Why we should never trust ‘trusted sources’

By Craige McMillan

One of the things I frequently hear is that, “it’s impossible to tell what is true anymore!”

Maybe it’s actually been that way for much longer than most of us ever realized. Operation Mockingbird, where big media got its talking points from the CIA, was exposed back in the 1970s. Did we really think that something which worked so well would be stopped just because it had been exposed?

What’s different today is that a second front has opened up with disinformation and censorship. Big tech, which was created by DARPA, added censorship to the government’s arsenal of lies. This is straight out of the fascist playbook, where it is illegal for government to censor individuals, so they use a created private entity to do the task. The end result is the same: Only the “official truth” emerges, and it always comes from big media and “trusted” sources.

These sources are trusted, of course, only by those who lack the skills to assess their truthfulness. There are a variety of ways to tell if information is true. Writers ask – and answer – this question all the time. What might surprise you is that fiction writers ask it more often than nonfiction writers.

Makes no sense, does it? Fiction is, after all, a made-up story. The author can cause the characters to do and say anything. But can he, really? What happens if he does?

I would argue that those who create fictional stories are less likely to take liberties with the truth than are their nonfiction brethren. Here’s why: Fiction must seem real to the reader with each turn of the page. The fiction reader interacts with the story at a level much deeper than a page of reportage.

The author has to ask the same question the reader does: “Would this person (character) behave like this, given what I know of him/her at this time?” If the reader decides “no” once, she becomes more guarded about the entire story. Do that more than a very few times, and the author has lost her, probably forever. But if the reader applies that reality test as she reads the story, nods “yes,” and moves along to the next page, then the author has succeeded in creating truth in the reader’s mind. It matches what she had experienced at some point as truth in her life.

This is a skill set that most non-authors could easily develop (and fiction readers already have). It’s a way to bypass “trusted sources” that can’t be trusted, because they make no sense. The source is only trusted if you trust it.

Today we are all drowning in active propaganda and disinformation that is being dispensed by our own government to be used against us. Bluntly, we want freedom. The government wants tyranny. Big media is the active lying propaganda arm. Social media censorship is the passive disinformation and demoralization arm.

You possess the knowledge within you to overcome this unholy duo. Here’s an example that comes to mind: Earlier this year a report surfaced in Seattle that the state of Washington had achieved an historic milestone, something that had happened only once before in its history. The flu had been eradicated for 2020.

For most of us the flu has been with us, closer than we’d like, for most of our lives and especially heading into fall and winter. Many people, especially the elderly and infirm, die from the flu every year. I wouldn’t believe eradication if I read it in a medical thriller. Why would I believe it from a talking news head?

What I would believe is that the normal number of flu deaths were shifted to a new, mysterious illness that has symptoms similar to the flu. The big clue for me is the overreach. All deaths were attributed to the new illness, taking the annual flu death total to zero? Ha, ha, ha! Not believable without a forensic audit of death certificates and patient records.

Was the shift an honest mistake? Perhaps the dreaded new disease and the flu were very similar, and experienced medical people could not tell the difference in how the patients died. The longer you are alive and visit doctors, the less likely you are to believe that we can hide anything from them. It just doesn’t ring true on a large scale, with many patients and many doctors, does it?

Maybe something else was at work. Were the hospitals padding the numbers of deaths by the dreaded new disease? Did they get extra money for dreaded new disease deaths? Yes, they did, and they still do. Would hospitals withhold therapeutic treatment with off-label drugs that alleviated hospitalization? Aren’t hospitals supposed to fix people, not just keep them locked up until they die?

Is there anyone else outside of the hospital who benefits by lumping the seasonal flu deaths in with the dreaded new disease deaths? Tyrannical governors? Power-hungry health departments? Pharmaceutical companies? Go ahead and ask the questions. The reservoir of truth within you about how the world works and people act will set you free.

Fear is a powerful motivator. It elicits predictable responses in different personality types. But sometimes fear needs help in getting established. Reality, you see, shares the pages with fiction. It especially shares the human characteristics that have existed down through our history. Greed. The lust for power over others. A drive to implement a hidden agenda. A personality that shifts blame for bad outcomes onto others.

Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t pay much attention to so called trusted sources. The fact that they are being called trusted sources by those driving the narrative is a big clue. Any source that can be trusted isn’t afraid of being questioned.


Earth’s Final Kingdom, Vol. 4 of Armageddon Story, now available.

Craige McMillan

Craige McMillan is a longtime commentator for WND. Read more of Craige McMillan's articles here.


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