Created November 6, 2020
If we can keep from becoming emotionally stampeded, we can reach compromises in a more pleasant way that are creative, innovative, bold, exciting, inspiring, and consensus based.
Isn’t that the whole point of Democracy?
How did we get so divided so fast? It seems hard to believe based on what had gone before.
We all grew up with the same values. Other countries were corrupt, we were taught, but here we had the privilege of living in a democracy, where there is concern for every individual.
Who could disagree that this is a core American value? No one. WE are united on this foundation. This is not red or blue it is America.
THIS is why we can get teary eyed hearing the national anthem or remembering the righteous things we have done. America is a noble cause and human beings are built to sense such things intuitively.
It helps, when we get out of perspective and exaggerate how far apart we are, to remember the common ground upon which we stand, with each other here at home, and with former allies around the world who had followed our guidance for two hundred years, and will be like the prodigal father when we return with them.
Relaxing, from the fight against the Left or Right, as we are doing together here, here’s two thoughts about how we got so split recently.
Factor 1: Please take into account that political advertising and more broadly speaking political propaganda, has recently so well learned its Internet lesson, that the Orwellian implications are becoming disturbingly clear.
While television has always been stabilized by common consent, it’s a ruder patois which rules digital. The mind frame into which one can be catapulted by a wrong keystroke, dwarfs the ability of television shows to give me nightmares as a subteen. The wildness of the Internet is its leitmotif, its taste. We are transfixed by its unpredictability. Whereas television has a product that relies upon dependability and therefore predictability.
It might help to picture the media as an actual alien being determined to take over our minds. In reality it has that equal power, although not alien.
Factor 2: When I was 8 years old I “knew” the Commies were my enemy.
The screen media hypnotic effect in my era was a firefly in relation to the digital sun today. But it was enough to inculcate me into believing in enemies and believing that Commies were my enemies.
Many propagandists on our side as well as folks like Joseph McCarthy pumped this “Pinko” thing up to humongous proportions from the 1919 Red Scare and it’s still with us today. That’s coming up on a century we have been conditioned to think of Commies as the enemy.
Then Donald Trump called Democrats Pinkos. Is it any wonder that Follower types would transfer all the hate, rage, and violence in their souls against Democrats, based simply on the anti-Communism perspective imbued into every American living today?
It’s an oversimplification to paint people who lean slightly left as if they are at the left pole. Just as it’s an oversimplification to do it to those who lean slightly right.
The middle is what really counts. Let’s come back to the middle together, voluntarily, individually, please dear reader, take the initiative yourself.
We all want the same things – with enough differences among us on the details to keep life interesting. Let’s not be driven into insane rage by media overdrive or people who will risk our minds and our peace to gain even more power over us.
Let’s stop before we hurt ourselves more. Our strength in in our unity, disunity only brings us weakness and ultimately defeat.
Best to all,
Bill
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