Then uneducated, ignorant of democracy and unable to think critically, I was set free and found my faith in what I wanted to believe rather than what I should believe.
Once American education was the envy of all, our student performance second to none, our skill at self-governance a beacon the world over.
The attack on education, truth, and the facts is no accident. The dimmer we become, the more malleable we are.
The only remedy is to sustain at least one source for trusted facts that any citizen can turn to in confidence — facts without interpretation and protected from influence.
VoteSmart.org is exactly that, but requires a people’s will to use it, believe in it, and to support it. A source to which all conservative and liberal citizens can turn in confidence for the facts and the truth that is dependent upon those facts. Without that, we cannot sustain an ability to self-govern successfully.
It can be done, ensuring its integrity with an elected board balanced between the multiple sides on major national issues. Supported without dependence upon self-serving interests and operated by those willing to commit their time and expertise in the national interest and not financial self-gain.
That is what VoteSmart.org strived to be. As a young man, my boss once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” Without VoteSmart.org or an organization very much like it, it is not the meek that shall inherit the earth, but the stupid.
“What do you do?” I asked. Answer: “I raise moms. I let only the females live. They are expected to get pregnant every year. If they do not get pregnant themselves, I impregnate them. If they still do not, I butcher them or sell them off to someone who can make good use of them.”
It is an odd world, where one male will do, and that most Americans, including me and much of the world, lives by.
It is a statistical absurdity to think our life on earth is all there is of consciousness in the universe. As a statistician once demonstrated, there are more suns in the sky than there are grains of sand on earth. And in case you missed it, the new Web Space Telescope just upped that number of suns 10-fold. Trillions of those stars have been around for billions of years longer than our puny, insignificant, unexceptional sun.
Yet here we are, alone, no one reaching out to us or making themselves known, even though so very many other worlds have had incomprehensible amounts of time to advance further than we.
Science suggests several reasons for this, most related to space and time, but perhaps the reason is closer to home, perhaps intelligence is a disease that no matter where it takes root, it inevitably comes with a deadly cancer called arrogance.
All developing intelligent life would naturally, routinely believe themselves exceptional, the chosen ones, superior to all and perhaps even made by a God, in God’s own image and thus all-powerful, God-like themselves.
It could be that arrogance inevitably kills its host and intelligence can never significantly develop enough to discover an antidote to arrogance or even recognize that one is necessary.
Most everyone I know would quarrel with the notion that intelligence is a dangerous thing but if I asked every other species on the planet, not a one, not even the earth herself would disagree. Our intelligence has come with catastrophe for the earth and all those we share it with.
My work was my passion and I always had too much of both. It was about the 25-year mark of my life’s work when a spectacular left hook, I did not know I had, smashed into the face of my University of Arizona Director.
I worked all the time, all the time. It is when I finally decided to take a break and go on a holiday that she called. She was our National Director in the main office who also oversaw a director of one of our satellites in Arizona. A string of lies forced her to fire him but he would not leave the office, apparently unwilling to take directions from a “girl” and certainly not going to be fired by one.
My vacation abruptly ended, and I had a four-hour drive to load up a bit of steam. I walked into our satellite Arizona office and told a snickering nut case to pack up and go. He did not, suggesting he would leave at the end of the day and that was all there was to it.
The next few moments are a little foggy in my memory as they always are when anger holds sway. Although I do remember getting in his face and splattering out a slop pail of unkind words. As it turned out my slop was unkind enough to get him to take a swing that glanced off the side of my head. That is when to my total surprise I discovered I have a spectacular left hook. My spot-on accuracy changed his expression and the color dripping down his pasty white face.
As I headed for home, I was pretty upset about what happened and how I had handled it. It was not the first-time I let my anger rule my actions.
As I pulled into my driveway, perhaps the most interesting, accomplished person I knew was standing outside in his yard. At 93 years, he still had youthful good looks, was one of my closest friends and my next-door neighbor. As a poor kid growing up in the Depression with nothing much for parents, Jack used to shag balls for Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, once hitched a ride into D. C. and was picked up by Eleanor Roosevelt as he worked his way through school. After earning a Yale law degree, he found himself ducking enemy fire as a Marine gunner in the South Pacific. The only time I ever heard him say he was scared and ran away, was when he turned 18 and Jean Harlow asked him up to her bedroom.
As the years rolled by Chief Justice Earl Warren asked him if he couldn’t clean up what had become some very seedy operations at the U. S. Supreme Court. His portrait still hangs there in thanks to this day. He became the President of two major universities, chairman of MetLife, as well as a couple other major international corporations. Two U. S. Presidents would be included in his circle of friends and when he relaxed a bit, he might be found having a picnic lunch with actress Jean Simmons on the hillside of the site they had chosen to build the Getty Center. To me he was Forest Gump with a brain.
Anyway, there he was, standing outside as I pulled into my driveway, and I was about to hear one of the most jaw dropping, life awakening responses to a question I would ever ask.
Visibly unsettled, I walked up to him, told him all that had happened and then asked, “Jack, you have led so many efforts, been so successful in life, struggled and achieved so much on so many fronts. How did you managed it when you were forced to fight on your way up all those hills?
He just looked at me for a moment in silence, and then softly said, “Richard, I never fought with anyone.”
This piece will take almost 1 minute to read, or in other words, roughly 7 times longer than your attention span.
Franklin, the Founder I would most like to have over for dinner, said something to the effect that the older he got the less certain he was of anything.
Richard Kimball, the person I most trust, has been confused about almost everything around me and all within it, as long as I can remember. As result: I have always been a listener, sitting quietly, soaking in the monologues of those I once knew certain, knew more than me.
But now I am old and have heard an awful lot and must say, I don’t care what you think or what you have to say.
Like all my age, I am done. As with almost everyone else I have ever known, I am only interested in what age and experience have left ME to prattle about.
Few things make one more miserable than that moment in an argument when you realize you’re wrong!
For that reason, two words have never been heard in debate, “I am wrong.”
Once you invest in a point of view, you’re done. In fact, research has shown that exposing people to contradictory facts only intensified their existing beliefs, making them more inflexible. You see this reality with participants on January 6th, opposing sides on the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, at your job and in your personal life.
If you want to be persuasive and impact someone’s misguided beliefs, you’d better start by agreeing with them. Only that approach can expose any unfrozen receptors and open potential for adjustment.
