Category Archives: Politics
Is the United States Heading Towards a Civil War?
As someone who did his doctoral work in political science (and then subsequent graduate work in communication), let me tell you a secret that people almost always miss when it comes to the concept of civil war: No one EVER sees it coming. No one.
During the US Revolutionary War (which could be considered a Civil War as it involved fighting amongst Americans against Americans (as well as the outsiders who were theoretically in charge of the insiders at the time). For the sake of this essay, I’m referring to the people who fought against neighbors. And to make things even more complicated, most neighbors may not even known they were in the middle of a revolution until it was practically over. They were living their normal lives, farming or making products, and their only brush with the knowledge there was fighting might have been Revolutionary soldiers or British conscripts who crossed their lands at one time or other.
Forward just a few years after our conflict, and the French were in the middle of a civil war, often called another revolution. Some say it started because they had seen what had happened to the United States, but regardless, when it happened to the French, most were taken completely by surprise. Even the people who should have been knowledgeable. You know, the people who ended up getting their head chopped off for being in the parties of the people who lost. When Marie Antoinette said: “Let them eat cake,” she was not suggesting a desert choice for dinner. She was oblivious to the fact that things were going to come at her and come at her fast.
That’s kind of how I see things happening right now. The United States has had the luxury of nothing truly bad happening on its shores for over two hundred years. Sure, a bunch of religious fanatics, with connections to ideologies in foreign lands, flew a bunch of airlines into some or our largest buildings. But that’s not what I mean by bad happenings on our shores.
For over a hundred and fifty years, we’ve had nothing serious consume our homeland that threatened the very nature of what we stood for. Other than World War II, which was basically a challenge to Europe and the Pacific Rim, we’ve had it pretty lucky with most of our conflicts stemming from U.S. attempts at enforcing Marshall Plan-like proclamations. But those rarely threatened the daily lives of American citizens.
However, right now, we seem to be heading for conflicting territory in our future, the kind of mixed narrative where no one knows where it might end up, and any guess might just be more dangerous than saying nothing at all. In most civil wars, and I’m talking about a history of them from all corners of the globe, they happen for reasons you can never predict, and they explode in ways that no one can be sure they won’t end up under a guillotine or at the end of a firing range.
Civil Wars in Africa and East Asia have resulted in some of the worst atrocities imagined where common citizens were picked out of common groups and executed. Sometimes, people are killed for just looking one color or for having an occupation that someone believes to be a future threat.
But here’s the secret: The usual response is that “oh, that’s just in Africa and East Asia!” But here’s the thing: It’s not about where these things have happened; it’s about how they’ve gone from military targets to civilian targets. And what people don’t want to believe is that it’s not relegated to Africa and East Asia.
The United States’ citizenry has a unique history of murdering its own. In the United States, we have gangs that coordinate racial, ethnic, racist, religious and sometimes just local bullies. Historically, they have targeted less defended populations and harassed and/or killed them.
What is to stop anyone from thinking that these types of organizations, once there is rationale for the elements of civil war, won’t take it upon themselves to target those same demographics now that they have a justification for going after them? That’s pretty much how it’s always happened in the past. There are documented cases during a 19th century Civil War in France where shopkeepers used their ties to the leaders of a winning side (at least during two year periods of control) to target shopkeepers who were in competition with them, killing them so that they would no longer have to compete. That’s pretty much capitalism at its worse attribute.
Right now, the United States has split down the middle in a way not seen in the 1860s. Sadly, most people don’t realize that this isn’t new. The U.S. has always had this division. We just didn’t have the capability of recognizing it with some amount of immediacy. Up until now, we had mass communication, but that mode of speed was contained mostly by media and academics. Now, everyone, through social media, has instant communication. People who hate other people are now in contact with people who feel the same way, and they’ve become quite vocal.
For a few decades, we were generally okay because at least our politicians weren’t stupid enough to exploit this hatred Americans have towards other Americans. Now, that cat is out of the bag. And I don’t think anyone can figure out how to put the cat back into the bag, or even if America might bounce back to the way it was before the bag was opened.
We’re heading for a Civil Awakening, and whether that leads towards a Civil War is anyone’s guess, but from what I can see, NONE of the politicians trying to lead the country are capable of keeping it from happening. What we need right now is a completely different voice from what we’ve been hearing. We need someone who has a future vision of America where everyone benefits, not just one group of people rather than another group of people.
Our political parties are part of the problem. The Republicans represent a party that’s only desire is to benefit very rich citizens. Pretending to be for the people, specifically Rednecks that drive pick up trucks and wear baseball caps, has been dishonest for the last 60 years when they might have had an argument to make. Unfortunately, the Democrats have a similar problem. They advocate that they are for the lower classes, the middle class, and every disenfranchised demographic that is conceived by all sorts of parameters, but once elected to higher office, they immediately enact laws that protect specifically banks and very rich people. Meanwhile, a minority of their party still tries to advocate for the downtrodden, but not enough of them do in order to justify the appeal for 50 percent of the available votes.
The problem is that the people ONLY have a choice between these two parties. And this leaves a lot of people truly feeling disenfranchised when they become smart enough to realize what is really going on. Sure, they could vote for third parties, but in a two party system our country was built around, most of us are screwed.
And when people recognize they have no voice (and never will), the idea of revolution or civil war starts to sound appealing.
But like I said: If someone new with a completely different vision comes along, and at least one of the parties buys in, we might have a chance. Otherwise, we’ll exist on co-pilot until someone like the orange bufoon comes along with a more serious agenda that takes us right into the arms of an autocracy. And then it’s too late to care because those who do will end up being rounded up.
That’s how it usually happens. And you’ll never see it coming.
America Has a Problem, and We Refuse to Face It
On June 30th of this year, America achieved a milestone that set this year apart from previous years. And no, it had nothing to do with eating contests or Celebrity Jeopardy. No, this had everything to do with how many mass killings we achieved in the first half ot this year. We had 28 mass killings (more than four deaths in one instance) wheras in 2006, we had 27.
27 of those deaths involved guns (4 of which involved AR-15s) and one involved an arson, so this could easily be one of those articles about how guns are out of control. But I’m going to spare you from that. Instead, I want to talk about something more important, a factor that we should have been talking about a long time ago.
I’m talking about mental health.
One thing I’ve always found to be interesting is that after one of these minor massacres, politicians tend to stake them out on specific platforms. Liberals will generally commit themselves to the idea that guns need to either be removed or regulated while conservatives will pretend guns don’t exist at all and say either we need more thoughts and prayers or they will talk about the need for mental health focus.
And then they’ll never mention mental health again.
The reality is that we need mental health coverage and focus for a lot of people who have been targeted as needing such coverage, but in reality that costs money, and one thing conservatives won’t do is spend money, unless it’s to cover defense spending.
And while liberals are generally for mental health coverage, they’re generally not interested in focusing on it as long as their energy is centered on controlling or eliminating guns.
The biggest problem we seem to be facing is that neither side is capable of focusing on more than one issue at a time. But it shouldn’t be hard to see that if we started to focusing on mental health, we might solve one of the bigger problems that has reared in American society.
Let’s look at mental health in recent history: In 1967, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act allowed for those struggling with mental health to be placed in mental hospitals in hopes of improving their mental health. But there were a lot of problems during this period, including horrible methods of treating those in custody. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter created a presidential commission on mental health with the idea of reforming a lot of these procedures. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president, he ended the Lanterman-Petris Short Act and pretty much kicked all of the people with mental health issues back onto the streets. Today, we don’t have much of a process with dealing with mental health issues unless police or medical officials can get a patient to admit that he or she intended to cause someone else or themselves some type of bodily harm. Then, and only then, can they admit someone into a medical facility as a danger to themselves.
That’s where we are today and why police services have such a hard time handling risky cases of potential mass killings. Their hands are tied, and the citizens are left fending for themselves.
Unfortunately, the only way to solve this is to either be viligent all the time (which is practically impossible) or for our elected leaders to do something to protect the people. Either this has to happen from Congress, which is the entity that in all theoretical terms should be the one to make such a thing happen. However, the president can do so as well through executive order, although ironically such an order would be constitutionally appealed by members of Congress and then sent to the Supreme Court, which in today’s environment, would probably reject the order on those grounds. That would leave a challenge to the Supreme Court, but if there’s no court case that is making the grounds to the Supreme Court, then they have no grounds to hear one. It is doubtful another fanciful cake bakery case would make its way to the Supreme Court covering this issue, so that’s not an option either.
In the old days we’d argue that if we wanted to get such a thing done, you’d need to write your member of Congress, but our country now exists within a vacuum, meaning that our representatives rarely respond to our interests any more these days, so one can only wonder if the second half of 2023 is going to lead us to reach another zenith in numbers of mass killing deaths.
For context, in 2019, there were 46 mass killings. We’re now at 28, which means we’re 18 away. I hope we don’t continue this trend. But all I have is hope, which isn’t much considering both hopes and prayers haven’t helped us in the first six months of this year.
America’s Values Are Competing With Our Desires
Years back, I was wandering down Powell Street in San Francisco. If you’re not aware of the nuances of San Francisco, Powell Street serves as the Bart connection for most people in the corridor between downtown and the financial district. When the homeless situation started to get out of control in the city, you would expect this corridor would also serve as their hangout as well.
I remember a couple of suits walking down the street when one of the homeless confronted them, asking for money. One of the men seemed flabbergasted that one of the city’s homeless had addressed him and turned to his friend for encouragement after he cursed at the homeless guy. His friend turned back to him and said, not even waiting to take a breath: “When did people become so callous towards other people?”
I’ve often remembered that conversation because I think it was the last time that I heard someone actually evoke concern for those living on the street. Oh, sure, I’ve heard aid organizations talk about needing to help the homeless, but that was the last time I heard it said out loud by someone on the street. Nowadays, if someone tends to see a homeless person, or any person in need, I see them avoid that person, even to the point of crossing the street, if that will help avoid that encounter.
Yesterday, in the New York Times, there was an article about how the heat wave has been affecting Texas. I figured it was probably getting hot in a number of states, but they also reported that 10 people had died in Texas the other day, all because they didn’t have access to air conditioners. I seriously thought about driving to Lowe’s and buy ten air conditioners and drive them to Laredo, TX, the place where the 10 had died. And then I read more. Some of them had air conditoners but were scared to turn them on because of the prohibitive cost. The others just couldn’t afford air conditioners and roasted in their homes with air fans on, not realizing that it just wouldn’t be enough.
But here’s what caused me to want to write this article: Tano Tijerina, the county judge for Webb County (where Laredo exists) said about handing out air conditioners to citizens: “If you’re going to start giving out air conditioners, where do you stop?” he said. “We are an aid, we will help, we’ll assist.” But he added, “we’re talking about people’s tax dollars here.”
And that’s the problem right there. It’s a problem that has been growing for about as long as the United States has been a country.
You see, before the U.S. came along, most countries were monarchies or empires, and it was through their benevolence that they bestowed charity upon those they ruled over. When we came along, we promised to be a rule of the people, for the people and by the people. If you unpack that, what we promised was that our government would be ruled by the people and that those people would take care of the rest of the people.
But notice, that promise didn’t come from the original founding fathers, even if they might have meant it. Those words didn’t come into a hundred years after our nation was formed, from a speech given by Abraham Lincoln, detailing a new America after the Civil War. While his intention may have been that no people should be enslaving other people, he also meant that people with means should look after those who have needs.
And for many years, the country has moved in that general direction, but throughout all of those times, there has always been a group of people with resources who have tried to stand in the way of helping anyone who has needed assistance. Years back, they argued that people should lift themselves up by their bootstraps, even though those of means rarely ever had to lift any bootstraps; they were lifted long ago by families that were rich that allowed them to inherit immense wealth.
Throughout our history, whenever those in power have tried to give a lift to those in need, there has been that swift boot of injustice that tries to intercede and stop it from happening. During the Depression, when many were destitute, there were those who had wealth that did everything to stop FDR from enacting programs to help those in need. They used the Supreme Court to stop every move FDR made. And then FDR threatened to pack the Supreme Court, which caused the very rich to realize that all of the gains they had achieved from a favorable Supreme Court might end, so the Supreme Court allowed FDR’s reforms to go through.
So, why am I talking about something nearly a century ago? Because those people never went away. Oh, sure, they’re different people, but they are acting in the same ways their fathers and grandfathers did. That county judge shows us that those people are still around.
What’s important to think about is what do we consider to be important to the American system of values? On one hand, we have those people who honestly believe that profit is more important than the well-being of our fellow citizens. We’ve been fighting this battle as long as most of us have been alive. It’s so convoluted that at times those with wealth have figured out ways to pitch the fights between groups of people without anything, so that the majority of the attention is spent on irrelevant fights while those with everything laugh while they’re counting their money.
As long as citizens of the United States care more for money than they do their fellow citizens, the point of the United States is irrelevant. We could be any location on the planet and it wouldn’t mean a single thing. People sailed to this country in hopes of starting a new and wondrous life. They didn’t do it because there was new land across the ocean. They risked their lives for something greater than that.
And for centuries, that’s just what we offered them. Now, not so much.
And that concerns me.
School Shootings in the Lone Star State and the US of A
There have been a few serious shootings in Texas recently. There have been a few serious shootings in the USA as well. To put it bluntly, there have been too many shootings in places there really shouldn’t be any shootings. And sadly, this probably doesn’t surprise a whole lot of people.
You see, we’re getting used to this sort of thing in the US of A. Random people kill random people for no reason. And we don’t bat an eye. We moan and we speak out and we offer thoughts and prayers. And then a few days later, someone does it again.
Do we change the laws to make it tougher for people to do it. No. We don’t even dare attempt to think about that. That would take away our freedoms…to kill random people, I guess.
But that got me thinking about this whole thing as it’s been happening a lot in Texas. You would think that people would sit down and then start to realize that something needs to happen. IN TEXAS. But no, the mindset is that this is a national thing, so the answer needs to somehow come from the national area, whatever that is. We could solve this sort of thing on a local level, and then perhaps the national level would start to get better as more and more local areas responded with the right legislation to make sure this stuff doesn’t happen. But we won’t.
So, that means we need to solve this on a national level (or a state level, if that really exists as well). But state level won’t happen because Texas is Texas, and as long as guns are involved, Bob with the gunrack in his pick-up is going to reject any such plans to make Texas safer. Instead, the answer is to arm more Texans with higher powered rifles, and then somehow that will solve the situation with a sense of a “good man with a gun is there to stop a bad man with a gun” that only ever works on television shows where writers decide who wins and loses in a showdown.
But we won’t do anything nationally because we kind of suck nationally. The NRA has managed to pay off enough people on one side of the house to do nothing long enough that another election will come along and then the NRA will pay a new group of people to make sure enough don’t do anything. Look, I’m all for the idea of guns and the 2nd Amendment, but right now we’re trying to counter children killing children because of perceived reasons and threats that none of us have any control over stopping.
Our country is kind of screwed up right now, and no one seems to want to address that. Our leaders don’t lead any more but respond to the other side as if people who believe differently than we do are dangerous and must be put down. I don’t remember it ever being like this before. When I was growing up, if you were liberal or conservative, you didn’t think the world would be a better place if all of the people on the other side of he aisle were dead. You came up with either better ideas than the other side, or you came up with compromises that would cause the other side to say “hey, that’s good enough for me” and then we all went home and watched Jeopardy or whatever show we liked at the time.
Today, the two sides don’t even have a friendly conversation any more. That’s bad.
If we want to solve our problems, we need to do a few things going forward:
- Stop thinking of the other side as the enemy. Progressives want to change things for the better, and conservatives like to keep things as they are or as they might have been at some period in the past. Historically, both sides were against fascism, communism and genuinely evil people. Now, both sides are convinced the other side is one of those negative things I jus mentioned.
- We need to remember what the purpose of this country was from its foundation. It was designed to be the shining light in the midst of darkness all around us. Becoming the darkness doesn’t somehow make America better or great. We seem to have forgotten that in lieu of short-term goals.
- The gun lobby needs to be put back in its place. It was never meant to become the overriding lobby to end all lobbies. It was meant to be one of many different ideas that people would consider whenever it came to legislation and directions for the country to take. As a lobbyist that has full control, all we’re ever going to see going forward is shootings that kill so many loved ones that we’re never going to stop going to funerals and wondering why Washington can’t put a stop to it. We need to pull back on this string and put America back on it proper course.
I say this with mixed thoughts because I’ve become so used to us doing nothing and hoping for miracles. The truth is that miracles don’t come unless you’re willing to put forth the work to make them happen. Sure, you can pray for one. But look where that’s gotten us so far.
Simple Reasons Why Progressives Don’t Do Well in Red States
As a political scientist currently working in the State of Texas, one of the things that often bothers me is whenever the national media tries to create a narrative that a red state is potentially turning purple (i.e., previously conservative state starts trending towards becoming more liberal). Whenever I read (or hear or watch) such proclamations, my immediate thought is that I’m receiving wishful thinking much more than actual news content. But every election cycle, these claims happen, and as often happens immediately after the election, rarely do those predictions come true.
This was my thought when there was so much effort put into claiming that Texas was going to be turning blue during the last election (and slightly before it). In recent memory, there were claims that Beta O’Rourke was going to overcome Ted Cruz for US senator, which never happened. And then there was a weird belief that President Trump was going to lose to Joe Biden in the state vote, and now I’m hearing claims that due to “popularity” Beta O’Rourke has a strong chance of becoming governor against Greg Abbott when he runs for reelection. Again, wishful thinking along with further beliefs that the state is on the verge of becoming that ever so elusive “purple” state.
Probably not going to happen.
But it could. If only progressives actually did something about making those predictions come true, something they NEVER do no matter how much blustering they do.
Now, before you get all “Duane, stop with your crappy conservative man-child crying,” I should probably point out that I’m not saying these things because I want red states to remain red, but because I’d be quite happy if they did turn blue, or at least purple. I just realize they’re probably not going to, and the reason is the rationality for why these areas always stay the same.
So, your argument right now is probably, “okay, smarty pants, tell us how progressives can actually win in these areas if you think you know better.”
And therefore, I will.
First, progressives need to understand the canvas on which they are trying to paint this bizarre approach to “winning” future elections. And they need to understand why their predictions rarely come true. And then, second, once they understand those reasons, they need to work as a network to make sure that they actually do something to change their direction, because continuing to pull from the same playbook is never going to achieve long-lasting results that work in their favor. So, here goes:
Stop treating conservative behavior as inherently wrong. Instead, try to understand conservative ideals and see how they can start to fit into a progressive agenda.
Being a progressive means being a person who advocates for change. But in order to convince people to want to change something, you have to do more than just point at something you don’t like and say that’s wrong. You need to have actual solutions. Example: One of the hot issues in Texas is guns. Saying that people have guns is bad isn’t going to change the mind of a person who grows up believing that guns are a part of the national fabric and that it may have served as a necessary evil in the building of this nation. Pointing out that guns are used to kill people might seem like a logical ploy to persuade, but all it does is point out a simple fact that doesn’t lead to alternative outcomes.
Think about it this way: If I give up my guns in order to achieve some elusive sense of safety so I don’t accidentally kill myself, I’m still stuck with the struggle of logic once I realize that bad people use guns to hurt other people, and thus, being without a gun means always being perceived as a victim to actual armed people. It doesn’t even matter if I’m already a progressive; I still exist in this society where guns already exist, and unfortunately, there are people who tend to use those guns to do bad things to other people. It feels inevitable that one is going to need guns in order to simply survive. Or we take another page from the conservative playbook and realize that we can cut down on guns eventually, as long as we bolster up the police forces that work around us to protect us from those evil people who want to do us harm.
But honestly, why do we even think that there are people out there who want to do us harm? How many of us have actually seen those “people” face-to-face on a daily basis? I’d say not many of us.
Most people will understand the threat of violence due to a situation or two they may have encountered in their lifetime, usually when they have gone into a bad neighborhood or just made a stupid decision that didn’t turn out as good as they hoped it would end up. Maybe your house or car was broken into.
But let’s look at that last possibility (mainly because it’s the most likely one to occur to someone rather than random violence). How would having a gun have made a burglary or a car vandalism (that led to property loss) have turned out better? I’d argue that in most of those cases, a gun wouldn’t have made a single difference because most of those incidents happen out of your sight.
Yet, in one’s mind, he or she is going to perceive that incident as “violent”. And if anything, you should be asking yourself how that conclusion was reached, because in the end if you’re arguing for gun rights as a way to counter such horrible circumstances, logic would tell you that a gun wouldn’t have made a difference whatsoever. Yet, it’s often tied to issues like this one, and is on one’s mind when making future decisions about such policy issues.
So that begs the question: Where did we get such ideas that petty crimes are somehow tied to the senseless violence we perceive exists all around us?
Well, where do we actually experience this type of violence that so much of us believe is prevalent? Well, this might surprise you, but if you think about it, the majority of us encounter this type of violence in the media we consume as a natural part of our lives. If you watch television on a regular basis, you’re inundated with more violence than you can possibly imagine. Just yesterday, I received the line-up of new shows on one network alone (CBS), and I was overwhelmed by how many of their television shows airing right now are all about police and crime (NCIS, NCIS: Hawaii, FBI, FBI: Most Wanted, FBI: International, S.W.A.T., Magnum, P.I., Blue Bloods, CSI: Vegas, Bull, the Equalizer, and NCIS: Los Angeles). That’s just one network.
Now add all the other networks with the violent shows they air, and the add in all of the 24 hour news that constantly tells us how much in danger we are from practically everything that exists around us (from school shootings to crazy people on the national highways), and you start to see a sense of why people go to bed and then wake up in the mornings convinced that violence is going to be coming at them from every direction. Keep in mind that a lot of this programming we consume comes from historically liberal sources (meaning mostly fed to people who would tend to be progressives). That doesn’t even get into the mass hysteria that is fed daily on right-wing media channels that take that sense of fear and turns it up to 11.
And then go into those areas saying that “we need to control guns”, and you have an immediate response of hatred for practically everything else that you have to say after that.
And that’s just one issue. Now imagine you have five issues of progressive importance that you want to feed to a red state. Let’s just choose 5 random ones that tend to get trotted out a lot: guns, abortion, health care, national defense and education in schools. Keep in mind, there are hundreds to thousands of other issues that could be important to any one individual, yet for the sake of simplicity, I’m keeping it down to just these five to show how difficult it is to maintain a party message that can sway an audience that doesn’t already agree with you.
We talked a little bit about guns already, but let’s just touch on the others for a moment.
Abortion: Remember, you’re appealing to the average person in a red state. Most often, the arguments used to “sway” people on this issue are along the lines of “my body, my choice,” which if seen on a surface level can be perceived to be specifically a gender based issue that would only be important to a woman who might be seeking a potential abortion. Yet, the people who seem to be boisterous about this are both men and women, and they’re often split right down the middle of the issue itself. Conservatives tend to gravitate towards arguments that point out connections to religious doctrine, even if that religion doesn’t have actual policy or doctrine on that specific issue. Many people are willing to just turn off thinking any further about an issue if they suspect that a religion they follow might side one way or another on this particular issue (quite often selective, depending upon parish and specific leadership of any particular church). Rational people can make some pretty irrational decisions based on erroneous beliefs, yet they’ll cling to deal life to those beliefs, regardless of how much persuasion is attempted to reverse those decisions.
Health Care: Most people who have health care don’t even know what their health care covers. Due to insurance secrecy, they quite often don’t even know how much they’re paying for the prescriptions (and usually don’t find out until their insurance doesn’t cover it). Some people with crappy coverage think they have Cadillac coverage, and some people, like members of Congress, have the greatest coverage of all and somewhat suspect that everyone should be happy with the coverage they have, even though their constituents have little to no coverage.
National Defense: Most people don’t know how much of the national budget is spent on defense, and even those that do tend to not have a clue how much corruption is built into the system to reward major defense industry corporations that provide munitions and logistics. And when we find out, we tend to just file it away under “stupid things the government does” because we have little to no say so on how spending is decided. Years back, there was a national outrage about how much the government was spending just to buy hammers for the military, and then almost immediately after, the outcry stopped. Did we fix the problem? No. We just stopped paying attention to it. That alone defines our approach to dealing with national defense.
Education in Schools: There is so much baggage wrapped up in education that it’s almost hard to determine what to do about the transgressions that occur here. Much of the debate from conservative channels on education is that it is used to indoctrinate younger people to liberal values, yet much of the debate against conservatives is that they are trying to use education to indoctrinate people to ignore much of history, like slavery, the honoring of confederate leaders, and even the presentation of confederate symbology. Progressives tend to boil it down to simpler terms, as all three of those issues are generally wrapped around in the ideology of promoting racism, and thus much of the problem tends to be addressed in attempts to shame conservatives into compliance. And to their chagrin, it rarely stings as much as they hope it will. More on that to follow.
Which brings us to the real problem that progressives have when trying to change the minds of red state ideology. With the Internet came a new process for dealing with dissent, in which our old procedures were to participate in public forums where both sides could present their side and then let the public decide. The Internet destroyed the gatekeeper model, in which the media was often the go between for the two sides, and now because distance is no longer an issue, the Internet allows like minded people to converse with each other and completely ignore any opposing viewpoint. Rather than direct confrontation, the subsequent result has been either shaming or cancellation. Shame was the previous model, in which addressing such divisions in the open would result in change of procedure or policy. Think of it as the Karen Effect, in which the original approach to dealing with people who were caught on film doing bad things was to shame them, exposing their behavior, which would push them to try to do better in the future. Now, take that Effect a bit further, and no longer do we just try to push such behavior in the open to use shame as a change agent, but now we tend to use that same vehicle to locate the original offender and then hunt them down until we can expose them to their employers and get them fired if they ever do something out of line. In other words, we stopped shaming for the sake of changing their behavior but are now shaming them to bring about their complete destruction.
This is a major reason why shame isn’t working with red state behavior. If a governor does something that is perceived as horrific, like Governor Abbott of Texas did when he claimed eliminating abortion wouldn’t be an issue, especially with women who were raped because Texas would somehow magically eliminate all rape, well, the first part of shaming was utilized when pointing out that Texas doesn’t even process a fraction of the rape kits it gathers. But because shaming doesn’t work any more as a change agent, the attempt is to use that same shaming process to build about an eventual removal from office (as they’re arguing that it may assist Beta O’Rourke in his future campaign to become the next governor).
So, what solutions do we have that might actually cause progressives to do better in red states? Well, for one, progressives need to actually address issues that can make situations better for all. Every issue has multiple potential responses that could serve to solve those problems in ways that don’t necessarily attack the right as the “cause” of the problem. Like I mentioned with gun violence, attacking gun owners as bad people doesn’t cause people to buy into the argument; it alienates people. Whereas, attacking the element of fear itself, more of a Rooseveltian approach, might actually lead people to think that the need for a gun isn’t as prevalent as it used to be. Sure, there would still be people who would want guns (something that shouldn’t have ever been a problem), but it would no longer be perceived as something necessary just to survive on a day to day basis.
Think about countries like Great Britain. They don’t have the gun violence that we have, even to the point that their police don’t often feel the need to carry guns (unless they perceive a situation that would warrant it). But look at their police procedurals they air on their networks. Quite often, the detective detects, rather than participates in mass shootouts that make Quentin Tarentino blush, something practically every police procedures in the United States does. We feed into the fear here, and thus, make it a part of our culture. There’s certainly something to be said for that.
Part of the problem red state people perceive with progressives is that progressives don’t generally take red state people seriously, but treat them like children who would do so much better if they just swallowed the red pill. That’s NEVER going to convince them. You don’t win anyone over by treating them as if they’re stupid, even if they sometimes act that way. Fox News and OANN didn’t come around because that source of news has always been there; it came about because liberal news treated them like illiterate imbeciles. After a certain amount of time of being told you’re a moron, you’re going to stop listening to that type of news and look for sources that don’t treat you like you’re stupid. When conservatives watch Fox News, they generally don’t feel threatened by the people who tell them the news; unfortunately, the style of news is designed to scare them of the bigger world, but newsflash: The liberal media sources have been doing that all along; the only positive conservative news has for its viewers is that it doesn’t insult them while scaring them.
The days of Walter Cronkite types of news coverage have ended. The news is no longer dispassionate and dry. Instead, it’s filled with tons and tons of news celebrities that have image consultants and follow specific agendas. In 1960, you watched three anchors deliver prepared news reports. In 2020, a dozen or so people sit around a desk and argue their personal opinions, and quite often even someone who tries to use facts gets drowned out by people who laugh and quickly change the subject.
And I’ll let you in on a little secret that progressives don’t really ever reveal to themselves: Elections are cyclical, which means that in one election cycle, they might convince a bunch of people to support their ideas, but in the next election those ideas will be dropped to the junk heap by a very impatient public. Just getting people to even participate in the electoral process is a chore, which is why whenever I hear poll numbers, I laugh because I realize that when someone on the street says he or she is definitely voting for one candidate or party but then when it comes to the election, he or she is too busy updating his or her Instagram page to worry about frivolous things like elections.
People are generally fickle, and they rarely vote for their best interests, even if they vote at all.
The Logic of Dealing with Unmoving Objects
A number of years ago, I ran into a conflict that I never encountered before but ever since then have never forgotten. You see, I was an editor for the opinion section of a small newspaper some years back, and I had printed the article of a young man who criticized a group of people who were local moped riders that happened to be part of a moped community. The immediate response from that community was not dialogue explaining why he was wrong, but instead an extremely hostile approach that included attempts to attack the very nature of the newspaper itself, including physical threats and intentions of causing actual physical harm. This type of behavior went on for several days over the next week, and it was an immediate education in how irrational and quick to arms certain members of the population can be, especially when the moped community we were talking about was generally a very pleasant and friendly sort whenever dealing with pretty much any other issue beforehand. Basically, what it taught me is that people can be easily led to very dark places in very short times, and people are generally on the verge of being very irrational and unfeeling towards any other person to whom they are not personally accountable.
Fast-forward a couple of decades to today, and I’d like to share with you an experience I encountered only a short time ago. Over the pandemic, I started to view a lot more Youtube programming than I had in the past, and at one point, I was trying to find videos on how to get better sleep, and I came across the ASMR community. Interesting community. But they’re not actually the ones I want to talk about. But what I discovered is that when you watch a certain type of content on Youtube, you start to receive all sorts of recommendations for other content that is somewhat similar, and through one strange connection to the next, the algorithms ended up recommending to me content that mostly caters to what I’ll refer to as the “man-o-sphere”, a place where videos seem to incorporate a lot of male commentators who seem to have a lot to say about the state of dating in America. And what I discovered was that it was content that was filled with some very angry voices.
The thing about this content is that Youtube has a really weird algorithm-recommendation process that seems to suggest more and more outrageous content, thinking that’s the natural progression of what you wish to pursue. So, what started off as videos to help me sleep, narrated by very kind, friendly women with soft voices, turned into angry, violent “my way is the only way” right-wing women haters. The sad thing is that the transition in recommended content did not really take that long to occur.
Anyway, I could talk about this content for hours, but that’s not really what I came to talk about either. What I wanted to talk about was something I discovered called MGTOW, which happens to stand for “men going their own way”, which is basically an approach that men make who have given up on ever pursuing traditional relations with women because of a belief of something called “market forces” in dating circles that seem to value this elusive end goal of high value men avoiding any involvement with women who can never seem to measure up to a system of goalposts that become harder and harder for anyone to ever achieve. And a lot of the evidence cited will generally be some very specific types of data that point out that over the years feminism has changed both men and women in ways that make the man and woman dynamic from history more adversarial than it’s ever been and now more of a man vs. woman dynamic that constantly feeds into a zero sum dichotomy where men always lose out unless they happen to be part of this mysterious one percent of the highest value men.
Now, a lot of this rhetoric can be pretty persuasive, even if a lot of it is often cloaked in the retelling of a lot of wives’ tales involving statistics that are quite often repeated over and over to sound authentic, but when I started investigating a lot of the studies myself, I realized how flawed so many of them were, meaning that even some of the commonly held understandings in the community itself were based on misinformation. And let’s just say that as an outsider to this community, I kind of came in with a doe-eyed approach and thought one day that I’d share my observations with the rest of the world, because while some of it was flawed, some of it was interesting enough that I thought my public contacts might be interested in some of this information as well, and then, well, just decide for themselves.
So, I created a Youtube report of my own that was a little over an hour long, and I posted it, expecting my usual cobweb-like response. Instead, I got that response I remember from the moped community some years back.
When I did my report, I was reacting to the MGTOW community that I had observed, and I wanted to put it out there for others to know this community was out there. I wasn’t really all that critical of the community, but just presented what I saw. But then made a couple of blatant errors. The first was not realizing that some of the sources I was referencing in the story weren’t really considered a part of the MGTOW community, but kind of a secondary community that I had not even known was a thing. You see, there were levels of what I will now call the man-o-sphere, which is broken up amongst different philosophies, one of which is the dating strategy community, another being the pick-up community, one being a strictly anti-feminist community, and then kind of in their own corner of this hemisphere, the MGTOW people. Well, because I had titled this story something like “Finding out about MGTOW” and then going into my observations and analysis, an immediate campaign of dislikes started from people who were adamant supporters of a very specific MGTOW philosophy AND community. In my years of doing Youtube, I don’t think I’ve ever received a dislike for a video, mainly because most of my videos are designed to inform or help people. And within minutes of posting it, I had a few dozen dislikes from people and some really heated responses in the comments that were basically just very angry that something they watched didn’t seem to treat MGTOW like it was the greatest thing since sliced butter. And strangely enough, there was basically nothing negative that was even shared about MGTOW and its philosophy. It was like some weird signal switch had been hit and now everything that followed would forever bathe the room in darkness.
After the continued negative attention, and a tiny sliver of positives and likes indicating people found the report fascinating, I just took the video down and decided to never do a video on that population ever again. I quickly came to the conclusion that they weren’t interested in discussion, or even educating anyone about anything. For a population that doesn’t appreciate when women call them out for toxic masculinity, the response was pretty damn toxic and completely out of the blue. If I learned anything, it was that some people don’t play well with others and have no desire to come to any common ground to raise a common conversation. It also sort of illustrated exactly what seems to be wrong with our country right now and why it’s not going to get any better. As long as people remain in silos away from each other, our country is forever going to continue to spread apart at the seams.
I know this sounds a bit depressing, especially as I haven’t written anything in some time on this blog, but I really wanted to share this, and I’d greatly appreciate any insight you might have to share in response.
Youtube and Controversies: Political attitudes, conservatism and the struggle with being non-political
For those who don’t actually already know this, my Ph.D work is in political science, and since then I’ve taught political science for years before adding another graduate degree and focusing on communication. However, one thing that always seemed to grate at me was that no matter how hard I tried to be non-political, it was practically impossible. Not for me. But for anyone who happened to be in the audience. Let me explain.
To explain, it’s important to probably point out my political affiliation, because that helps to explain why it’s even stranger. Back when I was first going through undergraduate work at West Point, I was a staunch conservative. There was no problem that I felt couldn’t be solved with our military, states’ rights and did I mention our military? When I got to grad school and started learning massive amounts of information about politics, I started to realize that I hated politics. A lot.
So, I sort of became an anarchist. And that has all sorts of problems if you’re capable of actually understanding what an anarchist is. You see, people think an anarchist is some crazy liberal that throws Molotov cocktails at cops. Well, that was one type of anarchist, specifically the Russians at the turn of last century and maybe the French, well, anytime in history. As an anarchist of my type, what it meant was that I hated the fact that we need a government to do anything because what almost always happens is we become part of corruption and oligarchy, to the point where government is almost always used as a tool to oppress other people. There are good people in government, but over time, those people get drowned out by people who see government as that tool to push through their personal agendas, and there’s no end to the types of agendas they might want to push (social programs, religion, anti-Internet policies, anti-gaming policies, anti-Shania Twain fundamentalism, etc.). What it doesn’t mean is that I want to throw Molotov cocktails at anyone. That requires upper arm strength and exercise, both things I do like to protest against.
Anyway, getting back to my original point, when I was teaching political science, one thing that inevitably happened in class is that some young student would want to know what my political affiliation was. And it was rarely out of actual interest. It was almost always to figure out whether or not to listen to anything I had to say as useful. If I picked an affiliation that was different than his or hers, they discounted everything I had to say. If it was the same, they often felt they knew as much as me and then didn’t have to listen any further. If I chose my usual tact and said that I don’t have an affiliation, or that I don’t discuss it, they automatically decided that it had to be the opposite of the one they had, or they assumed it had to be liberal (no, not sure why that assumption was always made).
That brings me to an interesting phenomenon I’ve come across recently. Over the Christmas break, I found myself overly interested in following a number of channels on Youtube that I found interesting. Mostly, it was ASMR artists, but when that got kind of boring (or I didn’t need to sleep), I started to branch out and find other types of subjects. My first “go to” was gaming channels, but I’ll be honest, the majority of those are awful, often hosted by some teenage mentality that tends to scream into the microphone, or thinks it’s 1980 and has lots of flashy stuff trying to send watchers into seizures. But a few of them were actually pretty good, and one of them is actually a bit of the subject of this post.
I don’t remember how I found it, but I came across a cast called The Quartering, hosted by Jeremy Hambly, a Youtube game industry reviewer who leans to the conservative side of the house. Having watched his podcasts over the last year, I would recommend his site if you’re interested in interesting perspectives on the industry, but at the same time understanding that sometimes he seems to get a little high on himself and takes on fights that are generally left to different avenues of the Internet. An example is how he has a tendency to want to create a space that lacks politics when it comes to computer gaming (something I highly support) but then falls right into the same territory himself when he goes anti SJW (social justice warrior) and becomes political in trying to advocate for not wanting to become political. Yeah, it’s kind of the same thing I ran into when teaching political science, and even though I was completely aware of the problem, the problem always exists. What I did discover to be the ONLY solution is one he hasn’t reached yet, and that’s to stop caring about politics, rather than focusing on politics as an approach to not being political. Yeah, I know that sounds bizarre and strange, but it’s basically the only way to deal with it.
This last week saw some interesting developments for Hambly as he lost one of his main sponsorship deals with a coffee company when it was alerted to one of his recent videos (that pissed off people who tend to get riled by SJW politics), so he decided he was no longer going to accept sponsorship deals. Unfortunately, this type of drama continues, no matter what someone does about it.
What I would like to say is that when he’s not dealing with actual politics, his information is actually pretty interesting. However, one thing I have noticed is that because he has such large numbers of subscribers (I believe it is upwards of 100,000 subscribers, but could be off on that, although I know it’s pretty damn high), Hambly does often ignore the fact that his influence quite often becomes a McLuhan message is the medium factor (he’ll go on an anti-Electronic Arts rant and then laugh when EA suffers financially, arguing that it was EA that caused its downfall, not the fact that perhaps Hambly’s negativity might have attributed to the down turn).
Moving away from Hambly here (as I said, I actually like him and think his information is informative, so I don’t want to get into a criticism mode here), one thing I’ve started to notice is that there are a lot of Youtubers who attempt to adopt the Hambly model, but completely fail to do so, and only make things worse because they turn into shrills for anti-establishment thought without doing anything other than harping on how much enjoyment they get out of the drama. Having watched a lot of this behavior over the last year or so, I am starting to feel that a lot of these commentators are somewhat responsible for the down turn the industry is starting to feel. I mean, think about it: If the majority of the people covering the industry keep talking about how bad the industry is, it’s going to feed the perspective that the industry is nothing but bad.
I used to work for the industry (both Maxis and EA), so I had a unique perspective myself, but at the same time I also realized that there are a lot of diverse minds in that atmosphere and whenever I tried to get a “this is how they feel at this company”, I find myself often realizing that I was putting too much of a spin on the thought based off of anecdotal information I received from a very limited observation of what I was able to see myself.
Coming Under Fire…trying to achieve the honor of being placed on the highest court in the land
Years back when I was in the Army, a grizzled NCO pulled me aside one day and explained something to me. Now, if you’ve ever watched an old Clint Eastwood war movie, or one of the many like it, you’ve heard this story before, so I’m not telling you something you probably already shouldn’t know. But I’m going to tell the story regardless, and even though you’ve heard it before, I’m going to explain how hearing the story doesn’t mean anything until you’ve experienced it. Anyway, it goes like this:
Two new lieutenants or two new privates come into a unit for the first time. They’re fresh out of combat training and ready for their first assignment. Soldier A is gung-ho and looking for a fight. Soldier B is scared of his or her own shadow and looks like the one most likely to run from a fight. And then shit goes down for the first time and the whole unit is under fire. Soldier A marches into the theatre of battle looking ready for the fight, but when the first shot is fired, finds he or she can’t even move, freezes and basically fails everyone, including oneself. Soldier B, realizing that Soldier A is under fire and unable to move, jumps into the fight, drags Soldier A from the battle and fights back oncoming forces in the process. Soldier B proves to the be hero, and Soldier A has disappointed everyone.
Trial by fire we call it.
People often tell this story, thinking it is specifically about battle but fail to understand what it actually means. It means that everyone lives within their own narrative and tells their own stories. But until something happens that tests one’s own abilities and shows that person that everything you’ve prepared for doesn’t explain a current dilemma, and you have to develop a new narrative based on walking through fire, you don’t really know how you will ever handle the stress of having to pull yourself out on the other side. Will you honor yourself and others? Or will you fold and prove yourself to be a complete failure? You can tell yourself you’re going to do one or the other, but until you’re truly tested, you never know what you’re going to do to get to the other side.
I’ve been fortunate, or unfortunate, to have had that test come across me a few times in my life. And each time has helped me to build upon my beliefs of what I thought might happen. So far, I’ve been lucky in that I’ve not had an encounter turn out to be the opposite of what I hoped it would be. Sometimes, the outcome hasn’t emerged as best as it could have, but at the same time, I feel confident in the sense that I’ve not humiliated myself or brought dishonor upon anyone else in my care. Sometimes, that’s all you can hope for.
So, let’s talk about Brett Kavanaugh. A few days ago, he was undergoing his trial by fire as he was made to face a past accuser and to confront a hostile Senate that wasn’t about to let him just play legal games when answering their questions. Instead of just owning up to simple failings in his past by saying: “Yes, I drank a lot, and I made a lot of mistakes back then, but I’m trying to be a much better person these days. That’s all anyone can do.” he took the frat boy-no consequences approach and from what could be seen just bullshitted his way through the entire confirmation hearing, hoping that partisanship would keep him from having to take any responsibility.
And that hurt a lot.
As a veteran, my one thought watching this whole disaster on the screen was that I’d never be comfortable under fire with this guy backing me up. To be even more blunt, I wouldn’t be comfortable getting drunk with this guy in a bar. This is that guy that breaks a crime while drunk and then blames you, even though you were throwing up in the bathroom the entire time, telling the cops he only had two beers.
The trial by fire moment in this man’s life put him in front of the nation and asked him to make the right decisions. To quote the grail knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “He chose poorly.” While he may still get a chance to get on the Supreme Court because of partisanship alone, most cases of trial by fire only get one chance to get it right. In a combat unit, he’d be that one soldier relegated to holding up the rear until the colonel can transfer him out of the unit where his actions won’t threaten to get any other soldiers killed. You rarely get a second chance to prove you’re no longer a coward. That first time is all a group of soldiers will allow; they may never trust you again.
While even if he was denied the Supreme Court pick, he’s proven he doesn’t even deserve the lofty position he already has, but he’s life locked into that position as well, meaning that he snuck his way into the elite unit and there’s really no way to usher him out. He’s now like that brigadier general who got his position by doing administrative work his entire career and once discovered to be a complete failure at combat is now being sent to some office in a corner of the Pentagon where he can’t affect anyone again, at least until someone can convince him to retire.
But I fear we’ve not seen the last of him yet.
And that should frighten a lot of people because the only reason this guy will ever be allowed a second chance is to fulfill a quota of people who just want a slot filled by someone on their side. And even they know he’s a horrible pick for the position they’re going to pigeon him into.
And the sad part is that there are so many other better people who should have been considered and seriously vetted instead of him. But they probably won’t be, so we’ll be stuck with him for decades.
If You Want to Make America Great Again, Have Media Outlets Stop Using Tweets As Actual Stories
I don’t even think people realize the problem that exists today with media. It’s not that media is wrong, false or lying. It’s that it’s lazy. And yeah, I know a big reason behind it is the consolidation of media outlets to get rid of people and save money. So, the problem has emerged to the next logical step: Find media anywhere you can get it.
And tweets is where they’ve found it. Because, let’s face it: It’s easy, it’s free, and it requires absolutely no work to put together a story that consists of someone’s response on Twitter.
But let’s also face the fact that it’s not actually a story. It’s a reaction from someone to something. And most likely, it’s irrelevant to practically everything.
Let’s take the Tweeter-in-Chief that gets quoted on Twitter the most. Instead of paying attention to actual policies the president is enacting or proposing, we get knee-jerk reactions from him at 3am in the morning when he’s just watched Fox & Friends and wants to let the world know that we must stop illegal aliens from stealing the world’s toilet tissue. or whatever stupid idea the bottom of the barrel commentators on that show have proposed at whatever time they actually air.
But the media eats this stuff up and actually reports it as a legitimate news story.
When news is dull or boring, we suddenly start to see “news” whenever one of the Kardassians picks a fight on Twitter with Taylor Swift, or whatever other shenanigans occur during that news cycle. The “famous for being famous” celebrities plan these stories for maximum coverage, and our media, realizing they don’t have anywhere near the amount of coverage to fill a 24 hour news cycle, eats it right up, and suddenly a turf war between two aging rappers ends up being a leading story. So, instead of reporting on something legitimate, or important, like anything written by Nicholas Kristof, or Rebecca Solnit, we get nonstop nonsense about the Kardassian sisters or “news” about toddlers in beauty pageants.
This morning, I woke up to read a “news” story about a Tweet from the president saying how much he believes that….
Not a story. It’s a moment of thought about something that is not a story. A story would be something actually happened. Legislation got passed, someone died, someone was arrested, an accuser was heard and listened to, a country declared war against another, a country attacked another, etc. Someone’s thoughts on something, especially something that came as a reaction to hearing an actual news story IS NOT NEWS.
So please. Stop passing drivel off as news.
And people, stop listening to it. When you hear it, turn it off because you didn’t get news. And better, contact the news agency and complain. Otherwise, it’s ALL you’re ever going to see and hear.
Just saying. I’ll tweet it for you, if it might cause you to think of it as real news.