You have learned well. I have had some experience with the devil ( not just pundits, but THE devil ) in my time. So let me tell you, when the devil asks you to play chess, there is only one way to win -- knock over the board and walk away.
The devil himself appeared to me in order to make me think I was some kind of angelic prophetic figure. And do you know why it was believable? Because the devil appeared to me! If the devil shows himself to me, and even acts afraid of me, I must be important, right? Ha ha ha...
This is what you don't do --
ChessHe works on you in a way that will make you think you're winning when you're really losing. It's the oldest trick in the book -- flattery. Out of pride, we think we can't be fooled, we think that we are defeating the devil. But then you realize it is not the devil but YOUR OWN PRIDE that is the enemy, and that the devil is only working on that.
The devil cannot fool anyone who doesn't want to be fooled. In a sense he is an agent of God because he tests us. I'm not saying he's not genuinely evil, he is, but at the same time God has turned this evil to a purpose. The devil thought he was going to overpower God and instead he became just another part of His plan.
His main consolation is that he has the power to trick humans and make them into fools just like he is. He is not a fool in terms of his intellectual capacity, mind you, only in how he USED this great intellectual capacity. Likewise, humans are foolish when they honor their own minds and can't admit how feeble and blind they are compared to God. Only humility and trust in God and the Church, a knowledge of our own insufficency, can stop us from being fooled. That is the irony. If you admit you're weak, you are safe. If you think you are brilliant, you are doomed.
So when you watch the talking heads you think you are sifting the wheat from the chaff, but meanwhile the chaff has installed itself in your head and is fermenting without your knowledge. Probably the best way to keep your head clear is to get into a medieval mindset. Read a lot of history and adapt yourself to how the Catholics used to think. See everything through the lens of the Church.
There is a point you can get to when you can almost drink intellectual poison without being harmed, because your Catholic sense is so strong -- but who is to say when they have reached that point? Traditionally it is the clergy, in particular the higher clergy, who would drink the poison for us, and then tell us what it was. Now we don't have that -- the VII "clergy," sometimes even the trad clergy, are regurgitating poison. This throws you back on yourself and guess what that leads to once again? Yep -- pride! The shepherd has been struck, and the sheep are scattered.
These are not easy times. I just try to keep flexible and to be ready to admit mistakes and to listen to others.