War is Peace

There's a discussion going on at my Facebook page that prompted this 'rant':

(The following is opinion, not to be taken as necessarily true...)

 
I find it fascinating, sad and unnerving that people at both ends of the political spectrum describe the others' words and actions the same way... "more of the same ... twisting and distorting to support their emotion." I'm old enough to remember when facts were...... well... facts; that is, true; accepted as so; beyond dispute. (This would have been before 1980 or so...) In those days, people were open to changing their minds, accepting new understanding based upon further research or fuller context. Now we seem to have entered this weird Twilight Zone-like world where opinion is seized upon as fact (they're NOT the same) and ACTUAL facts are pooh-poohed as "spin". We *are* emotional beings, but we are RATIONAL beings too. We invented and once accepted the scientific method as The Best Way to determine the Actual State of Things. Now the Actual State of Things is up for grabs... I once heard an award-winning professor say "Assertion is not evidence", ie, 'Saying it doesn't make it so'. That's obvious on the face of it, but so many of us (please note, I'm not excluding myself here) are subject to reacting emotionally that we fail to actually THINK. I have my theories about how this happened, but they're Just One Man's Opinion, and I'm not immune to conspiracy theory thinking. After all, I'm in my sixth decade of life on this planet and I've learned a few things about myself. I've also learned that people, organizations, businesses and governments DO lie. (They also 'take out of context', 'mislead', 'spin' and obfuscate, but those are all lying at root.)
I think it bodes ill for us as a people (or as a species) finding and implementing viable solutions to the challenges we face when opponents can't even agree on what's real...

Fortunately, I'm quite happy with my understanding of reality, and it has very little to do with the doings on this physical spacetime plane...