Regarding Echo Chambers

Two or three years ago a friend of mine accused a mutual friend and myself of being part of a MAGA or Trump echo chamber. We were only regurgitating information that we had read or heard from the MAGA crowd, we were Trump sycophants—what else could we possibly be to have voted for Trump?

His dismissal of our beliefs stems from a steady diet of mainstream media that tells him every day that anyone who voted for Trump lacks the necessary intelligence to have a logical basis for their beliefs.

Accusing someone of living in an echo chamber is a simple way to discredit them without having to engage in meaningful dialogue. To my friend’s credit, we have often had lots of back-and-forth, so it did shock me a bit that he thought we would parrot what we’ve heard without thinking about it. It was a telling, Freudian slip.

Whether or not we or my moderate (liberal leaning) friend are part of an echo chamber misses the point. We naturally gravitate toward people and ideas that align with our likes and beliefs. I have friends that I’ve known for decades who I disagree with politically, but most of the new friends I’ve made in my senior years are people I agree with. At this stage of my life those are the new relationships that stick.

An echo chamber is an environment where people are only exposed to one viewpoint and isolated from all others. We all have associations where we’re predominantly exposed to ideas we agree with, but that doesn’t mean we’re isolated from all opposing views. Do the people and groups we have chosen to align ourselves with have beliefs and ideas that are true? That’s the question that requires vigilance.

So how do we choose what writers or books to read, what publications to subscribe to, what programs to watch or what podcasts to listen to? Like Descartes (“I think, therefore I am.”) one should have a basis or foundation that makes choosing one source or person over another logical and reasonable.

Control the intake and you recover judgment. Set rules for what gets in, when it gets in, and how it’s tested. Build firebreaks around your attention. Triangulate across hostile and indifferent sources. Favor first-hand material over commentary. Ask better questions than the prompt on the screen. Short, regular audits beat long, heroic detoxes. Own the perimeter and the interior starts to clear.²

In 2016 my trust in the government faltered, but in 2020 and 2021—it disappeared. The first warning sign was the Mainstream Media’s attempt to get us to believe the election was not stolen. Within days it was the “most secure election in American history.”³ Seriously? How could they possibly know that quickly the status of how secure it was? Secondly, the way the Biden administration pushed the vaccines was incongruous with the reality of the “pandemic.”

It’s like getting a phone call from a friend whose predictable, brief routine entails asking how you are before dispensing details for a get together ending with a familiar, “See you then,” but for some, inexplicable reason this friend starts chit-chatting about things he normally wouldn’t give a damn about until you realize he’s got an ulterior motive for prolonging the conversation—which puts you on alert until you figure out what it is.

After watching election night in 2020, I was fairly certain they stole it, but the immediate, constant push to convince me they hadn’t—calling it a “conspiracy theory” and people like myself “election deniers”—convinced me they absolutely did. With the vaccines, we had decided not to get them because there had been no long term testing. I wasn’t thinking there was anything nefarious about it until they pummeled us worldwide via social media, television, billboards, the radio and in political speeches with “safe and effective.” It was everywhere. Then they labelled the “unvaccinated” a threat, implemented mandates and the charade was completely exposed.

The reason THEY (The Hierarchy Exploiting You) want to tell us so quickly what to think about events is that they do not want us to believe the truth we’re seeing with our own eyes. They want to replace our inconvenient observations and questions with their narrative. Controlling the Narrative is what THEY do.

So that became my baseline: the election was stolen; the vaccines were not safe and effective. I began looking for writers and publications that aligned with those beliefs. Once I found some, I started looking at the books and people they were reading.

Do I live in an echo chamber of sorts? Yes, we all do, but who cares? Who’s right? What’s the truth? Let’s have that discussion. Truth matters. Some beliefs are worse than others. Some beliefs are wrong and not only wrong, but evil (I used the word!) and detrimental to society and individuals.

There are three possibilities when having a discussion / debate with someone:

• You’re right. They’re wrong.
• You’re wrong. They’re right.
• You’re both wrong.

But you can’t both be right…well, I suppose if two people are accusing each other of being assholes—they could both be right. There are always exceptions. But generally speaking, you can’t both be right.

It is a great step forward to learn to be self-critical: to learn to think that the other fellow may be right—more right than we ourselves. But there is a great danger involved in this: we may think that both the other fellow and we ourselves, may be right. But this attitude, modest and self-critical as it may appear to us, is neither as modest nor as self-critical as we may be inclined to think; for it is more likely that both . . . are wrong. Thus self criticism should not be an excuse for laziness and for the adoption of relativism.[emphasis is Ibn Warraq’s]⁴ — Karl Popper

You have to be willing and able to change your mind. You have to be open to the possibility that you might be wrong. People rarely change their opinions during the heat of a debate or an argument, but when it’s over and upon reflection people can and do sometimes alter their views or at least are able to see the other side more clearly. Maybe it has merits. Maybe it doesn’t.

In the Varieties of Religious Experience William James wrote:

The wisest of critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow, and right at any moment, only ‘up to date’ and ‘on the whole.’ When larger ranges of truth open, it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to their reception, unfettered by our previous pretensions.⁵

Admittedly, this is not easy. It can be humbling, even humiliating to admit, especially to family members or friends and even to ourselves, that we were wrong about a long-held or cherished belief. But it is absolutely necessary if we are to have any hope of discerning what is true and what is not.

How few are shaken in their opinions, or have the grace to confess it!⁶

ECHO CHAMBER SALE!!

Our echo chambers come fully equipped with one, poorly thought out Left or Right idea with absolutely no supporting evidence, facts or a reasonable probability of being true.

Complete with social media posts meant to enrage, engage and never long enough for reflection, consideration or any compelling arguments from the other side.

Our deluxe echo chambers propagandize without fanfare. Our techniques or so hidden and secret, echo chamber participants believe they’re doing their own research in the midst of propaganda so intense they’ll disown friends and family members who do not agree with them. Even their pets should be worried.

50% off. Sale ended yesterday. But today, you can pay 200% more—truly a bargain. Trust us.

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Notes

1. Hazlitt, William, Literary Remains, Editor, Professor Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, New York 1983. Reprint of the 1836 edition by Saunders and Otley. Quote is from the essay "Belief, Whether Voluntary?", p. 29.
   
2. McGrath, Mark, "Guerrilla Information War: McLuhan Was Right About World War III", The Whirl of ReOrientation: Escape the Script. Win the War., Nov. 4, 2025, Source
3. Weaver, Stephanie, “2020 election ‘most secure in American history,’ according to CISA committees”, Fox News, November 13, 2020. Accessed Nov 8, 2025.
4. Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Vol. II, London, 1969, pp. 369-88, quoted in Warraq, Ibn, Why I Am Not a Muslim, Prometheus Books, New York, 2003 (originally published in 1995), p. 28.
5. James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, A Mentor Book published by The New American Library, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1958. p. 260.
   
6. Hazlitt, William, Literary Remains, Editor, Professor Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, New York 1983. Reprint of the 1836 edition by Saunders and Otley. Quote is from the essay "Belief, Whether Voluntary?", p. 29.