“Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”

I haven’t been comfortable with the rightwing infosphere for years. Sure, there are some reasoned thinkers out there, but I find most commentary from the right to be cherry-picked, facile, revanchist, backward-looking, reductive and derivative.

Crazy cons are aiming their pea shooters at Ron DeSantis, with Trump still deciding whether to call him ‘DeSanctimonious’ or ‘Meatball.’ Kari Lake–The Che Guevara of Team Trump–is broadcasting the lie that George Soros is endorsing DeSantis. This should all redound to the popular Florida governor’s benefit.

Ann Coulter’s shrill attack on Nikki Haley probably will not help Haley. It won’t help Coulter either. The rightwing harridan faded into obscurity years ago, but still manages to shriek from the abyss, desperately begging somebody, anybody to please listen to her…

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant. — H.L. Mencken

We have a real problem in this nation. Yes, we have biased news sources and unaccountable government bureaucracies, but the root problem is the average person’s inability to think for himself/herself and critically analyze information presented. A close corollary is the desire to hear only what reinforces our beliefs and biases.

Do not trust any information source that does not credibly steelman what it is arguing against, or provide a real and credible dissenting opinion. Any source caught leaving out information inconvenient to its argument is also suspect. In short, trust no one. Read widely.

Uncle Walter has left the building. Time to grow up and use our powers of logic and reason, and apply a healthy dose of skepticism, tempered by experience.

Everybody is trying to sell you something. Everybody.