Thinking About Big Things

Illustration: "The March of Intellect"(1829), William Heath

We don't need "critical" thinking as much as we need just plain thinking. When a madman claims there is a giant faucet, so big that it takes a full day to turn the handle, and that faucet directs all the water of the Pacific Northwest to either flow naturally into the ocean or to be redirected to drought-plagued California, it shouldn't require any kind of fact-checking or research. All that is needed is thinking. Think about what the world is like, what water is like, how rivers and oceans function.

If you were tempted even for a second to believe in the magic faucet, some realistic thinking would snap you out of it. Unfortunately, we seem to be living among a population that doesn't know what the world is like or what water is like, doesn't know how rivers and oceans function, and - most of all - doesn't know how to think. Fifty, forty, even thirty years ago, if a guy like that had appeared on TV making a claim like that, people would have had a hearty laugh before changing the channel. The show would not have been renewed. A third-grader in 1955 (the year donald was in third grade) would have known immediately that the giant faucet claim was ludicrous.

Yet now, many adults seem unable to think clearly enough to understand the difference between reality and nonsense. So let's assume that the giant faucet story seems credible. Why have we never heard of it before? A faucet that could control the flow of mighty rivers would be a remarkable engineering feat. When was it built, and by whom? Was it part of the Public Works Administration in the 1930's? Why have we not seen any documentaries about it? Why is it not a famous tourist attraction? These are some of the questions a person capable of critical thinking might ask, questions a middle school student might ask. Yet no reporters have asked these questions. Surely, the vast majority of the White House press corps know that there is no magic faucet. They can easily make the truth known to the public by asking the obvious questions.

If fact-checking and research are deemed necessary, send an expedition to the headwaters of the Columbia River to look for the faucet. Spend some time in a library checking the newspaper archives and the encyclopedias for stories about the great faucet project. Ask a few hydraulic engineers if such a thing is possible. Today's "journalists" won't do that work, not even the relatively easy work of asking the person making the claim to provide supporting facts for the claim.

 

The Giant Faucet

The Things They Say

Imagine that President Biden is making a campaign speech. In the midst of the speech, he could be talking about almost anything: the need to repair and improve our infrastructure, the challenges posed by climate change, the high cost of health care.

It doesn't matter what he's talking about, because, suddenly, he mentions a well-known movie character. "The late, great, Forrest Gump," he says. "Have you heard of him, Forrest Gump? He's got that box of chocolates. If you sit next to him, he'll start telling you about a box of chocolates. Forrest Gump. Don't sit next to him or you'll hear a long story about his mother and the chocolates. Forrest Gump, incredible." And then he goes on with the speech.

If this happened, people would be all over social media, claiming that this is all the proof we need that the man has completely lost his mind, that he's obviously been senile for most of his life, and he's out of touch with reality. The mainstream media, pretending to be neutral, would put it in the form of questions: "Does he have a medical problem? Is it time for him to stop campaigning? Will his party tell him to step down?" They'd claim, "Alarms are going off in Washington as the president's strange remarks have his team struggling to explain what's going on," and so on.

Yet, oddly enough, when donald trump repeatedly digresses into ramblings about his beloved movie character, Hannibal Lecter, hardly an eyebrow is raised. For years, the lord and master of the Republican Party has made many very strange public statements. The news media rarely comment, and never suggest that his bloviations about indoor plumbing, batteries, wind turbines, or imaginary history are signs of mental deterioration.

The double standard is real. The question is why. Why do the news media, who were threatened and vilified by trump and treated kindly by the President, want to undermine the President's re-election campaign?

This vile T-shirt, promoting the lynching of reporters, was popularized by trump supporters after trump imitated Hitler and labeled the news "The enemy of the people." Maybe trump's threats against their lives has made reporters too terrified to tell the truth. Yet that would seem a good reason for them to prefer a President who has not incited violence against them.

"With regard to the forest, when trees fall down, after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry, they become really like a matchstick. And they get up, y’know there’s no more water pouring through, and they become very very, uh, they just explode, they can explode."
- donald trump, September 14, 2020

"These millions and millions of people that are coming from prisons, coming from prisons and jails, you know there is a slight difference okay. They're coming from prisons and jails, mental institutions and insane asylums like Silence of the Lamb, the press always says why does he ramble about si- Silence of the Lamb, the late great Hannibal Lecter, he'd like to have you over for dinner, do you ever, don't do it, if he suggests I'd like to have you for dinner, don't go. But these are the people, these are the people that are coming into our country."
- donald trump, June 28, 2024.

“No water in your faucets. You ever try buying a new home and you turn on. You want to wash your hair or you wanna wash your hands. You turn on the water and it goes drip, drip the soap. You can't get it off your hand. So you keep it running for about 10 times longer. You trying, the worst is your hair. I have this beautiful luxuriant hair and I put stuff on. I put it in lather. I like lots of lather because I like it to come out extremely dry because it seems to be slightly thicker that way. And I lather up and then you turn on this crazy shower and the thing drip, drip and you say I'm gonna be here for 45 minutes. What? There's so much water. You don't know what to do with it. You know, it's called rain. It rains a lot in certain places. But, now their idea, you know, did you see the other day? They just, I opened it up and they closed it again. I opened it, they close it, washing machines to wash your dishes. There is a problem. They don't want you to have any water. They want no water.”
- donald trump, June 22, 2024

"Millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don't speak languages. We have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They're truly foreign languages, nobody speaks them."
- donald trump, Feb. 28, 2024