There are two excellent, even important articles in today's New York Times it would be terrific if every voting age American would read today.
Here's the first.
The End of Intelligence
A bit from the article:
It is..."no accident that the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year in 2016 was 'post-truth,' a condition where facts are less influential in shaping opinion than emotion and personal belief. To adopt post-truth thinking is to depart from Enlightenment ideas, dominant in the West since the 17th century, that value experience and expertise, the centrality of fact, humility in the face of complexity, the need for study and a respect for ideas.
President Trump both reflects and exploits this kind of thinking. It is fair to say that the Trump campaign normalized lying to an unprecedented degree. There was the candidate’s claim that legions of Arabs celebrated wildly in New Jersey as the World Trade Center collapsed. He defended his calls for the intentional killing of the Sept. 11 terrorists’ families because 'they knew what was happening' and had 'watched their husband on television flying into the World Trade Center,' something for which there is zero evidence. He insinuated that Senator Ted Cruz’s father had a hand in John F. Kennedy’s assassination and that the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia had been murdered.
When pressed on specifics, the president has routinely denigrated those who questioned him, whether the 'fake' media, 'so called' judges, Washington insiders or the 'deep state.'”
The second article is on not President Trump but someone from his political party, Devin Nunes, the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chief.
How Devin Nunes Turned the House Intelligence Committee Inside Out
In inquiries on Benghazi and Russia and beyond, the California congressman has displayed a deep mistrust of the expert consensus on reality — a disposition that has helped him make friends in the current White House.
I submit that this is a truly twisted man we have as President of our United States presently, making these potentially dangerous times. I also submit that this is not an over-reaction, in any way.
This, third article is from last year, last July and is equally important and, again, even frightening on what has been happening to our State Department.
Finally, the "end of intelligence" is a double-entendre on my part. I mean it as both the end of some of our nation's intelligence communities, like the CIA and FBI and DoJ as well as the end of some human intelligence.
I hope people are reading.
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