“I don’t believe anyone should ever hear pieces of a story, even many pieces, and then turn around and say definitively, ‘that man was incompetent.'”
While I overall agree with what you’re saying, I just wanted to point out that we do something similar when we vote, or have any political opinion whatsoever.
Few people are really enough of an expert to have an opinion on most public policy questions, or the question of which politician is most competent. So we have no choice but to read a few articles and make up our minds. (That is, unless we always vote for a particular party because we think it embodies Torah values more, or something, but that decision too is based on incomplete information.)
If King Shlomo were to write Koheles today I have no doubt there would be a long section about politics and how it is the vanity of vanities. Especially now with the ubiquity of blowhard talking-heads with extreme and arrogant opinions on everything, individual Americans are encouraged to spend much of their time reading others’ misinformed opinions and spouting their own.
Is this really what we’re meant to do on this earth? Is this really compatible with engaging in as much Torah, teshuvah, mitzvos, middos-improvement, chesed, etc. as we can? Or, more kabbalistically, achieving our neshama’s tikkun in this gilgul?
Of course not. It is arrogance, vanity and striving after wind! But try telling that to the millions of political-junky chatter-boxes on Twitter and Facebook. Modern culture has nearly ruined us. Let’s push away the fashions of the day and focus on our souls, improving ourselves and the world in whatever concrete ways we can.
None of this is to say people shouldn’t become experts on particular topics and then become activists who work for practical changes in that area. All power to them! But sitting around pontificating about all the issues of the day is meaningless.