Colorado GOP Kicks Out Reporter Because He Doesn't Like the First Amendment & Elon Musk Admits He Did No Research Before Mistakenly Destroying Man's Life
Women More Likely to Die of Heart Disease Because of Medical Bias, Fox Pundit Thinks Biden Wants to Replace God with Trans Community (Huh?), What I'm Reading, Lesley Gore Sings "You Don't Own Me"
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: How much responsibility does the average person have for the spread of Evil? A lot.
Colorado GOP ousts reporter from event, claiming ‘unfair’ coverage: Even some Republicans have criticized this clear rejection of the First Amendment.
Read Elon Musk’s Wild Deposition in Neo-Nazi Brawl Case: Musk tweeted without any facts. Was wrong. Put the lives of the man and his family in jeopardy. Still has no remorse.
Why Heart Disease Research Still Favors Men: Another clear sign that we don’t value the lives of women as much as we do those of men.
Fox reporter claims trans people want to replace God in bizarre rant: Did Fox ever have any integrity? If they did, this is another sign that they don’t now.
What I’m Reading: Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect is the highly entertaining sequel to Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.
Lesley Gore sings “You Don’t Own Me”: Seventeen-year-old Lesley Gore delivers a power anthem that still resonates today.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Ignorance is the handmaiden of evil.
Anonymous
Whew! That’s a lot to unpack. First, what is evil? For me, evil is when a person deliberately takes actions that serve themselves when they know those actions will devastate others. There’s lots of evil out there: child abusers, rapists, murderers, scammers stealing from the elderly, and much more. But the evil that affects the most people—and is preventable—comes from politicians who put their careers above the good of the people, including the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Kari Lake, Ron DeSantis, and Greg Abbott to name a few. But they aren’t the worst villains of this story.
In recent movies like Dune: Part Two and Monkey Man, key plot points hinge on changing the minds of the masses of people. In Dune, they must manipulate the people into believing the protagonist is the messiah who will free them from political evil. We have that scene where Timothée Chalamet walks through the worshiping masses. In Monkey Man, Dev Patel is in the ring fighting while the crowd boos and throws stuff at him. When he wins, they start chanting his name. He becomes their messiah, going after corrupt politicians who have been manipulating the masses.
Who’s the real evil in these kinds of stories? Yes, the politicians, but also the People—the unquestioning masses who blindly follow them in the first place. The hero/messiah’s job is to reveal to the people just how corrupt their false leaders are. But why should they have to? Why aren’t people smart enough to figure it out on their own? Especially in a country like the U.S. where we have access to all the information necessary to never elect these evil politicians, or at the very least not re-elect them.
There are two types of ignorance: not knowing something and willfully not knowing something. The first can be remedied by anyone with access to the internet or newspaper. The second is evil because it is the handmaiden that serves evil people and evil deeds. I recently read an article in Scientific American (“Why Some People Choose Not to Know”) that cites studies showing that 40% of people are willfully ignorant—they choose not to know the consequences of their actions. That allows them to act evilly but still think of themselves as good. The good news is that 40% of people are altruistic—they choose to know the consequences of their actions.
Yet, willful ignorance is gaining ground. According to a recent Washington Post article, “Six years ago, just about 1 in 4 Republicans (26 percent) agreed that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in the 2016 election. Now, 38 percent of Republicans — and 47 percent of strong Trump supporters — believe that is the case.” Despite an enormous amount of evidence coming out over the past six years that proved Trump knew he was lying about the election and that his advisors pushing the claims knew they were false, the number who believe the lie has increased! Willful ignorance equals willful evil.
So, when I see movies that require a messiah character to free the masses from their stupidity, I’m less sympathetic to those people. To me, they are a drunken lynch mob in a saloon ready to follow whoever is buying drinks. I want to tell them, “Quit waiting around for someone else to tell you what you already know. Be your own savior and read a newspaper. Stop following leaders who are fleecing your money and rights.” But they are willfully ignorant. They are Evil. And we all have to pay the price.