ABSTRACT
This introduction is a warmer-upper for understanding political rhetoric and valuing the need for critical thinking. While providing a spiritual and earthly foundation for this important part of school curricula, critical thinking is often referred to as higher interactive thinking skills (HITS) because it is hard to imagine deep thinking without engaged communication for processing and interpreting meaning in any venue. During the past several decades, there has been a blitz of information, sometimes referred to as the knowledge explosion, and students need support distinguishing among true, fake, and terribly biased information. This perspective is considered in a broad, inclusive context because political rhetoric is used not only by politicians but also by others with positive or negative motivations. When negative motivations occur, some news anchors, journalists, salespersons, neighbors, religious leaders, philosophers, politicians, parents, and others have used words to lie, exaggerate, exploit, bully, and promote bigotry. Negative motivations often generate alternative facts, as the average citizen—old and young—sometimes struggles in varied attempts to distinguish fake news from factual content.
