Another great, well researched and well written article. Well done.
The whole "fake news" thing is a PROBLEM-REACTION-SOLUTION (Hegelian dialectic) construct to replace the "Conspiracy Theorist" one which the CIA created after JFK. In other words, "fake news" is the 2.0 version, just reinvented and repackaged.
Regarding Critical Thinking, education systems and schools around the world have pretty much annihilated this imperative skill. That is one of many reasons I have started my own Liberty Academy (see http://liberty-academy.org/) where all courses are free and focus on people developing such skills as Critical Thinking, Emotional Intelligence, and so on, along with a better understanding and embracing of the key concept of liberty itself.
A lot of what you've described in this post (misinformation, disinformation, indoctrination, "inoculating", etc.) is really the powers that be's attempts to control narratives and thus maintain almost complete control over the masses. It is pretty much textbook 1984.
And in my academy, I focus on many of these methods of control (including 'mind control', propaganda, etc.) in my course
1984: The Prophetic Voice of George Orwell
.
The free course will be launching soon; so feel free to pre-register if you'd like, as places will be limited.
We explore many related themes in this course and it is packed with eye opening materials you never thought possible which are being employed on us now.
Time to really walk up folks.
Cheers,
Yup, critical thinking is crucial for the evolution of humanity towards great potential and actualization of our moral living. If we don't do our thinking for ourselves, someone else is doing it for us and feeding us what to accept and go along with.
Indeed, and I'm afraid it's only going to get worse - mostly because of those cell phones.
Furthermore, people are becoming less and less able to communicate face-to-face amongst one another. This is also notable in the workplace. I've seen a progression, or might I rather say a regression, of younger people in the workplace. I work in China, and this phenomenon seems very apparent for Americans under the age of 30 who come here for work; they have extremely poor communication and social skills and don't know how to handle even somewhat slightly challenging things that occur on the job. Plus, they are way too indoctrinated with Political Correctness, gender sensitivity and all that other crap they were fist fed in college. Sad.