It has come to this point: Just who and what are we supposed to believe anymore? Are we all more susceptible to conspiracy theories now? I worry that we might be. And I worry that those of us who are normally rational, logical thinkers, will find it easier to believe there are connections where there is coincidence, planning where there is actually lack of planning.

Why is this happening? President Donald Trump is a big part of it. The groundwork has been laid for him to say and do whatever he wants, and there are those who will accept it blindly. There are those who go along for their own good — be it fear of retaliation or wanting fame and fortune, even though they know the truth.

How can he get away with this? Past presidents were held accountable, some sooner than others, but history eventually caught them. History will do that with Trump too, but we don’t have the time to wait. There is an urgent need for truth in this country.

Those who observe the United States from outside our borders know the truth much better than we do. They have a perspective that we don’t have. They are not depending on a media divided into right and left polar opposites. Watch BBC or a translation of a German newspaper for an outside insight. King Charles has really hit some nails on the head with his recent speeches during his visit here. Although delivered tongue in cheek, he was getting at the truth.

But we have to deal with the media that surrounds us daily. Our government used to care that American citizens were getting correct and fair reporting of the news. Introduced in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to give airtime to differing viewpoints of controversial issues of public concern. This for a long time helped the public receive a more well-balanced picture of critical news; Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley delivered the facts in an objective, unbiased way. When the influence of commercial broadcasters became an issue, President LBJ signed into law in 1967, the Public Broadcasting Act, that appropriated funding for public broadcasting which provided quality programming without consumerism. Now they want to take that away.

I mentioned that groundwork had been laid for Trump’s ability to get away with lie after lie, deception after deception. In 1987, under President Ronald Reagan, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine. With the rise of cable TV, and the shift toward more emphasis on free-market competition in the communication industry, cable outlets were still projecting differing viewpoints – but separate from one another.

These differences got more extreme and were more influenced by the political and sociological beliefs of their ownership. So we ended up with Fox, which Trump uses as if it’s his personal propaganda outlet. Folks who tune in to that channel get a whole different presentation of the “news” than what is seen on CNN or MSNOW. And what many don’t realize is there is no regulation or restriction on how truthful they have to be. And the internet is not independently regulated; the only oversight is by the billionaires who control it so all sorts of dark paths are there to trap us. AI has emerged to further trick us. No one knows what is real or not real anymore. This has caused a deep divide in our country; we have no shared objective reality anymore with which to find common ground.

The search for truth is so difficult now, that we can’t even rely on our own critical thinking. We can’t problem solve without a set of actual facts to work with. It’s such a problem that fact-checking entities like Snopes have become necessary, and news sources like Ground News have to display the differing presentations of the same story so that we can see how the story can be manipulated.

There is a chart that is put out by Nexstar Media Group, Inc. that displays the relative bias and reliability of various news sources. It’s a good tool to determine how truthful your go-to news source is.

Now back to conspiracy theories and how they are or are not believable. It used to be that a good rule of thumb was Occam’s Razor which pretty much states that the path to discovering the truth is usually the simplest, most straightforward one, or, the more steps it takes to come to the conclusion, the more likely it is that what you’ve found is not the truth. This generally applies to conspiracy theories; the more lines you draw trying to connect things the more you end up in a maze of falsehoods.

But with Trump and his administration, it seems to be very tempting to cut corners in the maze and be more willing to believe what would normally be improbable. He has lied so much that ordinarily discerning, intelligent critics of conspiracies are willing to admit that faked assassination attempts are plausible where he is concerned.

I admit that I was quick to find multiple reasons why the attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner was staged. They were all reasons that did make sense. But the overall factor that had me back up my thinking was “Are the folks we’re imbuing with the ability to pull off such a stunt, actually competent enough to do it?” That did give me pause. However, I would not put it past them to try.

Keep in mind, though, that it may be an intentional plan; to keep the population so confused that they become easy to rule and control. Stay aware, stay rational and reason things out that you see or hear in the news. Be skeptical, but think things through. These are strange times, what might not happen normally, could happen. Is it possible? Is it likely? Two different things. Use resources to help you sort fact from fiction.

Being president does not make a person a king, or the almighty. Our founders deemed the first Amendment to the Constitution the most important right, the one that is the protector of democracy. It protects our right to express opinions, to criticize the government, to shield us from government censorship.

It guarantees the right to gather peacefully, protest, and ask the government to correct injustices. It is our first amendment right, no, our obligation, to question leadership, especially if the leaders are running our country with lies and corruption.

We contact our representatives with our concerns, it’s our duty. We protest. If they don’t listen to their constituents, they don’t belong in our government. We vote them out. We must make them believe US.

Susan Bigler is a Sheridan resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com