but that would involve critical thinking

One of the most dis­con­cert­ing things
I have no­ticed as of late
is peo­ple say­ing any vari­a­tion of:

“I don’t watch the news much but I haven’t heard [thing they’re in dis­be­lief of] …”

“Well, I’d just as­sume that …”

“But I would think …”

“Well, but would­n’t they …”  Etc.

As I’m sure most (if not all) of you can guess, this is typ­i­cal­ly in re­sponse to some in­for­ma­tion about ICE dis­ap­pear­ing peo­ple off the street, the US bomb­ing Iran or the next aw­ful thing in a long line of aw­ful things the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is do­ing … ba­si­cal­ly, any­thing and every­thing out­side their very small, thick, opaque bubble. 

It re­al­ly both­ers me and I think it’s a huge part of the rea­son why we’re in this mess. 

Most Amer­i­cans seem to be in­suf­fer­ably opinionated
while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­ing woe­ful­ly uninformed. 

It sel­dom ever cross­es the mind of your av­er­age Amer­i­can that they don’t know what they don’t know, so maybe, just maybe, they should con­sid­er that they don’t know what they’re talk­ing about and shut the fuck up. 

I sus­pect that part of this is due to the im­me­di­ate dis­com­fort ex­pe­ri­enced when hear­ing about some­thing that runs con­trary to their per­cep­tion of reality. 

The world has a lot of beau­ty and won­der in it, but it is also a very, very, VERY fuck­ing ugly place.

Just as not every­one is bad, nei­ther is every­one good.

I know peo­ple who will not watch any­thing that makes them the slight­est bit sad or un­com­fort­able, and no, it is not al­ways be­cause they are al­ready too aware of the state of the world and their heart can’t han­dle anymore. 

It’s sim­ply too up­set­ting that any­thing not have a hap­py end­ing, that lovers don’t get to­geth­er, that good does not tri­umph over evil. (In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, a fair num­ber of the peo­ple I know who are like this have some in­cred­i­bly ques­tion­able morals, ethics, and be­lief sys­tems, but that’s a di­a­tribe for an­oth­er time.)

Now, some­times, there is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in say­ing, “Well I would think that …” if you fol­low it up with some state­ment based on the log­ic you’ve used (usu­al­ly based on some pre-ex­ist­ing fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion) to ar­rive at that conclusion. 

To give an in­nocu­ous example:
“Well, I would think that tung­sten prob­a­bly can’t scratch a di­a­mond, be­cause di­a­mond is hard­er than tung­sten.”

Di­a­mond IS hard­er than tung­sten, that’s a fact, so no, it can’t scratch di­a­mond, and you know that even if you’ve nev­er looked it up to see if it’s pos­si­ble. (This is not the best ex­am­ple, I know, but you get the point.)

Some­where along the line, peo­ple got it in their heads that any thought they had was a cor­rect one and it need­ed no fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion; it was right sim­ply be­cause they had the thought and it feels right so there­fore it must be right. 

Which, that’s su­per fuck­ing weird, con­sid­er­ing how it’s eas­i­er than ever to con­firm ba­si­cal­ly any­thing. We all have the en­tire­ty of hu­man knowl­edge in our pock­ets at all times. 

I know we have to tread care­ful­ly due to bull­shit like AI, pseu­do­science, ap­peal to emo­tion, and all that nasty stuff, but if you al­ready know to ques­tion what­ev­er dumb shit pops into your head or you hear at ran­dom, you should be able to take the next step and do some digging.

“Emi­ly, it’s crit­i­cal think­ing. What you’re de­scrib­ing is crit­i­cal think­ing.”

Okay, fair enough, but give me a break, I’m neu­ro­di­ver­gent and I ramble.

Any­way

I sure am glad this jack­ass here in this small ass tap­room tonight has ap­point­ed him­self as a Free­lance Re­porter and has loud­ly an­nounced sev­er­al times that we bombed Iran.

Then called some­one on speak­er and told them too. 

Thank­ful­ly, the staff told him to take it off speaker.

And no, he’s not ex­cit­ed or any­thing. Ap­par­ent­ly he just for­got that en­tire­ty of hu­man knowl­edge in our pock­ets thing I just mentioned. 

And that it in­cludes a real time news machine. 

In any case, there is so much that we don’t know. And what’s dan­ger­ous is not nec­es­sar­i­ly that we don’t know it, but that we don’t know that we don’t know it. 

We VE­HE­MENT­LY be­lieve we *do* know it, and we act on that premise and re­sist any at­tempt to get us to think otherwise. 

We take it as a per­son­al af­front. It is killing us, and it’s killing every­one else. 

Be­cause when Amer­i­ca sneezes,
the world catch­es a cold.
 

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2025 Emi­ly Duchaine. Pic­tured: some Logan’s Run (1976).

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