Real Thinking Requires Hard Work

I have thus far refrained from writing anything about the atrocities taking place in The Middle East. I have nothing constructive to add to the debate. However, I can't help but make an observation and reproduce the thoughts of another writer, who I will get to in a moment.

First, a walk down memory lane: the immediate aftermath of 9/11 saw this famous declaration from then-president George Bush:

Such a proclamation, that you are either "with us ...  or you are with the enemy" is clearly the product of an untutored mind, a mind that sees the world in bifurcated, absolutist terms. It is the favoured stance of both the simple-minded and the extreme radical, on both the left and right of the political spectrum. They allow for no nuance, no willingness or capacity to hold two conflicting views at the same time. God forbid that reason should enter into the calculus.

And so it is in the current war between Israel and Hamas/Gaza, the refusal to allow for the fact that the terrible attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum, and the suffering inflicted on both sides is horrendous and worthy of condemnation. 

I came upon a very thoughtful and thought-provoking article today by The Star's Shree Paradkar, one that doubtlessly will bring about a severe reaction from some. Because many readers do not subscribe to newspapers, I am taking the liberty of reproducing the entire piece, something I don't think I have ever done before in this blog.

See what you think:

I’ve been sick for a few days. Now I’m sick at heart. Sick in body and spirit. Like many in Canada, I’ve spent a sleepless night that’s reverberating with the sound of a clock a world away. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

More than a million people given 24 hours to get out, or else.

How are they planning it? What will the elderly and disabled do? Are there roads?

Will they send the minors first? Half a million of them?

Bombardments on the way.

No water.

No food.

No electricity.

The babies on incubators in hospitals? The people in the ICU?

No beeps there.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

What about the Israeli young ones who died?

That, too, is a tragedy. Of course, it is horrendous.

Hamas is bad. The Israeli government is bad. Innocent Israelis and Palestinians are being targeted and killed.

See, it’s not difficult to believe more than one thing is true at the same time.

But since the Hamas surprise attack last weekend in Israel that included mass killings and hostage taking, and Israel’s vicious retaliation including tightening its 16-year-long illegal blockade on Gaza, we have been fixated on a fake litmus test that decides whether we care for humanity or whether we support terrorism. The test question: “Do you condemn Hamas”?

Of course I condemn them — but why must I be made to say it?

Have we lost our reason? Or have we simply pulled off the mask of reasonableness?

When Hamilton NDP member Sarah Jama released a statement in solidarity with Palestinian people, the response in corners that usually see chest thumping about free speech became chilling very quickly. First there was her own party leader Marit Stiles publicly throwing her under the bus, asking for a retraction. There was Premier Doug Ford demanding she step down, falsely claiming Jama was “publicly supporting the rape and murder of innocent Jewish people ” Of course, she had done no such thing, but the howls became louder.

A Black, Muslim disabled woman was being hounded. Then the racists smelled blood and came rushing up to say, “Go back to where you came from,” and much worse.

Eventually Jama apologized.

Her sin? She hadn’t condemned the attack.

But not condemning it does not mean support of it, or of Hamas. It’s not so hard to understand the reluctance to condemn the Hamas attack on demand, horrible though it is. The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, who lost family to Israeli attacks, puts it this way: “It’s the Palestinians that are always expected to condemn themselves,” he told the BBC in a now viral video. “How many times has Israel committed war crimes live on your own camera. Do you start by asking them to condemn themselves?”

He’s right.

Palestinians are so rarely defended. More than a million people in north Gaza, half of them children under 18 who have never voted, and certainly not for Hamas? Abandoned by the world, how can they be saved? Tick-tock, tick-tock.

So now, in a cruel twist, it has fallen upon Jews — the very people whose trauma was triggered by the Hamas attack — to put aside their own grieving, their own coping and become the voice of restraint.

That’s why Jewish groups such as Independent Jewish Voices Canada are calling for a ceasefire. Or why we see Daniel Levy, president of the U.S.-Middle East project, getting so blunt on TV. When a BBC reporter said: “The Israelis would say we’re targeting Hamas,” he said, “Do you really keep a straight face when you say that? Do you think terrorist organizations embedded in populations who are denied their most basic rights are ended once and for all in a military campaign? Does that happen in history?”

Tick-tock.

A day after the Hamas attacks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Canada unequivocally condemns” them and that Canada reaffirms its support for Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law.”

Other Western leaders condemned the attack, with U.S. President Joe Biden calling it “an act of sheer evil.” But all pretended that this was happening in a vacuum. Nobody is asking them to justify it, but there wasn’t even an attempt to acknowledge how we got here.

The international law is now being openly broken. Forced deportation or forced transfers are defined as both a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Could the international community now condemn Israel?

No. The U.S. sent weapons.

Could other people protest on behalf of Palestinians?

No. Germany, France and many European nations banned them (some rightfully when they descended into antisemitism).

Could the politicians at least acknowledge that Palestinians have been denied basic human rights?

No.

Could the politicians say: Palestinians have a right to live?

Apparently even that is too much.

While Gaza starts to get closer to extinction, all Trudeau managed were a few waffling words about unilateral military actions “not contributing to the kind of future we all want to see.”

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken asked Israel to show restraint.

Tick-tock.

History needs to know we saw this happening, we understood what it was and we did nothing to prevent it.

We need to know that to be on the right side of history requires that we grow a backbone in the present.

Real thinking requires hard work. It would appear that many of us are not up to the task.

The Burden Of Thought

 

Over the years of writing this blog, I have made fairly frequent mention of  the importance of critical thinking. At the same time, I have usually been quick to add that it is an ideal toward which I constantly strive, one that I frequently fall short of.

There are, of course, many impediments to critical thinking: our values, experiences, ideology and biases, to name but four, can very much get in the way of sober reflection and analysis. No one, to my knowledge, has ever achieved the Platonic ideal of critical thinking. Let's face it: we are all human, and failures along the road are inevitable.

What I cannot abide, however, is a blatant disregard for critical thinking, either through willful indifference or incapacity. When the state is run thus, we are really dealing with a rudderless ship.

Which brings me to the real topic of today's post, Ontario's Doug Ford government. It is one that seems, either by intent or genetic shortcoming, to be headed by a man who displays a singular disregard for, or contempt of, critical thinking. Take, for example, his recent decision to 'repeal' a post-secondary 'requirement' for people wanting to become police officers. In fact, it has never been a requirement (a high-school diploma is all that is technically needed), but the trend for a long time has been to hire people with post-secondary education. 

In response, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles had this to say:

“It’s very concerning,”... university and college educations teach a wider view of the world.

“They (police) have a very difficult job, and they require a lot of skills including critical thinking to do their jobs properly.”

The website Indeed notes the following regarding needed police skills:

Critical thinking is an officer's ability to analyze a situation from multiple perspectives and make important decisions within a short time frame. Police officers must have strong critical thinking skills, as their decisions can greatly impact the health and well-being of themselves, their colleagues and members of the public. Critical thinking also allows an officer to examine outside influences that may affect their decisions and actions to remove the possibility of bias and assess a person's conduct fairly.

While it certainly can be argued that having post-secondary education will not ensure critical thinking skills, it at least maximizes the possibility of having/developing them. 

And the decision of  Doug Ford to try to lower the standards is emblematic of the larger problem within his government: it engages in very little real thought when developing policy. A narrow, telescopic lens is applied to most issues. This is most apparent in the building of new houses and new highways that will exacerbate urban sprawl.

""We need more houses."

"Great. Let's open up the Greenbelt."

"People want a faster commute."

"Great. Let's build Highway 413."

Despite the dire implications of paving over farms and wetlands during this time of climate catastrophe, the hammer that is Doug Ford's brain sees nails everywhere. As a consequence, all Ontarians will have to live with heedless decisions that enrich his developer friends and also significantly undermine ways of mitigating that catastrophe.

But let's not lay the blame entirely at Ford's feet. Every member of the voting public who chooses to ignore or have only a passing acquaintance with the problems that envelop all of us are complicit. 

The cynic in me believes this means that come the next provincial election, Ford will return with a majority. And we will have only ourselves and our collective lazy thinking to blame. 

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The American Taliban

One of the main joys of this part of my life is helping to look after our granddaughter, who is now 18 months old and very, very bright and engaged in the world around her. Sometimes, in order to 'coax' her to eat, we play some children's programming available on YouTube. Like the many books she has, the programs involve a diversity of characters, both White and non-White, both straight and gay, which I think is a tremendous way of teaching about the world's diversity.

Education has real power.

Unfortunately, in Ron DeSantis' world, diversity is perceived as inimical to young minds, and many jurisdictions in Florida are pursuing with real gusto his directives against materials that will enlighten young minds and ultimately help develop critical-thinking skills.

The following is from TizzyEnt (aka Michael McWhorter) whom I follow on Twitter. He makes a daily practice of calling out injustice and racism, and most of his material is quite compelling. See for yourself in the following.

It is doubtful that many people in Florida see themselves as the American Taliban, but I will be happy to hear from those who would challenge that assertion.

When Mass Psychosis Takes Hold

It is ugly, and it is real. 

H/t Aaron Rupar

Especially chilling are the hand gestures of the faithful             

I do hope PP doesn't see this.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Apologies for appropriating the title of one of Carl Jung's works, but it just seems an appropriate label for this post.

I had a dream recently in which my daughter was just a young girl again going to elementary school. She was involved in some kind of basketball tournament, and my wife dispatched me there to find out what time it was likely to be over.

While sitting in the stands, I noticed a person behind me looking at his phone and getting quite agitated. A woman checked in on him, and she too became visibly upset. I asked what the problem was, and he said the venue was under a terrorist attack and the kids were being evacuated.

It turned out they were indeed evacuated, but there was no such attack. The aforementioned man had seen some kind of video simulating a terrorist operation and had taken it for real. I tried to reason with the other parents at the tournament, all in quite a state. I asked them if they had checked legitimate sources for verification, and if it was real, where were the police? 

They were unreceptive to what I had to say, so I angrily asked them, "Have you people no critical-thinking skills at all?"

The genesis of that dream was no mystery to me. Critical-thinking skills, or more precisely, the lack thereof, is a subject that has been weighing on me for quite some time. The fact that the June 2 Ontario election is fast-approaching has lately made that weight more acute.

With Doug Ford and his Conservatives currently leading in the polls, there is much to be concerned about. Egregiously evident are warning signs that a re-elected Tory majority will not be good for those who care more about the environmental, social and economic health of the province than they do about licence-sticker bribes and the like.

The following are two example of where we are head under Doug's 'stewardship.'

First there is the premier's insistence that the much-disputed Highway 413 go ahead. A boon to his developer friends, it bodes ecological disaster, especially vile given that viable alternatives exist, including better use of the tolled Highway 407. 

A Star editorial captures the essence of the incursion nicely:

It’s hard to believe the Ford government could find a way to make its proposal to build a 400-series highway across the northern part of the GTA, destroying farmland and parts of the Greenbelt along the way, any worse than it already is.

But it seems it’s managed to do exactly that.

Internal Ministry of Transportation documents reveal that at one of the most environmentally sensitive sections of the proposed Highway 413, the province ignored the advice of its own consultants.

It chose a route that avoids a planned subdivision development near Kleinburg. Instead, it chose a path that would cause what the consultants described as “maximum incursion” into the Greenbelt and destroy hundreds of hectares of conservation land.

By the way, this unnecessary road will cost between $6 and $10 billion.

The second example, as reported by the CBC, is the matter of adding up the cost of Ford's pre-election promises, with more likely to come in the late-April budget.  

With the start of Ontario's election campaign still two weeks away, Premier Doug Ford's government has announced more than $10 billion in spending, fee rebates and tax cuts since early March and could unveil even more in next week's provincial budget.

Ford and his ministers have rolled out the promises in a flurry of campaign-style announcements, many of them in ridings that are crucial to his Progressive Conservative Party's chances of winning a second straight majority in the June 2 election.

The promises total at least $10.9 billion, according to figures compiled by CBC News, based on information provided by the government in news releases and emails (The full list of financial commitments is in the chart at the end of this story.)

I won't include any further details here, as they are readily available by clicking on the above link. What especially bothers me here is that, to my knowledge, no one in the media is asking Ford how these promises will be paid for.

For those who believe that responsible citizenship is informed citizenship, the picture of what lies ahead is very troubling. For those who rely on social media for their information or make no effort to read at all, they are likely resting easy and having pleasant dreams.

To slightly paraphrase what I said at the beginning of this post, "Do people not have any critical-thinking skills at all?"

 

A Weapon Against Fake News

Living in an age when critical-thinking skills are increasingly hard to find, anything acting as a bulwark against the ignorance and stupidity that seems to inform public 'debate' is welcome. Natalie Turvey writes about a weapon that sounds promising.

While misinformation, memes, clickbait and outright lies proliferate across our online feeds, especially in this election season, Canadians are not powerless to fight back.

There’s no question it can be difficult to distinguish between fact-based real news and fake news and those who want to mislead and confuse us are becoming more sophisticated every day.Research shows that:

-90 per cent of Canadians admit to falling for fake news

-Fake news stories spread six times faster than the truth

-Only 33 per cent of Canadians regularly try to confirm if the news we see is real

-40 per cent of Canadians report finding it difficult to distinguish between truth and misinformation in the news

-More than half of respondents (53 per cent) have come across stories recently where they believe facts were twisted to push an agenda

Help in fighting these daunting numbers is now available:

The Canadian Journalism Foundation has launched a campaign called “Doubt it? Check it. Challenge it.” The campaign aims to give Canadians the skills and tools to combat fake news and information. We have built tools and tips to empower people and it all lives on DoubtIt.ca.

Having checked it out, I can attest that the site offers a wealth of resources to determine whether or not 'news' is genuine, some of which are common sense, and others are resources that many may be unaware of. There is even a fake news quiz. (I took it and scored 9/10)

Essentially, Doubtit.ca revolves some simple steps:

[F]irst, if a story doesn’t seem right, trust that instinct; second, check it out, look for other sources to verify; and third, if it is fake news, call it out.

Of the three steps, the first — Doubt it? — may be the most important. More than half of us have come across stories we think are fake. So, our Spidey senses are working. Often, we just need to take a breath before we repost something and ask ourselves “does this feel right?”

If it doesn’t, there are simple ways to “check it.” First, read beyond the headline. In today’s news, headlines don’t always match the content of the story. They can be much more provocative, to attract clicks, than the story that follows.

Next, take a look at what surrounds the story you’re reading. Do the other stories on the site seem far-fetched? Are they satirical, or all about conspiracies? If so, you’ve found your answer.

And finally, if you doubt a story’s claims, do a simple online search to see if anyone else is reporting it. If it’s true, those claims will be covered by other, reputable news sources. The same goes for images. You can search those online too, and you’ll quickly learn whether the image in that meme is real or fake.

The final responsibility we have, if we are at all active on social media, is to identify fake news when we find it. I have done that many times on Facebook (but I always like to frame it tactfully so as not to offend the poster).

As we enter the crunch point for our election, detecting and exposing fake news is paramount to the health of our democracy. If we remain silent, we give consent to lies, distortions and malicious manipulation. That is something none of us could ever be proud of.

Be Skeptical. Ask Questions.

Given the very strange times in which we live, some sound advice from Jonathan Jarry: