Quote of the Week...from Philip Roth

You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.
                                                                            ---Philip Roth

Philip Roth, who sadly passed away this past May, was an influential American writer both of fiction and non-fiction...his first major work was the novel Goodbye Columbus.  I've just finished reading his 2006 book Indignation: more on that in a day or two.  He interested me enough to look at some of his past quotes, which I accessed through the website A-Z Quotes.  I picked the above one because it spoke to me as to how too many people handle their take on the news...

This has been going on for years: I'll watch some politician or public figure give a speech or interview, and I come away from it with a few details but more importantly their general philosophy on the subject being discussed.  Then I'll tune in to the cable news channels and talk radio and get drastically distorted spins on what was said, often accompanied by the speaker being trashed in the most personal terms. As someone who has learned to think for myself...whether or not you happen to agree with my conclusions...I find that many, if not most people derive their opinions not from the source event but rather from the spin that their "side" has generated in interpreting it.  Note that I'm not distinguishing the political left from the right in this regard: I see it going on everywhere!

Let's consider the last two presidents: Barack Obama and Donald Trump.  You couldn't dream up a pair who have such a different way of looking at things and treating others...to some extent it's necessary to take their personalities into account when they speak on different matters.  I have listened extensively to both and have found areas of agreement, as well as disagreement, with each one.  But too many people, I'm sorry to say, either regard Obama as all-good and Trump as all-bad, or the reverse, depending on how they are ideologically inclined.  First comes the ideology, usually strongly welded to a political party...if it's one of the "bad guys" they'll belittle their positive accomplishments while casting aspersions on their motivations as well as alternately ridiculing their stupidity and accusing them of being sneaky and despotic.  Their own "good guy", of course, is beyond reproach...why, if you dare to criticize then you're both a traitor and a fool...

I thought school was supposed to teach us how to think, not how to parrot others' thoughts...