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how informed can we possibly be if we assume that everything that is reported by the media is false and therefore not worthy of paying any attention to?

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Originally posted by chellim1:
"Nor Our War": NATO Allies

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Originally posted by 6guns:
NATO "allies"...

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Originally posted by PHPaul:

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Originally posted by chellim1:
"Nor Our War": NATO Allies

That shit works both ways.

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Originally posted by chellim1:

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Originally posted by 6guns:
NATO "allies"...

They want to benefit from our protection, but they don't want to pay for it.

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I’ve been struggling a bit on the intellectual front these past few days, and it stems from several recent conversations about our strikes on Iran. The speed with which some people abandon previously “strongly held” beliefs—simply to oppose Donald Trump—is dizzying. Even more striking is that the justifications they offer are often immediately contradicted by basic, verifiable facts—or worse, are based on nothing at all.

What’s left is not disagreement, but disorientation.

Many of these same people place their trust in institutions and voices that have not earned it in years—if not decades. The inconsistencies, reversals, and outright falsehoods are ignored as if they never occurred. In their place emerges a kind of emotional reflex: a need to oppose whatever is in front of them today, regardless of what they believed yesterday. I’ve come to think of this as “current thingism”—a mindset where outrage is constantly refreshed, and yesterday’s convictions are discarded like soiled clothes.

In observing this pattern, I’ve noticed something deeper at work. These are not unintelligent people. In many cases, they know—or at least suspect—that something doesn’t add up. But their emotions will not permit them to resolve the contradiction. Instead, they hold onto multiple beliefs that cannot logically coexist, and the result is predictable: tension, frustration, and often anger.

There is a well-established term for this: cognitive dissonance. It occurs when a person holds two or more incompatible beliefs, or when behavior conflicts with belief. The human mind is built to seek coherence. When coherence breaks down, pressure builds. That pressure must be resolved—either by adjusting beliefs or by distorting reality to protect them.

What we are witnessing now is that process playing out not just in individuals, but across entire groups. It becomes a kind of social contagion. People who claim to support human rights, equality, and personal liberty will, in the next breath, defend or excuse regimes that violate those very principles in the most obvious ways. Iran is a clear example. From the subjugation of women to the execution of homosexuals to rigid theocratic rule, the regime stands in direct opposition to the values these same people claim to champion.

And yet, because the geopolitical alignment is inconvenient to their political preferences, the contradiction is ignored—or worse, inverted.

To understand how this becomes possible, you have to look at the philosophical foundation beneath it. Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to the perceived failure of the modernist project—the belief that human reason and empirical inquiry could steadily improve mankind. But instead of refining that project, postmodernism rejected its core premise. Rather than acknowledging limits, it denied the existence of objective truth altogether.

Where modernism affirmed absolutes, postmodernism dissolves them. Truth becomes subjective, contingent on individual perception and “lived experience.”

But this creates an obvious problem. If truth is entirely subjective, then whose truth takes precedence? If you demand that I respect your “truth,” what obligation do you have to respect mine? If you claim something is true based on feeling, and I reject it based on evidence, on what grounds can the dispute be resolved?

At some point, the contradiction becomes unavoidable. If two “truths” directly conflict, one of them must be wrong—or the concept of truth itself becomes meaningless. And if truth is meaningless, then so too are reason, evidence, and debate.

This is where postmodernism reveals itself not as a belief system, but as an anti-belief system. Its function is not to establish truth, but to undermine the very possibility of it. And in that vacuum, something else inevitably fills the space: power.

Under postmodernism, conflict is not a flaw—it is a feature. If nothing is objectively true, then arguments are no longer about discovering truth, but about asserting dominance. What matters is not whether a claim is correct, but whether it can be made to prevail.

This is why the contradictions don’t get resolved. They don’t have to. In a system where truth is negotiable, consistency becomes optional. And once consistency is abandoned, anything can be justified, no matter how incompatible it is with previously stated beliefs.

That is the real danger.

A society that cannot agree on basic truths cannot reason together. A people who cannot resolve contradictions will eventually normalize them. And a culture that normalizes contradiction does not remain stable—it becomes volatile, reactive, and increasingly detached from reality.

At that point, the question is no longer who is right. The question is whether truth itself still matters—and if the answer to that is no, then we are no longer having arguments—we are merely competing for control of a narrative untethered from reality.
- Michael Smith

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Landlocked Czech Republic (didn't know they even had a navy).
https://x.com/SemSuchar/status...303302033547636?s=20

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Originally posted by chellim1:

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Originally posted by 6guns:
NATO "allies"...

They want to benefit from our protection, but they don't want to pay for it.