Letters: Showing support for the Spikes; The best source of truth

Showing support for the Spikes

We have lived here in State College for the past six years, and during the summers have often frequented the Spikes games at Medlar Field. There is no more pleasant way to spend a summer evening than to take in a home game, and get dinner and an alcoholic beverage on-site. The vendors even sell veggie burgers and hard cider on tap, among the many options.

It is easy to get tickets at the last minute and park. This is in contrast to attending an Orioles game in Baltimore, our last home. Going to an Orioles game was more of an ordeal, so we didn’t go.

Additionally, the setting is more intimate, you feel like you get to know the team, and there are often fun post-game activities to stay for, like fireworks and monkeys herding sheep dogs.

We hope the Spikes will continue to play in State College!

The best source of truth

We each come from our exposures of our youth, and have certain innate tendencies which leads us toward certain attitudes. We develop beliefs that may not totally represent reality, yet we persist in looking at reality for justification of our beliefs, so we tend to miss or ignore that which is not consistent with our beliefs while emphasizing that which we can interpret as consistent with our beliefs, a conformational bias.

We find ourselves in increasingly polarized groups, many adopting more and more extreme attitudes toward the other, as we now have echo chambers that reaffirm our beliefs in the media, and in social internet groupings. Add to this selective recall and the result can be extreme beliefs, an attitude polarization.

These attitudes tend to be resistant to change, even in the face of concrete evidence. This is a key weakness in humanity. This can lead to serious conflict if not corrected.

We need to adhere to the best understandings of reality to make good judgments and minimize bias. Our best source of truth would be a “systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge,” one that tests the concepts to see if they hold up to scrutiny and have value as to predictions, that in fact is the definition of science.

Liberals and conservative both used to value science. Climate science says we need to act now and forcefully to stop a building serious worldwide crisis, the very beginnings we are starting to see. Conservatives downplay this at our peril.

Another ‘shot heard round the world’

In 1775, the “shot heard round the world” marked our desire to be independent of a British monarch. Our nation eventually became a beacon of freedom, justice and human rights. Freedom includes free and fair elections. Justice includes a genuine search for truth, with trials that include witnesses and evidence.

Donald Trump is responsible for enforcing the laws. However, he has abused his power by breaking two.

Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub has said, “Let me make something 100 percent clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.” However, Donald Trump did.

The Government Accountability Office reported that the White House violated the Impoundment Control Act when Congressionally appropriated funds to Ukraine were withheld.

So, is the president of the United States above the law?

If Republicans questioned whether he broke any laws, then it was their critical responsibility to bring in relevant documents and firsthand witnesses to ensure that both they and the American people had the knowledge to vote intelligently. Instead, almost all of them chose to defy impeachment history and the common sense definition of “trial.” They actually chose to continue the Obstruction of Congress. On Jan. 31, we experienced the second “shot heard round the world”— that we are no longer a beacon of liberty (free and fair elections) and justice (search for truth).