The Direction of Intention

The timing was uncanny. While on a slow walk in the park, deep in a conversation about our discouragement – no, our despair – for loved ones sucked down and seemingly lost in the dark, angry MAGA hole, we passed a group of girls engaged in an emphatic conversation and overheard the phrase, “I don’t know you like that!”

The phrase came like a slap. Kerri took out her phone to capture the slap in her notes. “That’s exactly it,” she said. “That’s precisely what is so troubling. It’s what I want to say: I don’t know you like that.”

I am lately haunted by the words of H.G. Wells: “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

There is a reason that the template outlined in Project 2025 includes the elimination of the Department of Education. There is a reason that governors in red states are (and have been) waging a war on education. Educated people ask questions. Educated people check the veracity of statements hurled their way. They take time to check facts and sources of information. In a democracy, an educated populace would never sign on with an autocrat exploiting their anger. They’d ask questions of their anger -and so would be impervious to exploitation. An educated populace would demand ideas from their leaders, respectful debate, reasonable compromise, adherence to the Constitution. They’d demand the same of themselves. An educated populace would see through the ugly name-calling and victim-squeals of a would-be dictator. An educated populace would pay no heed to the cries of “fake news” because they’d have learned to check it out for themselves. They’d hold news organizations to a higher standard. They’d care enough to question and verify information before jumping onto a hate-train. In fact (hear those two words) they would not so easily jump onto any train other than the truth-train because they were dedicated to living-in-facts that transcend bubble-gossip and tribal tittle-tattle.

This morning I had an HGTV revelation about our current political choice. It’s my latest metaphor illuminating the dangerous nonsense running around our nation in a red hat. I’ve learned in my HGTV viewing that demo-day feels good, takes very little time, very little thought, and requires only a sledgehammer. Anyone can do it. Destruction is easy. On the other hand, building the house is hard. It takes ideas, time, thought, planning, cooperation, collaboration, flexibility, knowledge, well-researched choices, skills, process and patience. Wisdom. All are the results of education.

Destruction is not complicated. It asks no questions, requires no learning. Destruction is the center of the red hat campaign.

Creating something beautiful and long-lasting is hard. It takes skill, the capacity to question and learn from mistakes. It takes a plan, forward thinking, and complex considerations, not fantasies sought in the rearview mirror of some imagined sitcom past. And it is never done. Building a better house is the center of the blue team’s campaign.

The red hat and company certainly espouse a plan, Project 2025, but an educated person would only need to ask the authors of the plan a pair of questions before rejecting it outright: 1) Why would you tear down the shining-city-on-the-hill and replace it with a dark prison? 2) Why are you trying to hide your plan from voters?

People I love, those caught in the undertow of the red swirl, empty of fact but full of shared-victim-anger, gulping and then spewing mouthfuls of toxic-fox-swill, waving their flags, raging with a dedicated ignor-ance…I don’t know them like that. I wonder how they came to know themselves like that.

“Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

Let us learn about truth: Truth is not what we hear or see in the stream. It is not something verified by people passing memes around our social bubbles or validated because we share the same opinion and invest in the same misinformation sources that cater to our opinions. Truth is what we find when we question what we hear. It is verified by exiting our bubbles and questioning what we think we know, examining the foundation of our likemindedness. Truth is learned when we fact-check our own opinions and especially challenge our rigidly held beliefs. Rigidity is a red flag, a marker that something false is hiding.

I have learned to remember this: an opinion shared with great passion or rage is still just that – an opinion. Any strong belief held without question or reflection is, in fact, weak and makes us easily exploited, easily led. Lemmings. Fools. Learning the truth requires constant effort and personal responsibility – especially in our age of easy misinformation. In learning truth, our greatest weapon, there is never a need to fill the communal cup with fear-mongering. Truth dispels fear. It dissipates gossip, and, because it demands personal responsibility, affords no room for blame.

Truth is a common center. Education, the art of questioning and discernment, is the compass that gets us there.

read Kerri’s blogpost about I DON’T KNOW YOU LIKE THAT

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