I came up with a saying decades ago that has guided my life. It’s this: “You can’t choose what to look at, but you can choose how to look at it.” The main building block to this realization was master negotiator Robert Dawson’s audio series on negotiation tactics, where he gave the example of holding one’s hand out and having someone else describe it. The person holding their hand out, then describes it from their perspective, which would be a lot different. For me as a Black man, making this point is easier; when I say the word “brown” the person getting this demonstration instantly understands the point. While we are both looking at the same hand, we have different descriptions based on perspective. A similar experience in the beginning of my film career helped me understand viewpoints better. One day on set a director gave our lighting guy (Gaffer) instructions of how to light the model we were shooting. He then went to lunch and when he came back the lighting was wrong. She was lit from the bottom as opposed from the top. The lighting guy fixed the problem and suddenly she had the angelic appeal the director wanted. Same model, same makeup, same clothes, same set. The only change was how we shined light on her. This lesson taught me that I can choose how to view life and my experiences simply by shining my own contemplative light on it from the angle I choose to.
I have since learned how to use intentional perspective to affect my outlooks and subsequent actions. When I was dissatisfied with my career progress, I thought to the first time I saw a film set and simply wanted to be in the building. When I need to put the work in to grow professionally, I think about how long I’ve been in the film industry and how some have come in later and whizzed right past me; this causes me to create a plan of action for a swift move forward. This “Intentional Perspective” creation makes me the master of my own outlook. I find Intentional perspective valuable but it has its limitations. For instance, I can choose to view a red light at an intersection as green but that wouldn’t end too well. An underlying reality guides my thoughts and sets the limitations that balance my outlook. This has gone without saying and as I became more philosophical and inquisitive about society and humanity’s behavior, reality always set my limitations. While there’s plenty of leeway within reality one should always recognize there is, in fact, a reality; and that reality trumps truth and facts. The difference between my mindset and the mentality Western culture produces is I actually respect the prevailing reality underlying our truths and facts. Western culture views reality as optional and since we are a society of words, citizens are taught to defer to intellectual constructs rather than using their own eyes to view what these constructs describe. Prosecutors fight to disqualify exculpatory evidence from trials because they believe in jury decisions over reality. Police plant evidence on people then arrest them for crimes they didn’t, in reality, commit. Presidents, who were racist in reality, get to be non-racists, so long as a society equally vested in their success backs them. Western society allows truths to trump reality.
Reality is Real. Truths and Facts Aren’t
Reality always prevails; truths and facts are human intellectual concepts to help us cope with and 
navigate within that steadfast and unrelenting reality. For example, in scientific explanation, Pluto, the space object, alternates between planet and dwarf planet. In fact, prior to Pluto’s 1930 discovery, facts were that there were only eight planets. A person in the 1980s calling the ninth planet a, “planet,” would have been stating a fact and doing so meant they were telling the truth. That same person in 2023 would not be speaking factually and telling a lie even though the object they speak about has been the exact same thing throughout humanity’s whole existence.
However, reality is evasive to the human mind. Societal barriers and our overconfident and arrogant reliance on “truth” can estrange us from reality. For instance, many Europeans in the past 
established a truth that the Earth was flat. That was the truth in their population at the time. Anyone in this social group suggesting the Earth was round would have been telling a lie and not speaking factually. I’m sure the few Europeans bold enough to sail too far and consequently died at sea, created substantiating facts to support this inaccurate truth. This makes my point. “Facts” and “truths” are coping mechanisms rather than intellectual equivalents of reality. Flat Earthers needed to regard the world as having a deadly precipice to prevent them from sailing too far from the coast and dying in the ocean’s vast expanse. The Flat Earth truth functioned perfectly to keep countless humans from dying before technology would allow them to navigate far from shorelines.
Although I have always used objectivity to triangulate reality, I didn’t fully realize the brilliance of this approach until a day in Small Claims Court. I was suing the mobile phone provider, T-Mobile for misinforming me about a product. In small matters like this, corporations are unlikely to attend the hearing; it’s more cost efficient to let the process play out on its own. However, unlike Traffic Court, it’s not an automatic win if your opposition doesn’t appear, rather, you still have to make your case. Good judges, in absence of a counter argument, use objectivity to better understand the realities surrounding the case. They ask questions that make them seem like they are on the opposition’s side. This technique frustrated me during the trial but then I got a judgement in my favor and instantly realized what the Judge was doing. I also realized that I did the same thing when speaking about matters of race. People tend to operate superficially based on social standards until something is at stake. When their ideas, outlook, pride or money are in jeopardy, the superficiality goes out the door and they begin speaking candidly and using the best facts and evidence they have. For instance, Donald Trump’s 2016 win was America’s superficiality evaporating and its truth coming to the surface. America is perfectly happy letting racism play out, so long as Black people are losing. However, becoming more influential and seizing the presidency for two terms, Black people’s sudden political gains caused White America to remove their masks and unite behind a blatant racist. When challenged, his supporters simply claim they “don’t like his style,” despite supporting him anyway. When discussing racism with average White people they’ll say, “racism doesn’t exist,” or admit that it exists in some mysterious place that only those who get caught are. Those same people are quick to call a Black person “racist” for pointing out White shortcomings or suggesting preferential treatment for Black people based on past preferential oppression. If racism doesn’t exist, how can they spot it so readily when Black people supposedly practice it? It appears these people lack the objectivity needed to recognize racism intrinsically and consider racism a “Blacks
only” phenomenon. This, in itself, is racist. Objectivity helped me learn much about the true foundational elements that compose the White male supremacist mindset. Although the vast majority of racists lack any significant understanding of their own views, the smart ones cite writings from an abundant and thriving White Supremacy literati. Websites like Americanrenaissance.com and Stormfront.org have vast references to literature and science that establish truths for the White male supremacist’s community. American Renaissance’s leader, Jared Taylor speaks “truth” to his followers, not because his ideas align with reality, but because his philosophies and the countless academics over the centuries, who have contributed supporting materials, engender truth and facts that prevail in his social setting.
Truth Shopping
While racists are comfortably truthful with their beliefs, those opinions are far from reality. They feel that Black people never built civilizations, and that Africa’s highest societies lived in mud huts, had a need for European style clothes but weren’t smart enough to make them, had a need for European style weapons but were too dumb to create them, and fought in incessant warfare. None of this is true, which leads to my point about Western society as a whole. Despite opposing information being available to them, White supremacists elect to ignore it and subscribe to the information that serves them best. They pick truths over reality. In fact, they consciously exclude reality as if ignoring it creates an alternative one. It doesn’t! America’s thought leaders are fully aware they are using intellect to obscure reality. When a reality they don’t like begins to prevail and the masses are likely to accept it as an obvious truth, they elevate the voices of the naysayers thereby allowing a word soup to develop. It leaves the masses, who would otherwise be united behind reality, fumbling through words creating things that aren’t there. A great example is Black intellectual inferiority. Today, although not openly or explicitly stated, much of America feels Black people are intellectually inferior. Despite being written into the American 
system as slaves and not only gaining freedom, but seizing the Presidency for two terms, many Americans ignore the complete overthrow of a system from its least powerful subjects in favor of Black inferiority themes promulgated by racists. Much of White America chooses to defer to inferior academic performance by children purposely given inferior education. A member of the Trump administration coined the term, “alternative facts.” She is a lawyer yet she acknowledged that facts had “alternatives.”
The ease of today’s society has left Western citizens with the impression reality is optional. They also feel reality is irrelevant as long as they can posture details to form the truth they prefer. If this 
seems far-fetched, look the countless Donald Trump supporters who, despite all the proof available to them proving that he lost the 2020 Presidential election, chose to believe he won and even attempted to enforce this “truth” by overthrowing the government. They emphasized theories about voting machine programming by highlighting a typical amount of glitches and technicalities in a computerized election. They made light of voter fraud while ignoring that Republican voters committed the vast majority of that fraud. Trump himself even attempted to get Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp to participate in his postured “truth,” by either ignoring enough Biden votes or imagining enough non-existent Trump votes to create a truth that didn’t match reality. Donald Trump’s current predicament also illustrates how postured truths prevail in the Western mind? Our ex-President committed crimes during his presidency, however, he’s a White man and an ex-president, which means our society will change truth to preserve him from consequences. While the previous “fact” was “no one is above the law,” that fact shifted by appointing an Attorney General, Bill Barr, who would behave to the contrary, thereby placing an American, Donald Trump, above the law. Bill Barr wrote a memo in 2018 echoing President’s Nixon’s 1973 counsel and President Clinton’s 2000 counsel saying that prosecuting a sitting president would undermine the nation’s criminal justice system. Those collective opinions, and they were only opinions (as opposed to Supreme Court rulings or legislated law), guided Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s decision not to bring charges against Donald Trump. Conservative pundits state without context, that “Donald Trump wasn’t charged with a crime,” thereby sidestepping reality and deferring to the truths and facts postured to preserve Donald Trump by appointing Bill Barr. Another example is Conservatives’ views towards political upheaval. They have altered truth so drastically that they equate insurrectionists infiltrating the nation’s capital and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power, with the 2020 George Floyd protests. Their facts are so estranged from reality that they equate an attack on the capitol of the United States of America with looting CVS pharmacies. 
What Lebron James’ Career shows us about Racism in the Republican Party
A familiar example of White men evading reality and deferring to postured “truths” based on “facts,” is the fact, the Democrat Party was the party of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and Republican Party fought against those evil institutions. This 100% true and factual, however, this statement side-steps the reality that the same people of the same ideology that defended 
slavery and started the KKK are the same people today in the Republican Party fighting Black progress. Democrats were the anti-Black political party until a radical Democrat, John F. Kennedy, sought to allow Black political empowerment with his “New Frontier” policies. Well, America killed him for this! And with the passage of Civil Rights Legislation racist Democrats like Strom Thurmond began leaving the Democrat Party for the opposition, thereby transferring the blatant anti-Black value system to the Republican Party. Here’s an analogy: Lebron James is arguably the Best basketball player in the world. It goes without saying that he’s a champion. In 2010 he went from the Cleveland Cavaliers (Cavs) to the Miami Heat, where me made that team a champion team in 2012 and 2013. He then went back to the Cavs and won them their first championship title in 2016. He then went to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he made them champions in 2020. It’s clear that Lebron, being a champion, made the teams he went to champions. In other words, it was Lebron’s championship character that made his team champions. Well, the champions of anti-Black racism switched teams after Civil Rights legislation passed in 1964, thereby taking their anti-Black leanings to the Republican party. However, “facts” support the “truth” that “Democrats were the party of slavery and the KKK,” while reality is anti-Black politicians and KKK members became Republicans. This part of this blog is an afterthought based on listening to the Mark Levin Show on May 16th 2023, where he kept sidestepping reality and deferring to his truths and facts about the Democrat Party, the KKK and slavery.
Hypocritical Truths about COVID19
Conservatives constantly seek studies that say masks did not help prevent COVID19 transmission but constantly complain that Democrats don’t wear masks. If they don’t help, why are they complaining? To them COVID19 wasn’t a dangerous disease and the skyrocketing infection totals weren’t that big of a deal during Donald Trump’s Presidency, however, in their alternate reality, every infection puts our nation in peril under President Biden. Underlying these oscillating truths is
something real; COVID19 leaves the respiratory system and gets contracted through the respiratory system. To think physical barriers between people’s respiratory inlets and outlets don’t decrease the disease’s transfer is less a product of reality, and more the cause of the human constructs known as “truths” and “facts.” COVID19 appears to have lessened in severity, which makes Conservatives look even more hypocritical. They didn’t make a big deal of it under Trump when the disease was its most deadly. They called for “herd immunity” through rapid spread when the fatality rate for COVID19 was over 6% however, now that it is below 1% they complain about every infection. In the Conservative mind the contradicting “facts” and “truths” that made them behave two different ways towards COVID19 show that truth and facts are not all they’re cracked up to be. Truth and facts also show that they can be terribly estranged from reality.
Ron Desantis, Coddler of White Male Sensitivities
As I write this, Florida Governor, Ron Desantis is gaining political momentum and may become president by suppressing interpretations of reality he disapproves of. Desantis, who I call “smart Trump,” is extremely intelligent, adept in politics, and less apt to make the foolish mistakes that blighted the Trump agenda. Subverting reality and deference to postured “truths” and “facts helped him rise into national politics. Him Opposing Critical Race Theory is nothing more than a technique to coddle White male sensitivities about the evils of Western society. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a less apologetically Black interpretation of American history centered on racial relations. Rather than allow academia to act in good faith and triangulate the realities surrounding Black people’s history in this country, Desantis has chosen to suppress these views and even modify them to omit White people’s forebearers’ evil deeds and obscure White people’s awareness of their current involvement in racism. He has eliminated much Black history along with it, calling on publishers to obscure racial references so students are more likely to imagine people like Rosa Parks as belonging to any race. Governor Desantis’ actions are a perfect example of White men choosing their truths instead of using objectivity to triangulate reality.
Critical Race Theory
The George Floyd protests engaged White America’s consciousness and caused them to do what they seldom collectively do, open an honest ear to Black plight. Rather than hear apologetically Black interpretations of our government’s relations with Black people from corporate America’s hand-picked and trusted Black commentators, White America heard directly from Black people and realized it was exponentially worse than their coddled surroundings allowed them to believe. White America immediately took the first step to eliminate the discomfort this realization caused them. They immediately looked for the most developed tool to help them understand what they apparently were oblivious to. In development since the 1970s, Critical Race Theory was that tool. Well, if you thought hearing raw accounts directly from oppressed Black people awakened White America to their collective ills, having academics interpret Black plight and back their theories with examples, responses to counter-arguments, and sources, eliminated the lack of credibility factor that White people often use to dismiss Black people’s calls for help; it removed all the rough edges that enabled White people to doubt what they learned. It’s like viewing one’s reflection in a pond versus seeing one’s naked reflection under harsh light in a full-length mirror. Critical Race Theory caused realizations even the most sympathetic of White America wasn’t ready for. In reaction to the shock from realizing they were participating in such an immoral social model, White America immediately began protecting their minds from this information. Under the pressure of Critical Race Theory, they divided amongst themselves to decide who would entertain the reality of Black people introducing new information about America, and who would defer to the traditional postured truths and facts that throughout American history has kept White America insulated from these ideas. The majority of White America immediately appropriated terms from Black America,
like “woke,” to aid their narcissism. By using the word, “woke” to characterize courageous Whites, who gave consideration to Critical Race Theory as ridiculous, and, “counter to the American cultural grain, White America forced White Americans to take sides.” Ron Desantis derives his political success from catering to White Americans, who are steadfastly averse to the underlying realities about racial relations in America; they are consciously avoiding others’ interpretations and subsequent characterizations of America’s history in regards to Black people. The ideas they avoid are properly vetted Black truths and if White America truly felt they were mischaracterizations of reality, rather than dismiss these ideas wholesale, they’d create proper counter-arguments. Instead they use previously unquestioned “facts,” like George Washington being a good person, to force Americans to think twice before changing their outlook. For example, all slaveholders were evil and George Washington was no exception because he was a slave owner. However, his reputation enjoyed the postured “truth” that he was somehow immune from the “evil” title despite doing evil deeds. Calling George Washington a good man requires one to completely disregard Black people’s views. Any White person attempting to rationalize this view will be walking through an uncrossable racial, political correctness minefield. Countless politicians like Ron Desantis help White America avoid the mirror by simply labeling these ideas “ridiculous.” To protect their outlook from White people sympathetic to these views, they label sympathetic Whites, “woke” and say they are participating in “Cancel Culture.”
Truth, Facts and Reality
To cope with the reality of human behavior regarding perception, I’ve divided human regard into three terms; “truth,” “facts” and “reality.” Truth and facts function similarly in that they indicate something that is fairly universal and reliable enough for a society to collectively rely upon. Truths and facts require the majority of society’s good-faith participation or else they fall apart. For instance, the sky being blue. An obvious fact, one can argue that the sky is “azul.” Swedish people can call it “blå” (bluwah) and Chinese people can adamantly insist that it is lán se (lance-a). Without underlying candor (that “the sky” refers to the same vast expanse of air above us) anyone can opt out of this labeling system and suddenly we lose the ability to designate something as simple as the sky despite the sky having always been the exact same thing since before human existence; the only thing that changes is humans’ willingness to cooperate. I therefore, have downgraded the terms, “truth” and “facts” accordingly and elevated the term “reality” to a superior position and made it flexible. Reality can change but it is pointless without a good faith social model. Without good-faith social cohesion Western people will simply misrepresent their perception and claim they are viewing reality in the way that serves them best. So, for this system of ideas to work, Western society must improve its good-faith cooperation between citizens by eliminating the barriers it puts between them. First and foremost, money. Central banking creates a fictional scarcity that makes humans compete in a cut-throat competition. It creates a universal willingness to deceive unknown beyond the Eurasian continent before Western dominance. While central banking underpins nearly all Western dysfunction, we should mention its derivatives. Race, politics, cultural battles, homophobia, transphobia as well as anti-choice advocation all stem from the financial scarcity caused by Central banking. But I digressed. The point is, prevailing reality dictates “truth” and the resultant “facts.” The latter two only represent that reality when humans are acting in good faith.
Create Your Own Truths, then Share them with Others
It is important that we use our own authority over ourselves to understand everything we encounter. We have to put our own eyes on it, then triangulate reality by soliciting the opinions of others who have put their eyes on it. Each outside idea represents a new plot on the “mentality map” and a new tool for understanding the reality surrounding real things. It is important to understand why others have a different opinion than you and empathize with what elements compose their outlook. Currently it is customary to avoid the work necessary to understand others by using “evasion labels” like “bigot” or “anti-Semite” or “sexist.” Stop using notions our manipulative oppressors give us to avoid doing the work necessary to unite as one American people. The better one understands other people’s ideas, the better they can see clearly through the other person’s eyes and thereby triangulate reality. One’s own views are not absolute; they’re subject to personal biases and the contemplative sway of their ideals. Understanding your own biases and ideals, then understanding others’ biases and ideals can help one more accurately pinpoint reality. Pinpointing reality helps one see the aims of media companies and academic mind manipulators. Rather than wait for a trusted personality to deem media personalities and companies “reliable,” using one’s own perception, one can learn the aims of manipulators and through these manipulators one gains better access to reality; it reveals what they omit and obscure. It’s clear that the last frontier for oppressive powers is the human mind. They work endlessly to fill your mind with the ideas that serve them best. Taking control of your own mind will turn our oppressors from repressive manipulators to humble lobbyists begging for one’s partnership. It’s time to triangulate our precious reality and reject, on factual grounds, the superficial “truths” and “facts” our oppressors have substituted for it.