Melanie is using<u> "critical" </u>thinking.
Critical thinking is the capacity to think what to do or what to accept. It incorporates the capacity to take part in intelligent and independent reasoning.
Critical thinking doesn't involve accumulating data. A man with a good memory and who knows a great deal of realities isn't really great at basic reasoning. A basic mastermind can find outcomes from what he knows, and he knows how to make utilization of data to take care of issues, and to look for relevant sources of data to educate himself.
The answer to this question is bias.
This bias is most likely caused by the negative enforcement that caused from the memory of your ex-fiancee.
Due to this negative enforcement, you will associate everything relevant to your fiancee as something distasteful, including her origin.
The main content of the passage is to present a possible situation in which a violent leader imposes the law on the country by force ("at the point of the sword"), which presumably leads to many deaths. This was what has happened, in Paine's interpretation under William the Conqueror in England. The intention is to show that this situation is undesired in America and to encourage Americans to fight against such a government.
<span> British troops are sent to confiscate colonial weapons, they run into an untrained and angry militia. This ragtag army defeats 700 British soldiers and the surprise victory bolsters their confidence for the war ahead.</span>