“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” — Mark Twain

I live in a red town, the red hat MAGA red that makes normal folk a bit weary. This is most noticeable in the signs and flags displayed well before the election announcing support for the former guy who wants to be the next guy that he may pardon himself and impose his version of payback on those who would make him accountable for his actions. Perhaps necessary for him, not necessarily for the rest of humanity. I tend to find the truth somewhere in the middle, ignoring the two extremes altogether. Sadly this doesn’t seem to be the norm.

The internet created so much abundance in this world, but abundance isn’t always a good thing. The genie is out of the bottle now, so how do we balance the truth with all that is otherwise? The old expression, “trust but verify” only works when you can trust the place where you’re verifying the information you’re wondering if you can trust. When you use the same search engine for everything, how can we be sure anything is true?

Modern life is making fools of us all. We ought to be focused on the massive challenges humanity and this planet face, instead we’re believing our ears instead of our eyes on every conspiracy theory, rumor and innuendo we stumble upon. When future generations look at us, will they shake their head in disbelief at the con job we were all sold on?

If I began to tell you what the truth is, you should immediately put up your guard. None of us knows the truth about everything, and those who tell you they’ve got it all figured out are usually the ones that we should all be most skeptical of. We really only know the truth about ourselves, and most of us bury that too. The irony in all of this as that fooling ourselves and others seems to be one of those timeless truths about humans we will never quite shake. But hey, don’t take my word for it.