I get what you’re saying. There are definitely ways of knowing authentically without being there. There are many ways to know many things but we all learn in different ways. We can’t assume that everyone will gain the same thing from the same source.

It is valid to say that you want to hear with your own ears and see with your own eyes to learn something. I don’t think the writer was suggesting that going to the rally was the only way to know what there is to know; just that it is one way of gaining authentic knowledge and that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions because it is the way his father (or anyone) might choose to learn.

Things that upon first glance seem to be logical aren’t always what they seem. This is especially true when we don’t have all the facts, or even many of them. Saying that attending a rally makes you a supporter is not actually logical. It’s easy, but it’s a logical fallacy in itself; a correlation-based fallacy. It’s judging a book by its cover. It doesn’t matter if most attenders of the rally are supporters; that argument is fallacious if you argue that all attenders of the rally are supporters or that any one person who attended is a supporter without having any additional information about that person.

I agree with you that it is pretty easy to mine for information these days, but I was a news copy editor and did it for a living. Not everyone likes to do it or knows how and that isn’t wrong; it’s just different from the way you or I might do and learn. And different is good. Different is what makes us individuals.