(06-07-2019, 02:57 AM)vine Wrote: Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
The problem is not with facts. You offer myths, fabrications, and stereotypes that are not facts.
Consider one of the worst and most infamous pieces of propagandistic bilge-- the forgery known as Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion among other variants. It is an unrelenting smear of Jews conspiring to do evil in an attempt at world domination for the purpose of humiliating and exploiting gentiles. The characters depicted are pure evil, and if Jews were that evil I would support aggressive proselytizing of them, separating Jewish children from Jewish parents so that the children be raised as gentiles, prohibiting the practice of the Jewish religion, and obliteration of Jewish culture. That would include the destruction of huge quantities of books and feature films, the latter (if good) depending heavily upon Jewish talent in directing, script-writing, and acting. Don't forget that much American comedy is Jewish, so we would be bereft of the Marx Brothers, Don Adams, Jerry Lewis, Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Carol Lawrence, Harvey Korman, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld...
Well, I have met Jews, and they little resemble characters out of Protocols. They are no more greedy and materialistic than gentiles. Many have concerns other than dominating the world -- like enterprise, medicine, law, science, engineering, cultural creation... as someone about half German-American I find at the least the Ashkenazim my cultural brethren. I have swatted down a neo-Nazi by telling him that if I had to choose between being a Nazi and being a Jew I would be a Jew, as becoming a Jew would require far fewer compromises of my morals and culture.
I have tests of truth, and one of the most effective is the test of internal coherence. Truth does not contradict. It may bring about paradoxes (thus, bigger triangles do not have bigger angles), but we all must deal with those. Truth is generally inconsistent with flawed means of getting knowledge. Sure, on occasion some skid-row drunk might say something profoundly true, but the truth can be found in some cause other than drunkenness.
So I pose a question: how are you going to create a better world? I say that we examine our assumptions.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.