Political sentience means realizing how you are being manipulated.  This is not an easy thing to do, because we are drenched daily in a monsoon of propaganda.  We are constantly soaked to the bone, so that who we are as individuals becomes almost indistinguishable from who we are told we are.  Even if we resist in our minds what we are told we are, our bodies still exist in the political society, so we often end up doing what is required of us in spite of ourselves.  The longer the pressure remains, the more futile our residence may seem.

Everything that exists exists to maintain the state or the status quo, whichever the case may be.  It’s the first law of humanity.  What matters only is that we conform to the state and its institutions and power structures.

I remember a long time ago I watched an interview with Gore Vidal.  He said, “Politics is like a shell game.  Where’s the pea?  Where’s the pea?  It’s the writer’s job to show that it’s in the magician’s hand.”

Exposing the trick for what it is may be the writer’s job, but it is incessantly challenged by what Joseph Goebbels, the evil genius, supposedly once said: “The bigger the lie, told often enough, becomes truth.”

You may need to watch the shell game 100 times before you see the magician’s sleight-of-hand, but when you do, you will be liberated.

Some might call political sentience the same thing as critical thinking.  However, I once observed one of my fellow professors teach a critical thinking class, only to realize he was teaching 100% liberal propaganda, and he didn’t even know it.  (Because of this and other experiences I have had in academia, I can easily understand why President Trump has such an issue with Harvard University.)

We read and hear arguments from the mass media all the time.  It’s the assumptions in those arguments (and are almost never mentioned) that need to be challenged.  For example, the press claims that Trump’s battle with Harvard University is his attempt to limit academic freedom and free speech.  However, progressivists (the elites) do everything they can to limit speech and the will of the people (the vote) with institutions: the media, the courts, and Harvard University.

Thinking freely is not easy.  It takes mental effort and relentless scrutiny of the shell game.  Power structures and institutions can seem omnipotent, but thinking freely is a fundamental component of it is what to be fully human.

Fear of thinking is the greatest cowardice.

Image: ElisaRiva via Pixabay, Pixabay License.