This just in: Last week I had a momentary lapse and became gullible.

Here is what happened.

Many of you have seen that kid wearing the MAGA hat and taunting the native American.

I saw this and immediately bought into the narrative. I blamed his parents for raising a racist. I blamed Trump for promoting racism in the United States. I wanted to be angry about this because it fit in nicely with my ideas about “the other side of American.”

It turns out that there was more to this story.

I won’t go into the details but this was far from a bunch of high school kids picking on a native American. In fact, their version seems to support the fact that they were remaining passive in the face of instigation in an attempt to diffuse a complex situation.

So…I’m sorry. I fell for the very type of thing I blame so many others for.

Confirmation Bias causes us all to look for things we want to believe in and then, when we find that one thing that fits, we sit back smugly with an “I told you so” attitude.

I was wrong. The good news is, that when the fault is mine, then it’s within my ability to fix it. In this case, the “fix” is to realize that I’m not above the fray. I fell for this and will probably fall for something else all over again.

Damn it!

I thought superheroes would rise above such nonsense. Maybe some actually do. Maybe I’m just one bite from a radioactive spider away from being the perfect representation of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Seems unlikely but you never know.

Up, up and away…

Jim