Keep this in mind [and naught else]

Robert Silverberg’s documentary OUTFOXED outed the Fox Network’s “some people say” technique, which they used to relate hearsay which in reality was attributable most likely to no one but spin doctors. Neither Fox nor CNN nor MSNBC can use that expression again without embarrassing themselves. You’d THINK.
 
Now this catchphrase irritates more and more each time I hear it:
“You have to remember-“

Experts being interviewed by the media now preface A LOT of their statements with “you have to remember,” especially when cornered to explain something beyond what their viewers are prepared to swallow. “Keep in mind” is another variant as they build an incongruous argument.

For my part, I need to get over being told I HAVE to do anything, especially when it comes to listening or thinking. Why and WHAT do I have to keep in mind? Some other false assumption that’s been spun into my head, which, unrestrained by logic, I might have wisely discarded?

Anyone of a respectable higher education knows the media’s official explanation of anything is a house of cards. It’s usually a fairly robust house to be sure, constructed with plenty of redundancy to buttress your sense of understanding of the whole, a myopic view however, as seen from a hole in the plywood keeping pedestrians safely at bay. But the cards rely on a foundation like anything else, in this case drawn from a pack of lies.

Faced with fresh questions from the uninitiated, or stories spun to death with fallacies, the clean-up experts find themselves having to start each time with “you must keep this in mind-“ to remind you about the face cards they’ve already dealt your hand.

If they could do away with the “must,” the admonishment might be more palatable, don’t you think?

But they can’t, just as they have to condemn you to the future that’s in store for you. You MUST believe, or most certainly you’ll choose not to.