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The Lost Art of Critical Thinking [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-29

In the era of clickbait titles, TikTok’s, podcasts and influencers, the skills of critical thinking continue to erode and seem doomed to become extinct in certain parts of the world.

Even as the means of research are ever more present and easier to use, the people themselves have turned their brains off and wait patiently for whatever commentator they adhere to, to feed them their talking points. Trying to debate in this climate is an exercise in frustration and hair pulling. Like magic as soon as a certain key word is inserted into your dialogue, dozens of people come out to reply and you are now the proud owner of dozens of duplicates.

Critical thinking skills are not some magical abilities that some possess, they are not something bestowed upon you by degrees and diplomas. They are simply the ability to think about the information (oral, visual) received, to question it, research it (find out more) to hash it out and to draw your own conclusions about it.

People today; copy-paste their thoughts. They cannot explain their reasoning for they have none. They cannot elaborate or extrapolate on a point, for they have not researched it past a catchy title that caught their eyes. Let’s look at some talking points the left is peddling to their own, because they refuse to admit that left voters are really the biggest reason we lost these elections:

Talking point: Fox news is responsible for this mess, with their propaganda… no dear, fox news is responsible for the propaganda, those who watch are responsible for turning fox on, listening to fox and choosing to believe the propaganda. Because I’ve watched fox, there’s woman named Tarlov who cuts the propaganda down to shreds, why not believe her? Fox talked about their defamation lawsuit on air, did you ever try to find out the results? And to further blow your mind, why is it that propaganda has developed some sort of bias in whom it affects?

Fox news isn’t force feeding them its views, no dears, they order from Fox news, because it’s their favorite dish, they place the order, they pay for it and they eat it with relish!

Talking point: people in rural areas don’t pay attention to the news… again that’s their choice. But riddle me this; do they pay attention to what’s going on in their rural areas? Did they miss the nazi flags? The patriot front marches? The bullying of minorities in school? The laws affecting them? Did they miss the price of their meds dropping drastically under Biden and now rising back up? One can choose not to pay attention to news, but it’s kinda hard to swallow that they don’t pay attention to their finances and town ongoings.

One person asked me if I was asking people to care more about other people’s lives then their own kitchen table issues… hum YES! The hidden secret is you cannot care for other people’s lives if you don’t care for your own… so yes CARE about OTHERS.

Talking point: The left has abandoned the working class… no, the white working class (the racism matters here) have closed their ears to what the left is saying because “immigrants are taking your jobs” because “DEI is giving jobs to unqualified Black people over you”… So, despite the evidence to the contrary, that in fact Dems are the ones under which the working class has been most prosperous, they choose to fall back on their bigotry.

To get back to how Americans in general have abandoned reasoning and logic for ready to eat soundbites: So enthused are they by this new abysmal method of communication that they are now proudly waging a war against those they call educated, snobs, elites, etc..... And by education I don’t only mean school learning, I mean just against anyone who simply knows about a subject having done the research and delved into it.

I feel I must address my use of the word research here, for that has been coopted by those who view a 5 minute video or read a headline and declare “they’ve done their own research” , this is not the research I reference when I use the term, take it in the old fashion way, when it meant reading, learning, thinking and accruing information.

We’ve devolved into a society where thinking, critical thinking, research, education, expertise and knowledge are viewed as “suspicious” and things to be sneered at. I would say the art of critical thinking soon will land in a museum, but alas, those are also under suspicion for containing too much truth and history. Maybe some distant future generation will ponder its fossilized remains and somehow revive it.

#ThePoet

Muriel Vieux – March 29th, 2025, ©All rights reserved

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