BY JOELLEN COLLINS
How to ascertain the truth seems harder than ever. Even a diligent seeker of actual facts and situations may find it frustrating to dig confirmed sources, see through the hype, and study carefully intricate versions of events in a society conditioned by the hype by sound bites and simplified accounts and nasty political rhetoric. Fact-checking is, of course, a necessary practice, but even then, one needs to understand the issues by analyzing them and those who hold them.
By the time you read this column, I will have the results from the first time I have voted in California in over 40 years. I miss recognizing precinct workers on election day in a smaller town and a place where I am familiar with and have understood the background of most issues and candidates. I hope my own ability to read carefully and decipher the context of election materials has helped me in this case.
When I opened the official primary election booklet with the details of Proposition 1, California’s most expansive attempt to improve the challenge of the state’s huge population of unhoused and often hopeless individuals, I gulped. The details filled 68 pages! I can’t imagine most people will fully consider this document. Many voters may well know about candidates for the presidency, the congress and for state government, but how many voters will be able to absorb the massive details within the proposition, which notes how the billions will be spent statewide and locally. Where do we discover the truth after an exhausting search?
I now feel somewhat better about the homeless crisis in this state because at least there are proposals to remedy the disastrous consequences of mental illness, extreme poverty and drug and alcohol addictions in a state which may be warm enough for sleeping outside but has lacked the ability to touch hearts and pocketbooks to help an increasing number of its citizens. Nonetheless, I have become cynical about the truth behind the promises from people of power.
Writing this column has reawakened some anguish, which I acknowledge is natural, about the widening distance between what we are told and what is true. I recently was the ashamed victim of an embarrassing scam. I believe that my vulnerability was that I tend to believe people and am surprisingly gullible when I think someone is trying to help me in a project. I grew up believing that most of what I was told was true, in an era where information was not immediately available, as it is today, through all the media outlets and flattering portrayals of newsmakers and influencers.
I wonder what we can do to be more aware of deceitful language and the influence of charismatic celebrities and pundits and those who seek attention through exaggerated gossip, to find a way to dig through all the gloss and immediate interpretation of public communication. How can we search with assurance that the found information is not valid? If truth be told, where can we find it? I’d like to listen.