There’s been a ton of analysis done-and on it goes-on this false claim by Donald Trump (forgive me but the title President still heavy on my tongue-not to mention my brain-talking about this person) about allegations of wiretapping by President Obama. I believe there is a more fundamental question that should be addressed in Western democracies about the value of truth, the question being this; should freedom of speech have logical boundaries whether it be accepted realties and preventing falsehoods being intentionally/systematically propagated. Societies in the West by and large continue to be vulnerable to fake news and baseless information campaigns-political and otherwise/foreign and national-due to values we hold dearly like Freedom of Speech, but then there does not seem to be mechanisms in place to protect against the abuse of such values, and if there are they do not apply to the rich/powerful at least in practice. I think that with these current twists/turns in the political tide we’re experiencing in the West and the evolving threat of Disinformation we need to take a deep breath and examine our own vulnerabilities that came into play here whether political, social or economic and gradually develop/carve in solutions that mitigate such vulnerabilities because we’ve learned the hard way that we cannot take such great values/traditions for granted; some suggested protections are mentioned here.
The key takeaway point here is this; when discussing and analyzing important/consequential news stories we need NOT be too consumed with intricacies of the story that we forget to also keep an eye on the wider context in terms of what they represent, how they affect (adversely or positively) our national and/or global echo system and how we should respond to them-The Big Picture.
Finally, part of the problem when looking at values and behavioral change is to consider the fact that we’ve become a society driven by consumption and less on genuine quality of life aspects like health, critical thinking, protecting/cherishing the environment (nature/wildlife) and upholding principles of morality/common decency/civility at all levels of social and political structures. We need to review/reverse this trend because it does have a profound impact on our judgement and in turn on our future as a civilized society. Speaking of civilized, Mr. Trump an apology to President Obama is in order here.