A Science Fiction Story?

I’m an avid reader.

From soup can labels, magazines in doctors’ offices, street signs, newspapers, and just about anything that has the printed word I’ll pick up and read. Early in my life, around 7 or 8 years old I discovered the Tom Swift books and I was hooked. By my early teens I had read every sci-fi book in the Fairbanks Public Library from the Tom Swift series, to the great authors.

Over the years the list grew to include Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, H. G. Wells, George Orwell, David Weber, Alan Dean Foster, Andre Norton, Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey and many more. Then in my high school years I discovered the fascinating books of the history of the United States, its military organizations, disasters and etc. Shortly afterwards I added world history, from the early Greek and Latin writers to Winston Churchill and even some of today’s writers of history.

In addition to that, Dorothy and I tend to collect books. I’ve still got some of my high school text books! And we’ve got shelves full of old Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. I have to stay away from book stores. Every time I go into one I want to buy dozens of books, even when I know the bank account won’t allow it!

Movies and radio shows are OK, but I really don’t like to see a movie made from a book I’ve read, because the screen version rarely matches what I visualized in my mind as I read the author’s original text.

Now add another ingredient to the mix...

I’ve had many years of intensive training in the use of logical analysis (forensics, public debate, scientific analysis of data, etc.) starting in high school and continuing through college, Navy and decades of newspaper reporting and editing.

All of which has given me a critical eye towards politicians and government agencies. Instead of taking their statements as gospel truth, I always take them with several pounds of salt. In other words, I tend to discount 95% of their pronouncements and then hold the other 5% to the fire of logical and historical analysis.

In spite of the far left liberal movement, it is still possible to find the historical truths about the founding of America. Even on the internet there are still sites where accurate accounts can be found, although they are slowly being made harder to find and will probably end up being removed. Rather than use the major search engines, I prefer Duck Duck Go. It is not only easier to use, it DOES NOT filter the results to meet some web engineer’s political leanings.

As for the national news media, we need to use a very strong filter to weed out the exaggerations, along with the deliberate twisting of the truth they mix into their “news” reports. The majority of my life was spent in the newspaper business and I was trained to keep my views and political leanings out of the reporting I wrote. Those thoughts and views were printed on the Editorial page, so the reader knows the article is opinion and not news.

Unfortunately, so many of today’s national news media (newspapers, magazines, radio and TV) is so enmeshed with the far left socialistic liberal movement it is virtually impossible to tell fact from fiction. A senior history teacher once told me, “The easiest way to discern if they are telling the truth or a fiction story is to watch their mouth. If the lips are moving they are lying.”

We need to apply that process to the majority of today’s politicians, so-called public servants and national news media. We are being lied to by more and more of them every day.