Information and thinking

Recently, in response to an ignorant comment by a former sports player, I posted a link (see also here) to ACLED's data on the BLM protests showing that 93% of the protests were peaceful and the majority of violence was white supremacists (including police). Other comments in response had addressed the cluelessness aspect (that all lives matter is actually a white supremacist response to Black Lives Matter), but no-one was addressing the issue of violence, which is why I posted the link. 

In response to my post, I had a comment - polite, not aggressive, absolutely NO need to block or mute the person - saying that may be "my perception", but television showed blacks committing violence. 

We are both correct. 

Why? Because television coverage was biased towards the sensationalist, rather than to the less likely to be viewed objective reality that (a) most protests were peaceful, and (b) television coverage may well have been biased towards black violence from the 7% - which, in truth, was triggered by police in most cases - over the excessive, endemic and egregious violence of white supremacists in and out of police forces. 

I hope everyone has noted I have not yet acknowledged that not all police are white supremacists: the way I have written the above has that bias, and it does so for a reason: to illustrate most of us lack fluency in our ability to critically analyse our perceptions. 

I like the ACLED data because it is a widespread, objective analysis. I gave up on television decades ago because it is often either trite, biased, or both. 

The problem is, almost all of us get sources of information that feel comfortable to us, and then believe it uncritically. 

In my case, I have a couple of conservative news sources (here and here) that I check occasionally to see how conservatives are thinking. I use those two sites as they are generally free of the fantasy style elements elsewhere, and are also mostly well-written. 

I still disagree with most of what they advocate for, but at least I know how and what they think. 

For most of us, doing something like that is akin to treachery - which is a schoolyard sort of response, something based on power (including networks ["alliances"]) and prestige, not reason, thinking, or good emotions. That inappropriate set of responses and viewing is a problem many of us - including those on my (progressive) part of politics, and we cannot afford to do so. 

To marshall a schoolyard type of response to the egregious schoolyard excesses of a tyrant like Trump is self-defeating: what is needed is reasoned appeals to good emotions, as being espoused by Robert  Reich and Alexandria  Ocasio-Cortez. 

The responses by right wing extremists to the ACLED data has included acts such as relabelling ALL protests and riots and deliberately misinterpreting data as "proof 95% of rioters were linked to BLM": there is nothing there but a schoolyard-level reaction - certainly no thinking, just hate.

As a society, we need to address that - teachers, family members, peers, we all have a responsibility to lift the thinking of those indulging in simplistic or biased thinking - and Trump is the ultimate example of the worst of that simplistic or biased thinking, but never, ever, EVER try to claim something is true just because you saw it on mainstream television: check decent sources like The Conversation or The Guardian.