My grandmother used to tell me, “Believe nothing you hear, and only half that you see.” I didn’t know it at the time but she was quoting Edgar Allen Poe.
It’s like she knew she knew that’s what I needed to hear to be able to protect myself from what was to come.
It’s a simple rule for critical thinking. Who said it? When? What’s the context? And most importantly, what are the facts?
It teaches you to slow down before reacting, to think for yourself instead of getting swept up by emotion or headlines.
My grandma was the kind of woman who made an impression. She loved her comically big, stylish glasses, Faygo Moon Mist, hard candies, and stacks of books. She was always reading, sometimes four or five books at a time. Her mind was alive and curious, always reaching for more. She taught me that curiosity was strength, that thinking for yourself mattered more than fitting in.
She also told me I was a survivor. I won’t go into details, but if you know my past, you’d understand why that stuck with me. She passed in May of 2016. She was a Democrat, and I sometimes think she didn’t have it in her to watch what was coming.
Her advice stayed with me through my time in the military, where it was reinforced in intelligence training. That’s where I learned what a psyop was, how propaganda spreads, and how it’s used to shape people into obedience. But I also learned how to resist it.
You don’t resist with violence. You resist with peace, awareness, and truth. There’s power in the old image of a hippie putting a flower in a soldier’s rifle, or the modern one of someone in a frog costume blowing bubbles at riot police. That’s real resistance: calm, human, absurd in the face of aggression.
Growth Mindset and Groupthink
The second key to resisting propaganda is mindset.
A growth mindset.
It’s what I wrote about in my undergraduate thesis: the ability to suspend your beliefs long enough to engage in constructive dialogue. To be open to the idea that you might not know everything.
How many realities exist? As many as there are perceivers. Each of us lives in our own version of reality, shaped by our experiences and environment.
Think about a time you met someone who turned out completely different from what you expected. Your version of them, your idea of reality, wasn’t necessarily true, was it? That’s what a growth mindset allows you to see. It’s what breaks the walls of groupthink and opens the door to understanding.
The Modern Challenge - The Bystander Effect
Our biggest threat today isn’t just propaganda. It’s the bystander effect. The belief that someone else, some institution, will step in and save us.
People still talk about midterms and 2028 like it will all be business as usual. Meanwhile, the Trump regime is working every day to subvert the election system and grab as much power as possible.
No one is coming to save us. That’s something the military taught me too. Don’t wait for rescue. Build resilience.
Resist peacefully. Organize locally. Show them how absurd their aggression is.
That’s how we fight back.
Not with hate. Not with fear.
With awareness, truth, and unity.