Hear no, speak no, see no.

Several years ago when the organic and health foods industry really started springing up, like cherry blossoms in the Spring, in America with stores like Wholefoods proclaimed to have “natural meat” and “natural vegetables”.  And even when these stores were situated in close proximity to traditional grocery stores, I never heard the question asked, if stores such as Wholefoods are selling “natural vegetables” and “natural meats” what have the others stores been selling us all this time?

Even the most passive observer has to ask, is there an actual difference between natural and anything else that we may consume? I tend to believe that natural is always best for us to consume.  Is it just me?.  Furthermore, if consuming natural foods is best for us now, why wasn’t it before?  And why are we still offered non-natural foods to consume?  And even more curious, why are so many of us seemingly disinterested in asking these questions concerning what is actually going into our bodies?. We no longer want to question what we see nor what we hear.

There is a huge purple haze of, what philosopher Colin Radford coined in the 1970s, as the paradox of fiction that is consuming Americans today.  The paradox of fiction is the inability to distinguish fiction from reality.  The paradox hinges on the power of emotion. It is understood that there is an emotional response to known fictitious events, characters, and objects, but yet cannot be also logically believed to be real simultaneously.  It is like our prefrontal cortex, what many refer to as one’s third eye, is the cerebral cortex covering the front part of the frontal lobe. This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behavior. I like to focus on what I consider as the operative word of cognitivebased on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge. In other words, what do you know to be true and factual.  It is not until there is seemingly a flood of external forces that are introduced that overrides your cognitive position, such as popular public opinion, your family or friend’s input, the influence of the media, the influence of the formal educational system, etc.

I can remember being taught in grade school that Christopher Columbus discovered America.  But, later when I got older, and was able to clearly put together facts and comprehend them, such as the fact that the American Continent, as well as the Caribbean Islands and the South American Continent, were already inhabited by people.  Logically, I could not truthfully believe that someone could “discover” a country, an island, or a shack, that is already inhabited by someone else simultaneously.  This does involve the ability to critically think, to noodle complex situations out to it’s single logical conclusion.

But in today’s America, fiction is being said to be reality and reality is being said to be fiction.  And both are being accepted as truth at the same time.

We live in a time in America, in a nation that was founded on the essence of a free-thinking people being able to self-govern their lives based on well-informed rational, logical, and moral judgment, where many of us today can see one counter of meat and food labeled as “natural” and the other with no label and accept them both as being true and equally safe to be consumed.   Many of us have been convinced to accept whole cloth many paradoxes of fiction during the Coronavirus-19 crisis. First, the virus has been known to only seriously target people over the age of 60.  Yet, the government has forced people between 55 years old and younger to have their lives irrevocably altered to the extent of shutting down cities and States for months.  This action has not been applied to any other virus or pandemic in human history. With this “crisis” mass hysteria and fear has been created that has driven many people to accept as fact that an ordinary mask can stop an air-borne virus even though we were all witnesses to masses of people shopping at stores such as Home Depot and COSTCO and dropping their young children at the YMCAs at the beginning of the crisis and during the past couple months Americans have jammed the Superbowl, Texas Rangers’ Stadium, and boxing and MMA [Mix Martial Arts] events to the max and there has not been any reports of mass infections. The nation of Sweden did not lockdown it’s citizens or it’s economy during this period and has faired better per capita than the U.S.  And lastly, there is the popular notion that the many varieties of covid vaccines are actual vaccines when there is the knowledge that many people have contracted the virus even after getting the vaccine. A true vaccine by definition is to prevent infection of a targeted virus. And even U.S President Biden and his agents are espousing that we should continue to act like leopard patients even after getting the vaccination.  What?!  So if these are not truly vaccines that millions of us are being driven to have injected into us, what are they?  Does standing next to someone with or without a mask, indoors or outdoors, mean that you will get infected or not? Can this virus, that travels through the air, do what no other virus has ever done, ever, be stopped by a cloth mask or not?

Many of our nation’s youth, and some adults, are being dazzled by the shiny object of socialism with it’s stated promise of a life free of hard work, with equal distribution of resources, a utopia.  When the reality is that in nowhere in the history of mankind has this economic system ever, ever never, never ever, never produced anything but pain, misery, servitude, and economic disaster. Exhibit A & B Venezuela and Cuba.  But, lets just say that they just didn’t do it right. Right?.  And what may be the most concerning acceptance of fiction over reality in America today is the notion that a girl can be said to be a boy and a boy can be said to be a girl and that they are equal.  Thereby ignoring millennia of knowledge and evidence-backed fact there are only two separate and distinct genders – a boy and a girl, a male and a female.  But yet too too many of us are seemingly willing to accept the premise that there are more than two genders that are separate and distinct even though there is no factual evidence or proof that they can present to affirm this position.  These fictions exist solely in our conscious minds and we accept them as truths to our peril.

Some of this may answer the question as to why critical thinking is not taught in today’s government-run schools.  Students in early America had to noodle complex issues out in their heads to determine what would be the best and most efficient way to get a field plowed or ride a horse from one side of the nation to the other safely and quickly.  Their lives depended on them arriving at the right answer.  Americans, unlike any other people on the planet, have the codified right to question the authority of the government and to remind it that it derives its authority from us and that its primary function is to preserve the rights and liberties of the free men and women of this nation. If America is to survive as anything close to what many of us inherited from our parents and grandparents, we need to set reason firmly in her seat and question boldly what is truth and do not stop questioning until we arrive at the true answer rather than surrender to blindfold fear and emotion.