that are inconvenient simply disappear…its combination of lies and half-truths has built a virtual reality that leaves its viewers too misinformed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities as citizens to make informed choices…Fox News hosts are serving the Kremlin’s interests… Fox and the GOP have embraced almost every twist of Kremlin propaganda…”
“…for years, Fox has repeated false conspiracies about the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy literally cooked up by Russian intelligence and fed into the US media…Fox’s evening talk shows and its morning show have proven to be a particularly egregious and odious swamp of fetid, metastasizing lies and bad faith feedback loops…The network’s pantheon of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and the rotating couch-cast of Fox & Friends’ morning show dunces-by-choice together represent a level of ill-informed demagoguery that would make Father Coughlin and Huey Long wince.”
https://www.wired.com/story/fox-news-is-now-a-threat-to-national-security/?fbclid=IwAR1uw_fQQAbxGTS0I2PqQgFoBHxTNUI2rn_FEM-e7bTBO-x_w_R1oFf0wL0
The Constitution and the Republic are imperiled by Trump and Putin and their enablers, including Fox and almost the entirety of the Republican party.
There’s a lot of work to do.
Here is a piece on Trust and Truth, for a podcast that I am working on. I share it with you!
Trust.
Such an important word. I want to talk to you about the word, trust, because WORDS MATTER, and there are some words that matter more than others… if it is survival WHICH IS at stake… and isn’t survival what Homo Sapiens faced from the start. Knowledge is power say the wisdom of the ages , and it is passed down by this talking primate through words.
It’s all about Trust in the long run.
Winning is often possible only by trusting. Beginning with trusting oneself, and depending on the guidance and assistance of others— who can be trusted.
I have trusted many people as I approach my eighth decade. I can speak from long experience with untrustworthy folks. Well, the monkeys on my little landscapes lied to me for a very, long time. I did not see the bus coming to roll over me, because I loved teaching, I loved kids, and I was busy teaching my heart out, reading with my students the words in great stories that describe moral character and ethical behavior.
I saw Trump for what he was, from the start, IN THAT BUS. Words are all we have to define character…something which that character lacks. BEHAVIOR IS ALL– and dialogue defines character …. I want to say: “Duh!” …. But, just because it is as clear to me, on my stage, does not mean that this truth is recognized by anyone else. Someone recently told me that the bus conversation, was “locker room talk.”
Words do matter.It is not merely that I am an ‘English teacher that I say that… although the choice of our words absolutely defines who we are. It is not merely that words are all I have to bring a character to life in my head… so I can write a play… where the words a character utters are the only way for the audience to determine who they are watching.
Behavior is all that you and I have to use when we dip back into our brains, to look at the PRIOR KNOWLEDGE that we possess.
I
f you can’t trust’em –f the people you count on to lead your business, your city, your state and your country–then you will lose the SUPPORTthat counts in life,.
Untrustworthy people are at large in our Congress,
“I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
AND… The Senate Majority leader literally tells us he is not going to represent the people–despite the WORDS IN HIS OATH TO BE IMPARTIAL. McConnell is in cahoots with the White House over how the trial will proceed. “In total coordination with White House counsel,” is how he phrased it on Fox News.
Spinning the reality for the ignorant public to swallow is the 24/7 cycle that is UNPRECEDENTED IN HISTORY…
ALL THOSE WORDS with so much disinformation and spin ( as Jorden, Nunez and Collins demonstrated!)
One more quote from my files, this one from my file on theUNINTENDED CONSEQUEBNCES of the information technology—> https://www.laprogressive.com/age-of-trump/?utm_source=LA+Progressive+NEW&utm_campaign=a1a5fe09dd-LAP_News_4_15_April_17_PC4_15_2017_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_61288e16ef-a1a5fe09dd-286983695&mc_cid=a1a5fe09dd&mc_eid=89923fe117
“The historically unprecedented nature of all this yakking, writing, interviewing, speculating, Tweeting, Facebooking, discussing, arguing, reporting, and perhaps, above all, the 24/7 talking heads on cable news going on and on about everything faintly related to one distinctly over-present personage (who was evidently God’s gift to them in 2016) has yet to truly sink in.”
“At some level, it’s not even complicated, especially in this impeachment moment. The shambling body of that president of ours — thanks to a set of media decisions about what truly draws eyeballs on this planet — simply blocks out much of the rest of the world, everything but HIM and anything or anyone faintly relevant to or associated with or ready to attack him and his strange imperial solar system. In media terms, he is now something akin to a force of nature, a Category 5 (or maybe 6) hurricane, but so, of course, is the coverage of him.”
Yes! Word are all that matters, today…and that is my 2 cents!