About Me

Ted Apelt
Land O Lakes, FL

Group Organizer
Pasco Activists

Whose side am I on? Liberals? Conservatives?

What ever side best fit the facts of whatever they are talking about. If liberals best fit the facts than I am on the side of liberals when it comes to that subject. If conservatives best fit the facts than I am on the side of conservatives when it comes to that subject.

I came up with some very controversial conclusions. How did I reach them?

When our current recession started in 2007, I spent a long time researching how it happened, and why. I looked at a lot of different explanations, and did a lot of fact checking.

Most people start with what they want to be true, form a political philosophy based on that, then try to find facts to support it. I decided not to do that.

Instead, I would use the most powerful tool humans have to discover reality – SCIENCE.

Throw out all political philosophies you have heard of. Look at your world from the perspective of aliens from outside Earth. What do you see?

Why are things the way they are? This will take some time. Do a lot of digging.

After tons of research, it became clear that the reason for the recession, as well as the way things keep getting worse and worse for most Americans regardless of which political party controls Congress or the White House, (whether we have a recession or not) is that there is way too much power by a very small group of people.

This was true before the American Revolution (when slavery was an accepted reality, Native Americans were savages that could be exterminated, and only white property owning men could vote), and has been true ever since.

https://upstanderproject.org/firstlight/doctrine

These people have set up a system that we are to accept as good, just, and proper because THEY say it is. This system is designed for one reason – to make sure that their power is maintained. It does not matter if it makes life better for us or not. If it does, fine, if it doesn’t, too bad – it does not matter. The important thing is that they maintain their power.

In the United States, people within the top 1 percent income bracket own one-third of the nation’s wealth. But scholar Richard Reeves, author of “Dream Hoarders,” argues that the top 20 percent has created an even starker divide with behaviors and policies that limit economic mobility for lower-income groups. Reeves joins Hari Sreenivasan.
Yale law professor Daniel Markovits says the system that values hard work and promotes the American dream is in itself a sham. He is taking aim at the very structure that made him a success in his latest book, “The Meritocracy Trap.” He joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss.
Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people? Their conclusion: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/

Notice how I back up what I say with facts?

This is because I started with them from the very beginning.

Some (but not all) of the ways they maintain this power is by:

  1. Donating huge amounts of money and resources to politicians, not only in campaign contributions, but also speaking fees, media coverage, and anything else they can think of.
  2. A “divide and conquer” strategy of dividing Americans between “black” and “white”, “liberal” and “conservative”, “Republican” and “Democrat”, and so on.
  3. Making sure that there are only two political parties that really matter.
  4. Discouraging people from participating in the political process, even though they do it all the time.

I was initially hoping (but very unsure) that Obama was going to turn things around. WRONG!!! He was clearly a pawn of the power elite. The “hope and change” he ran on? The “change” was that instead of the very top getting MOST of whatever economic growth we had, they would instead get ALL of it. That was the “change”. The “hope” was that we would not notice that. We needed a grassroots group.

Then the Tea Party came along, what about them?

They may have started out with the right idea, but the power elite quickly turned it around in a classic “political judo” movement, and used it to further their cause. Then came Occupy Wall Street, but they never did the necessary next step of electing people to political office (which the Tea Party did with huge results) , and died because they had nowhere to go. (This is very sad because they could have gone on to do great things if they had only done this.)

?

Robert Reich discusses the mood of America at the time.

It is worth pointing out that while the team arguing in favor of wealth redistribution lost this debate, a majority of those watching the debate were in favor before the debate started, and that percentage increased after the debate.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/26/americans-acceptance-of-trumps-behavior-will-be-his-vilest-legacy

Other studies using exit polls confirmed this result.

Finally, Bernie Sanders came along, with both the right political goals AND the right strategy for achieving it. I joined a group called “Pasco4Bernie” that was started by Elise Mysels.

Day after Thanksgiving 2015 outside of Wiregrass Mall
Elise speaking at a public forum

She later changed it to Pasco Activists, wrote the part beginning with “This group is open primarily to ALL FL Cong. Dist.12 residents” on “about us” to the end of the page, and designed the logo. (Everything else on this page except for quotes were written by me.) She later decided to step down after many years of tireless and well appreciated service, and I took her place. I now fully run it by myself, pay all expenses, and am fully responsible for the content of this website.

The more I have worked in political activism, the more and more I saw that there is a huge problem with people making things up that have little or no basis in fact. This happens on both the left and the right, is without question the biggest problem in politics, and it grows worse and worse every year, as people choose a side then defend everything their side is saying, even when it is wrong.

.

Topics in the order they were discussed:  election results, polling analysis, cult of Trump, culture war, problem with getting people to understand critical thinking, fixing our broken political system, guarding against motivated reasoning, partisanship over what’s best for the country, increase in craziness and false beliefs, where do we go from here, endless nonsense getting worse and worse, fighting tribalism and hypocrisy, the importance of skepticism, latest covid news

The sad truth is: Yes, it really is necessary to tell people that it is important for things to be true. They just don’t get that. They think that truth is whatever it is that they think it should be. Well, it isn’t. Reality does not care what you think it should be. You either find out what it is and act accordingly, or you suffer the consequences.

David Cay Johnston explains why China is eclipsing the United States as the world’s greatest superpower, and how the United States is becoming a third world country.
From the Turner Diaries, to Camp of the Saints, and now to Qanon! Thom Hartmann exposes the dangerous history of Republican conspiracy theories!

I have decided that the primary focus of Pasco Activists will be to teach people the importance of basing political positions on facts and science, and how to make sure that you are doing that instead of fooling yourself. Critical thinking is not as easy as you might think! It is very easy to be fooled, especially if you are not familiar with the facts, and understanding the facts of every issue takes more time than anyone has, which is why we depend on each other to form a more comprehensive understanding of the whole picture.

I tell this to everyone I know – If I am wrong, please tell me! Don’t let me continue to be mistaken about something because you don’t want to hurt my feelings.

Your best strategy to understand a political issue is to devote as much time as you can to understanding these facts, fully understand that you will never understand everything, nobody can (I have tried!), but you do the best you can. For the things you don’t totally understand yourself, rely on teams of experts that understand that particular subject very well, and more importantly than anything else, understand science very well. For example, when it comes to medical claims, you can trust Dr. Fauci, Dr. Jen Ashton of ABC News, Dr. Steven Novella of The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe, and many others. (I would normally say the CDC, but they were severely damaged by the Trump Administration.)

For scientific claims, trust the general consensus of the AAAS. Politifact is very good for political claims, and so on.

As you learn about different issues over time you will get a better sense of who to trust and who not to trust. The good news is that this gets easier the more you do it. However, sometimes you get such confusing and conflicting information that it is best to have no firm opinions on the subject. This happened with me on the issue over whether fracked gas or coal is more damaging to the environment for the same amount of electricity produced.

What if the experts are wrong? It is a basic principle of science that there are no final answers. Anything can turn out to be wrong. Why should we trust them?

We can because science is self correcting. Anybody who understands it and is committed to doing it properly (and therefore is worthy of our trust) expects and even welcomes criticism from colleagues. (This is why I say “If I am wrong, please tell me!” to fellow activists.) This is known as “peer review“, and is crucial to making science work.

In addition, science depends on a public disclosure of how observations were made and experiments were done. Anybody with the ability to do so can try to do the same thing and see if they get the same results. This is known as “replication of results“, another thing that is critical for science to work properly.

What if they are all lying and trying to hide the truth from the public? Eventually they get found out because science rests on an underlying reality that humans can’t change.

Some things I have done

One of our first Bernie events

Making our wishes known to our Representative in Washington.

Me advocating for Ranked Choice Voting to the Constitutional Revision Committee 5-17-17