Sadly Lies And Disinformation Are Both Parts Of Politics, Calm Down…

Scoring polit­i­cal points is to be expect­ed from polit­i­cal par­ties, it is how they gain trac­tion, it is how they forge ahead.
There must how­ev­er be some things that are above being politi­cized, nation­al crises like the con­tin­ued esca­la­tion of vio­lent crimes and pan­demics like the COVID ‑19 virus.
I under­stand the need to find issues on which to dis­agree with the gov­ern­ment if you are in the oppo­si­tion par­ty, but oppos­ing for the sake of polit­i­cal trac­tion is bad for our country.

Gone are the days when media hous­es report­ed the truth and were places that the pop­u­la­tion looked to for cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion.
Nowadays, media enti­ties are mere­ly organs of spe­cial inter­est, tools of the wealthy and pow­er­ful. Their pro­nounce­ments are [their truths], not the truth.
Once upon a time, entire media empires were state organs of pro­pa­gan­da but that was only in total­i­tar­i­an states.
Today entire radio and tele­vi­sion net­works have become untrust­wor­thy places to look to, if you seek the truth.
In The United States FOX and Sinclair Broadcasting are two of the worst offend­ers.
In our Island home, it would be unfair to sug­gest that at least edi­to­ri­al­ly, all of the media out­lets do not have polit­i­cal slants.
Nevertheless, the Gleaner Company and oth­ers have over the years become less and less cred­i­ble and seem to be more, mere organs of the People’s National Party.

As much as we loathe that peo­ple would pub­lish things that are demon­stra­bly false. We should not be so incensed that we react in ways that may be more harm­ful to the free­doms we so stri­dent­ly cher­ish and defend.
We must not over-react by demand­ing that they are shut down, or as I have seen in some hys­ter­i­cal social media posts, that they are tak­en out and shot.
These kinds of incen­di­ary out­bursts serve no use­ful pur­pose oth­er than to sat­is­fy our uncon­trolled anger impuls­es.
When we find our­selves at this lev­el of anger, we need to imag­ine that the Government in pow­er is not of our polit­i­cal par­ty.
Imagine that pow­er to shut down free thought, and to take peo­ple into the streets and shoot them.
I under­stand that your response is going to be that you are not pro­mul­gat­ing false infor­ma­tion.
If you believe that unscrupu­lous lead­ers with that much pow­er will be judi­cious with the use of that arbi­trary pow­er you give them, then I have a bridge to sell you.
The way to fight fire is not with fire, it is to find what works to put it out and use it. Water, foam, sand, what­ev­er it takes. It all depends on what kind of accel­er­ant is fuelling it.
The way to fight lies is the use of truth to counter it. Truth like light, will always chase away the dark­ness of lies..

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.