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Beliefs

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By BEN OLSON/for The Herald  —  Who am I to question your beliefs? After all, they’re your beliefs. Your belief may give you an opportunity to go to Heaven, Nirvana or be reincarnated. It remains to be seen whether you’ll get to find out if your beliefs were warranted. The truth is entirely another matter. Just because you believe in something, doesn’t make it true. I’ll use Santa Claus as my example. I must say, no one has invoked Santa Claus to help pass legislation that is popular with people who believe in Santa Claus. In that regard, I can respect that the Santa Clausists won’t be trying to force their beliefs on me through the heavy hand of government.

Yes Martha, the world is flat. Trust me

Sailing ships first circumnavigated the world over 450 years ago. To date, astronauts from 44 different countries have orbited the Earth in spaceships. There are more people in America today who profess that the world is flat than a hundred years ago. 

A major news network made news today by settling a huge lawsuit brought by a company that accused them of libel. News commentators knew that what they were reporting was false, but put it on the air anyway. If you solely get your news from that network, you won’t know anything about it, though. They don’t think it’s anything their viewers care about, so they’re talking about other things. $787 million is a lot to pay for telling their loyal viewers what they want to hear. Why, that’s 6% of what the network grossed last year.

You don’t have to pick a side

You can believe what you want. However, I don’t want to see beliefs in faulty information be the basis of policy promoted by elected officials from any party, left or right. Fact based legislation is the only legislation that should be considered. By hearing issues framed as part of a cultural war, we tend to lose sight of the problems we’re actually trying to fix. 

You may think it would be a good idea to have the government come up with a panel that decided the truth. From my point of view, there couldn’t be a worse idea. If you didn’t read or understand Orwell’s 1984, you could be forgiven. The truth is too important to be politicized by the political party that happens to be in charge at the moment. 

You can’t change history but you can try to hide from it

When I was in school, we were fed a dumbed-down version of historical events that proved to be, in many cases, wrong. Not a mention of the genocide that Columbus and other early explorers committed. The tales of bravery by the Indian fighters in the 1800’s weren’t embraced by my native-American classmates. Our history textbooks failed to mention that 9 U.S. Presidents were slaveholders. Would I have had a dimmer view of my country, had I known the truth? I doubt it. You can’t learn from your history if it’s hidden from you. The U.S. has engaged troops in foreign countries over 190 times in our history. You would be overstating your case if you tried to tell me we were doing this to protect our sovereign American borders. In many cases, wealthy American businessmen had their cronies in Congress send the cavalry in to save their financial interests.

I can be a proud American, even though I know the tarnished history of our country. Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men” indignantly said on the witness stand, “You can’t handle the truth!” He was wrong. What we can’t handle, if we want to keep our country together, is lies and innuendo being passed off as truth.

Ben Olson, musician and Oakridge Resident, with his standup bass. Ben is a regular contributor, as well as the Entertainment Report’s columnist. Ben Olson photo
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George Custer lives in Oakridge with his wife Sayre. George is a former smokejumper from his hometown of Cave Junction, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. and ran a construction company in Southern California. George assumed the volunteer duties as the Editor of the Highway 58 Herald in 2022. He loves riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, building all things wood, and playing drums on the weekends in his office.

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