Opinions ...
It has been said, I'm sure more than once, that I am never lost for an opinion on any subject. I am bound to say that I can only agree with that statement. After all, if you don't have opinions then you're really not paying attention to what's happening around you.
The list of topics I'm sure will grow with time, as I am quite an opinionated bugger!!!
And in all honesty, when you consider the topic of opinions ~ what are they really? Most people seem to gain theirs simply by echoing those of others ~ possibly those they've read in the tabloid media, or from the tv, but nowadays, moreso from the burgeoning swathes of disinformation being fired at them from all angles through "social media" outlets. With an almost total absence of significant regulation, these sites ~ whose only real interest is to gain funding from advertising revenue ~ allow the most bigoted, vile and manipulative people and groups within society to broadcast their bile for all to see and hear ... and, in many cases, for viewers/listeners to believe they are coming from some legitimate source. With the advent of AI, this disinformation is becoming ever more convincing to the average audience, rather than simply the most gullible.
Rather than entering the dystopian world of Orwell ~ where lives were governed by fear and the people downtrodden ~ we have become members of Huxley's Brave New World, where there is so much information available people are being drowned in a sea of irrelevance, accepting everything they see at face value.
Huxley himself wrote to Orwell on this subject: “Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” For “infant conditioning” read our currently corporate-run education system, and “narco-hypnosis” the state's unwillingness to effectively deal with the issue of drug misuse among the young, and you'll understand that we're essentially already there.
Ultimately, if all the information you need is out there, and all you have to do is figure out what is the truth and what are the lies, to set yourselves free. But you only have to note the continued dumbing-down of the education system to understand the plan ~ to make it so those at the lower levels of society, with the least education, will not have the skills to differentiate between truth and lies.
Who needs the jackboot to dominate a people who no longer have the ability, or will, to question what is wrong ...