I realized recently that I don’t trust anyone. No matter what I hear from anybody, I always approach it with skepticism. I thought at first that it’s just because I’m getting older and cynical. While that may be true, I think the real reason I don’t trust anyone is because I’m just tired of being lied to.
The other day, I received a call from Sunrun, they’re the solar company that manages the panels I have on my roof. They were trying to convince me to install a storage battery.
First, she asked me how much my monthly bill from Edison is. I said honestly, “about negative ten dollars”. Then she told me how they’ve been receiving a lot of calls from people in California because of the blackouts caused by the fires currently happening.
Hmm. First, it’s not fire season. Second, the entire state received several inches of rain last week. If there were any fires, they’re definitely out now. Third, there were blackouts last summer but not where I live. Fourth, the Thomas fire blew through here a few years back and there’s nothing left to burn.
The risk of a fire anywhere around here is pretty low. But, while she was talking, I looked at the Cal Fire incident response web site. Nope. No fires anywhere.
Let’s Cut to the Chase
I didn’t want to waste a lot of time, so I said, “Let’s just get to the bottom line. What does it cost?”
She told me a one-battery system would cost around $17,000.
I said no.
She said, “That’s the cost for one battery. If you buy a system with multiple batteries, the cost per battery goes down.”
I told her that if I wasn’t willing to pay $17,000 then I clearly wasn’t going to be willing to pay 10% less than twice that.
Then she said that Edison was planning a rate increase soon. I said I didn’t care.
She asked, “Why?” I reminded her that she already knows that I don’t pay Edison for power because I generate more than I use. Why would I care what the rate is for power I’m not buying?
She switched tactics. “Do you know”, she continued, “that if you leave a single light running for just five minutes a day, you’ll see a huge increase in your power bill?”
I said, “OK. Let’s look at that”. I then took her through the math showing her that a 100-watt bulb running 5 minutes a day for the entire year would cost me an additional forty-five cents. Not 45 cents per month, 45 cents for the entire year.
Then I called her a liar.
She said that they have charts showing there would be a massive increase in my monthly bill.
So, I gave her a choice. I told her that she is either lying to me, or she has no clue what she’s talking about. It has to be one of those two options. So, she should pick one and tell me which it is. I also told her that neither of the two options would result in me buying a battery backup.
I could almost hear the lightbulb come on when she realized that there was no way in hell she was going to sell me even a single battery that I don’t need.
I find it sort of interesting, and maybe a little ironic, that a representative from a solar power company was trying to blow sunshine up my ass.
Everyone Has an Agenda
The reason I told you that story is because it’s a good example of how everyone you interact with has an agenda of some kind. And they’ll tell you whatever they think you want to hear if it will get you to take an action that supports their agenda.
In this case, the lady on the phone tried telling me everything she thought I’d want to hear to get me to buy what she was selling. Had I been someone without an abundance of common sense and reason (and basic math skills), it may have worked.
All I had to do was poke a single hole in her argument and it made all her other arguments questionable. Once I found the hole, I couldn’t believe anything else she said. Because if there’s one hole in her pitch, there are likely others.
Stupid or Just Lazy?
Last week, I saw an article on The Gateway Pundit. It was about how Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees in their gaming division just months after acquiring Activision Blizzard for $69 million.
Hmm. That seems low. That’s because the actual number is $69 BILLION. In the very first paragraph, they were off by a factor of 1,000. I don’t know about you but, to me, that seems like a lot.
The article is from January 25th and it’s still incorrect. Clearly, they’ve had time to fix their mistake by now.
So, either they don’t realize it’s a mistake, or they’re too lazy to make a correction.
Either way, how can I read the rest of the article and take any of it as fact? I can’t. It may be accurate. But it could just as likely not be. And I have no way of knowing which it is. If there is one factual mistake, there are likely others.
Don’t get me wrong, The Gateway Pundit isn’t a bad site. And typically, it’s at least directionally correct. What I mean by “directionally correct” is that the site leans toward the right and not the left. But that means it also has a bias. Which means it has an agenda.
And that agenda is to get conservatives all riled up.
Don’t Believe Everything you Read
The vast majority of the people who read The Gateway Pundit are people hoping to hear what they already believe. The goal of TGP is to get you to click on a link so they can make more money. And that means that the people at TGP are, at least sometimes, blowing sunshine.
Here’s the thing. You should never, ever take what you see on The Gateway Pundit at face value. I read TGP, but I use it as an early warning system. If they post something, there’s at least a smidgen of truth behind it. But as I pointed out, they’re sometimes a little loose with their facts, so I don’t know how big that smidgen is.
So, I use what I read on The Gateway Pundit as a basis to do some more research so I can understand what’s really going on.
Which brings us to Ilhan Omar. In case you don’t know who she is, she’s the U.S. Congressman from Minnesota.
There’s no Translation for “Minnesota”
There was an article on The Gateway Pundit, and nearly every other right-leaning news source, showing a video of Ilhan Omar giving a speech in Minneapolis in late January. I watched a clip of it. Because she was speaking Somalian, I, like everyone else, had to rely on the transcript at the bottom of the screen.
As I listened, and watched the captions, I heard her very clearly say the word “Minnesota” twice. But, nowhere in the translation did the word “Minnesota” appear. I also checked to see if maybe she was saying a word that just sounded like “Minnesota”. You know, like if there was a Somalian word “minnesota” that referred to free cell phones and other government handouts.
Nope. Looking at the translation text, the two instances before and after the word “Minnesota” were completely different. She was definitely referring to the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
So, the word “Minnesota” should have appeared in the translation twice. But it wasn’t there at all.
Once I saw the second “Minnesota” was missing, I immediately knew that there was no possible way I could take the translation at face value. Because I knew it wasn’t a literal translation of what she said.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe Ilhan Omar is evil and has misplaced loyalties. She clearly is not working toward what’s best for the United States. I also believe that anyone holding a public office that displays even the least bit of loyalty to a country other than the United States should be removed from office and immediately tried for treason.
Even though I believe that it’s possible that Ilhan Omar said many of the things she’s accused of saying, I also believe that we can’t know for sure if she did. Because we CAN be sure that the text scrolling at the bottom of the video is NOT a 100% accurate translation of what she said.
A Small Ray of Sunshine
Of all the links I saw pointing to this video, only Fox News mentioned that they had not verified the translation. So, kudos to Fox News for at least doing that. But also shame on them for passing off as “news” something they weren’t certain was accurate.
It’s sad that the most level-headed report of her speech was, “We don’t know if this is true. But instead of going to all the effort to…you know…fact check, we’re going to pretend it’s true and tell you anyway.”
Their story shouldn’t have been what Ilhan Omar said, because they didn’t really know what it was that she actually did say. The story should have been about how so many people are just jumping on the bandwagon because they were told she said what they wanted to believe she did.
People lie all the time. And I’m tired of it. I’m tired of so many people liking or sharing things without considering if what they’re passing on is, or could even possibly be, true.
Constantly having to determine if what I’m being told is true takes a lot of effort. Which is probably why hardly anyone does it.
But everyone should. Because if you don’t, you can’t know for sure if someone is telling you the truth, or simply blowing sunshine.
