Self reflection

My first post and I'm sure it's not gonna be a popular one. I just want to have it said. Start thinking rational not emotional. For many people the emotional thinking has control when there is no time for rational thinking. Just throw out a few buzz words like Islam or Russia and everybody has an emotional thought about it.
I have a few suggestions for people who want to change their emotional thinking, but unfortunately many people don't even want to change anything, they want to believe what they think is right, no questions asked. This post is not for them.
The first thing I do when I hear some news is to think it's not true or at least not the whole truth. This is because whomever is telling the news wasn't there him or herself. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the experiment where you have a group of people and the first person tells a story to the second one, the second to the third etc. The story gets totally mixed up, changed and stuff gets added.
Second thing I do is to place myself in the situation and think what I would do and what I would feel. Usually from two perspectives: one with good intentions and one with bad intentions and from both sides of the story.
Let's take a few examples from recent news: House, Senate agree on Russia sanctions. They want to do this for meddling in the Ukrainian election and military actions in Syria.
This is what is said but probably not true. They want to put sanctions but probably for different reasons. They reasons stated are probably also not true. Why would they tell a lie? Usually for two motives: money and/or power.
Let's be the US with good intentions: we truly believe what is said, we have no ulterior motives, we think sanctions is the way to show that we don't agree.
Let's be the US with bad intentions: we have to please the lobbyists who are donating lots of money and will keep us in power.
Russia with good intentions: It's all fake news. We didn't meddle in the Ukrainian election and Syria asked us for help.
Russia with bad intentions: We want to keep the pro Russia prime minister in charge of Ukraine so we have to meddle and we like to kill Syrian people so we send our army there and by the way we don't let the USA tell us what to do because they do it themselves too.
Already from this exercise we can't see that it's not all that black and white. We don't know the real reasons so we can't make a good judgement until we have more facts.
One fact for example is that there was an agreement that NATO would not expand towards Russia. There is proof and there are documents. So if I was Russia I would be upset that NATO is not upholding this agreement.
Let's say that the US had nothing to do with the regime change in the Ukraine than it is understandable that Russia tries to stop Ukraine from joining NATO. It's actually neighboring Russia.
How would the US feel if Mexico is suddenly joining a Russia/China alliance?
Syria then:
US good - We are fighting terrorist and Russia is not
US bad - We are just bombing away, good to keep the war going, sell some wapens and get richer. The taxpayer keeps paying so we don't care as long as we stay in power.
Russia good - Syria asked for help so we give it because we don't like ISIS
Russia bad - Let's bomb the suckers. We have enough bombs and the taxpayers keep paying.
Any facts here? USA were not invited to bomb Syria, Russia was. USA is killing a lot more then only terrorists, Trump fired 59 tomahawk missiles on Syrian airbase.
There are many more facts which make me think we are not dealing with the good versions, but I strongly believe and this is my own conclusion: don't go fighting in other countries, stay home, protect your own borders.