By Tom Dodge
Dallas, TX –
What is or isn't true sometimes depends on whom you ask. Here's a commentary from Tom Dodge.
When I was a teacher I always reduced everything to the LCD, the lowest common denominator. Often I told students, the answer to life's seeming insoluble questions is often right under your nose. I may have learned this as a boy from reading comic books. Pogo, one of my favorite characters, said, "We have met the enemy and it is us." A lifetime of reading the peregrinations of Plato, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud, and the rest, hasn't disabused me of the notion that Pogo said it all. The others say more or less the same thing but say it in thousands of pages of arcane language.
Another tip I offered over the years was the "Iceberg Theory," based on the fact that ninety-eight percent of an iceberg's bulk lies hidden beneath the surface of the ocean. It is thus with truth. Truth is always been kept hidden beneath the surface, despite the fact that doing so makes it dangerous, like the iceberg. Out in the open icebergs would be no threat to ships. So if it's truth you want, you have to be willing to dive deep beneath the surface where it lies.
For my students I simply said that the easiest way to know the truth is to disregard what you've always been generally told and consider the opposite. This would be the Iceberg Theory reduced to its LCD. Sometimes a student would say, "Then, are we supposed to think that Hitler was really a nice guy?"
The answer is, of course, no. But I have a 1935 Collier's Encyclopedia in which there is a long and admiring entry extolling the Fuehrer for his accomplishments. He was also supported in this country by major industrialists like Henry Ford, by popular movie stars and celebrities, and by prominent members of powerful American political families. In Germany, the slightest criticism of him was a death sentence.
So, on the bright side, truth eventually becomes acceptable to the majority.
For example, HBO recently showed a special on Lady Gaga and her "Monster's Ball." I decided to take a look. I was an instant fan.
A few days later I received an e-mail from someone citing an information service calling itself ironically "The Rumor Mill." It was warning its paid subscribers to reject her message of accepting people who are different from us regular people.
When I was a boy, the 1950s equivalent of the Rumor Mill warned me about that evil Elvis Presley. These people who throughout history have believed only what they see on the surface, I used to call the Mediocritites, the Blinkered Majority, or, simply the Regular People. But now I think the times call for a more severe eponym. lf I were teaching today,I would call them members of W.O.E., because they are, quite simply, Wrong On Everything.
Tom Dodge is a writer from Midlothian.
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