My family was probably tired of me threatening to subscribe to the Times. Reading the emaciated Cleveland Plain Dealer often results in a What happened to REAL newspapers? outburst from my mouth. Getting the Times will ease my frustration when Facebook friends post links to its articles that I can’t read because I am not a subscriber. I think my life is about to become better.
My more conservative friends will no doubt fear my reading the Times will push me ever further over the edge they think I have been falling over for decades. My more liberal friends will wonder what took me so long. Most friends probably won’t care much either way.
I know this: getting to truth and fact in our world is damned difficult, and I believe the Times, like BBC News and NPR, remains a pretty reliable source of truth and fact. Not perfect, not without any bias, but pretty reliable. More likely to give it to me straight than CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or my daily emails from Conservative Direct. I must continue to be watchful, to read outside my comfort zone, and to try to think things through for myself based on as much information as I can absorb. It’s what’s expected of all of us in our democracy. It cannot survive on conspiracy theories, unfounded accusations and charges, and intentionally misleading “news.”
Al Kesselheim, senior wildlife biologist at Yellowstone National Park, has a great affinity for wolves. (Hang in with me on this.) One of his jobs at Yellowstone is to assure that its wild wolf population thrives. That job puts him in the crosshairs of many who fear and hate wolves, who believe we’d be better off if they were no more.
Kesselheim is interviewed in the January, 2021, issue of The Sun. Much of the interview is devoted to how he understands and interacts with people strongly opposed to his work. It is interesting reading in our current political context. A few sentences seemed particularly relevant to me:
…I’ve been an avid reader on the topic of human psychology, and the fact is that we are not good at logical, rational thinking. We’re emotional. We aren’t objective judges of reality. When something doesn’t conform to our picture of how we think things ought to be, we make it conform. Wolves aren’t bad if you look at them objectively, but they have such a bad reputation that most of us believe they are problematic. I just want wolves to be treated like other wildlife. It isn’t that hard.
I will try to keep his point about our human tendency to lack objectivity in mind as I read the New York Times, and hope you will keep it in mind as well when you read whatever it is you like to read. Maybe if enough of us discipline ourselves to do that, we will get through the new decade in better shape than we are in as we leave the old one.
Happy New Year!
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