A brief walk into Conservative territory

This is a walk I have taken many times but never document it here because it is such chore. I mean walks into conservatism territory. Since I am Singaporean, I am neither a conservative nor liberal. As a resident of a tiny island state, we are more concerned with the basics of security and sustaining the best possible family life for our children's future. There is no time for ideology and we are even wary we might be adherents of some unaware.

Many of my American friends are conservatives I got to know as customers. Very nice and generous folks but not very bright and there is nothing much to discuss with them. A few are liberals and they are generally more thoughtful and aware. There is a lot more I could discuss with this smaller group.

Much of the communication between the Conservative friends and me are via Facebook in one direction: from them to me. I just picked up one.

and I followed the link above, desiring to read another point of view than the liberal and left leaning views which are more likely to find their way to me.

I looked around and chanced upon another link (This popular immigration video will forever change the way you view the issue) I didn't like the title which includes, "forever change". There is no such thing unless you are a gullible person. You know, the sort that are easily sold by oily salespeople peddling substandard wares on TV. They also use language like that.

I often tell my kids to be careful of logical arguments. Before testing them you need to examine if they are even valid in the first place. My favorite is from the time I was lubricant engineer with Shell. Mobil used to advertise something like this on our TV.




and this is patently nonsense but works for many who do not have enough science education or more likely only studied to do well in exams. For such people they cannot transfer their knowledge beyond the exam papers. They will be conned by this TV advert. It is not valid to compare two oils this way because the operating conditions in engines are completely differently from frying them in a pan.

The article on immigration at the site had also committed the same error. It had included a six minute clip which I am sharing here.



The presenter who is a journalist is devious. He has mixed categories and objectives but unfortunately his audience and I am sure millions of people who had seen this bought his simple message just like they had bought Mobil 1 message and many other hoaxes that have gone viral. They have evolved into fake news which has now even began to appear as "alternative facts" after they have won the trust of many gullible people.

The purpose of immigration into America is not trying to solve the problem of poverty but to achieve a win-win for the most talented and intrepid of people around the world and America's economy based on their core values of liberty. Global poverty is solved through myriad other ways which the presenter above conveniently failed to point out to an audience which is poorly informed about the world in general.

Now America has a problem and we an even larger problem because of them. Trump's executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim majority countries is a terrible idea but received the support of at least half of Americans. How could this be? A sustained diet of deceptive logic, conspiracy theories and building trust to accept fake news and alternative facts has gotten many American voters to a very sorry state and to add insult to injury they are asking for more! How do you rescue millions of people from such evil deception? If this trend persist we will indeed have a modern version of Orwell's 1984.

The freedom on information and speech has not resulted in more light but heat in America. Doubts have not given way to clarity but confusion. To be practical many people are no longer confident about the conclusion of their thought or even gut and has taken to trust the wrong authority figures who always had planned to deceive them. They range from pastors, politicians and businesses. Trump is the latest and most egregious of a long line of such characters. There is a good reason why he turned from democrat to republican. The morally corrupt party was ripe for seizing. That party had systematically deceived and readied the guileless sheep for him. Now they are incapable of recognizing facts, reason and simply trust his 140 characters utterance.

Trump is just the symptom and symbol. The real problem is the mass deception of many American voters. If you can help them see the light or more likely some catastrophic event causes them to wake up, Trump and his kind will fall. Now with the voters behind him Congress will not impeach him. This could be a very long winter but I hopeful it would not be. Trump self deception and lack of discipline would be his downfall.