Recently, Alice (one of my growing group of wonderful paid subscribers) posed two questions on a comment thread.
The first had to do with class consciousness in the age of Covid, etc. and I may make a post or podcast about this soon.
Alice’s second question was: “Is it unethical/dishonest to hide one's own opinions on the gov't-corporate media narrative from one's friends?”
Of course, I could go on and on trying to answer this one. For now, I’ll say that the last line of the Beatitudes popped into my head: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.”
Then again, if I wanted to suggest discretion over valor, I could’ve just as easily quoted: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
So… I’ll put the question to you — with two caveats:
Firstly, I apologize in advance for not being able to keep up in the comments section.
Secondly, I realize that virtually everyone reading this has awful stories to tell about being rejected and abandoned by loved ones. I’m not trying to silence you but, if you choose to participate, please answer the question as it was originally worded:
“Is it unethical/dishonest to hide one's own opinions on the gov't-corporate media narrative from one's friends?”
Thanks in advance…
If your friends don’t respect your right to have your own opinion, they aren’t very good friends. Your family is stuck with you (although they can “disown you” - until it’s time to pay for dad’s funeral), so you have that going for you.
It's not unethical because you are considering their feelings, which might still be bound to their naivete.
For example, my father likes Fox News and gets sucked into the team sports of pointing out how the blue guys are the bad ones. He himself does not adopt a lot of what team red believes, but he sees them as the lesser of two evils.
Every time I try to remind him that fox news reports only a part of the truth, as they too are influenced by big corporations, he gets it but then goes into a mini depression.
I can't stand to see him feel hopeless like that when it doesn't help him at all.
In fact, telling the truth in that case is a selfish need of me to make him see what I see.
It's like telling your child that Santa Claus is made up. Joe Rogan made the joke that he didn't want his kids to be the first to know, but also worried that they would be the last to figure it out, lol.