America has devolved into 'camps of different facts' | Opinion

(Editor's note: The content of this op-ed has been modified from its original version.)

"And that's the way it is."

That nightly sign-off message from widely renowned and respected journalist Walter Cronkite, who anchored the CBS Evening News for 19 years, was last heard in 1981. During his award-winning career, Cronkite was regarded as "the most trusted man in America." Back then, the news he reported was treated as a "public service" by CBS and was proudly vetted, unrushed and as close to the truth as humanly possible.

Were there different political philosophies in the U.S. at that time? Sure. But each philosophy worked more from a single, reliable set of facts from which they could discuss and debate their differences, not a disparate, unreliable, duplicitous set of many falsehoods purposely crafted for each philosophy.

Since 1981, the news has devolved with conglomerates overtaking news organizations, treating them as "profit centers," abandoning news vetting practices and reducing staff. Combined with the advent of the internet, social media, cable news, and endless talk shows, we have devolved into "camps of different facts" that support different philosophies, neither of which are true or "the way it is." They both ignore valuable truths that do not support their specific positions and create lies that do support them.

It's a form of "Pavlovian politics." Here's what I mean.

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian experimenter, neurologist and Nobel Prize-winner, is chiefly known for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex through his experiments with dogs. Pavlov discovered that dogs salivated as food approached, but then eventually salivated just at the sight of the white uniforms of the nurses who repeatedly delivered the food.

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Similar to Pavlov’s dogs, people get conditioned to believe what they hear as "the truth" or "the way it is" not through examining the information, but just trusting the source of the information. But the "way it is" will be different for each political camp as falsely presented to them by their "trainers" (Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and many others).

Each of us can see and feel the animosity created by these false-premised trainers and their practices and the twisting of their audiences into strange, abnormal mental positions. Discourse between these two camps of Pavlovian political supporters is impossible since each set’s beliefs are premised on "different irreconcilable" so-called facts.

If there has ever been a legitimate usage of the notion of "woke," it needs to be applied here. Each side of Pavlovian political supporters need to "awaken" to being in the situation they are in, attempt to identify and accept the falsehoods they are exposed to and overcome the "conditioned responses" they have adopted from their "trainers."

This contrived extreme division has escalated our political parties’ behaviors into attempting extreme measures to exact their revenge on the other side even absent legitimate cause. The endless litigation and congressional investigations with each side fanning their feathers during congressional testimony to little purpose.

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Meanwhile, possible meaningful legislation is not produced, and the contrived divisions in our country continue on and escalate to dangerous proportions.

So, what can we do as individuals to make things better? We need to step away from our "trainers," whomever they might be, diligently seek out the real truths, reshape our heads to those truths, listen to all perspectives and make our choices based on what we discover balanced against what we believe, not how we are "trained" to "conditionally respond."

Vote as you will, it’s your obligation. But attempt to make your decision based on the truths you work hard to discover, not the falsehoods you have been trained to accept.

And reject the "conditioned response" that the "other side winning" will end our democracy. Regardless of outcomes, "this too will pass" and our country will advance. We need to believe that our county is stronger than its political parties, any of its temporary leadership, and will endure as it says in our Constitution to "a more perfect union."

Tom Keltner lives in Germantown, Ohio, and was born and raised in Bridgetown and College Hill.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Americans must step outside of their political bubbles to end division