#Van daniken's agent full

The American experiment, the original embodiment of the great Enlightenment idea of intellectual freedom, whereby every individual is welcome to believe anything she wishes, has metastasized out of control. WhatвЂ™s problematic is going overboard-letting the subjective entirely override the objective thinking and acting as if opinions and feelings are just as true as facts. Some of my best friends are very religious, and others believe in dubious conspiracy theories. We all have hunches we canвЂ™t prove and superstitions that make no sense. See MoreД®ach of us is on a spectrum somewhere between the poles of rational and irrational.

#Van daniken's agent full

And if the вЂ™60s amounted to a national nervous breakdown, we are probably mistaken to consider ourselves over it.Д¬heck out the full table of contents and find your next story to read. For all the fun, and all the many salutary effects of the 1960s-the main decade of my childhood-I saw that those years had also been the big-bang moment for truthiness. America had changed since I was young, when truthiness and reality-based community wouldnвЂ™t have made any sense as jokes. I donвЂ™t trust books-theyвЂ™re all fact, no heart вЂ¦ Face it, folks, we are a divided nation вЂ¦ divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart вЂ¦ Because thatвЂ™s where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen-the gut.вЂќ WhoвЂ™s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, thatвЂ™s my right. Constantly telling us what is or isnвЂ™t true. вЂњNow, IвЂ™m sure some of the вЂword police,вЂ™ the вЂwordinistasвЂ™ over at WebsterвЂ™s, are gonna say, вЂHey, thatвЂ™s not a word!вЂ™ Well, anybody who knows me knows that IвЂ™m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. In the first few minutes of the first episode, Stephen Colbert, playing his right-wing-populist commentator character, performed a feature called вЂњThe Word.вЂќ His first selection: truthiness. People in вЂњthe reality-based community,вЂќ he told a reporter, вЂњbelieve that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality вЂ¦ ThatвЂ™s not the way the world really works anymore.вЂќ A year later, The Colbert Report went on the air. BushвЂ™s political mastermind, Karl Rove, came up with the remarkable phrase reality-based community. I first noticed our national lurch toward fantasy in 2004, after President George W. W hen did America become untethered from reality? Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961) вЂњWe risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so вЂrealisticвЂ™ that they can live in them.вЂќ вЂњYou are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.вЂќ