Category: bias

Great Sayings – The Bias That People Have

People only see what they are prepared to see.  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

I’m not going to get political here because I think people should make up their own minds.  Most already have.  The problem with the MSM and Social Media is that you can confirm you bias, no matter what it is by going to what sources you feel comfortable to read.  That is your filter.

What I do think is that the actual smart people will have an open mind to both sides of any situation and look at the facts and ask questions.  We should challenge what is out there every time there is a “major issue” to see what the real answers are.

It takes time and you will have to have an open mind, but coming to the right conclusion instead of viewing a situation through the filter of what someone else says is the way to truth.

This is not easy.  What is easy is to fall back to your usual sources and just believe and regurgitate what is being said.

Take off the filter and evaluate like a detective.  Come to the right conclusion based on facts, not feelings or especially on what someone else said.

To Tim O’Reilly, On Global Warming And Rising Tides When He Told Me We Were Doomed And Will Drown.

After reading a post that claimed rising tides threatened the world a while back, I suggested to him that the tides fluctuate. Science plus history prove the Statue of Liberty isn’t drowning, or Florida sinking like his hero Al Gore promised. I was pointing out the obvious to no avail. I’ve rarely encountered such an elitist, who was so wrong on a subject (except Al Gore).

check it out Tim, The tides aren’t rising in 500 years. Global warming science isn’t hard if you lie. I figured it out and so did you. I’m just the one pointing out the truth you don’t want to believe.
One of Al Gore’s Houses
Which came true Tim O, or James G or Tom R? You guys were nuts and wrong every time.

His argument was that climate science is hard. (It is when you only try to scare others with fake predictions and not facts to back up your position and then the scare never happens). It’s hard to defend when none of those descriptions of doom ever come true, hot or cold. The tweet below shows the Grand Tetons the same as they were 100 years ago

What is funny to me is that instead of decent discussion which I offered, I instead got an ad hominem attack on my character. It was an ill advised use of a bully pulpit as without any personal knowlege of me, I was told I was a typical Fox News watcher (I refuse to watch any news channel, especially FOX l as they all are biased in some way, read my blog and you’ll see). This is typical leftist behavior when they don’t get their way. Start saying they are racists, supremacists, Hitler, deplorable’s and so forth.

There were the other usual liberal attacks on me personally about beliefs I was accused of but don’t have, typical of when you run out of facts. I was this or that, because I wouldn’t worship Gaia and no mention of my knowledge of science and history, and especially facts. So he lied about the tides and about me. Good job there boy.

I also know that Carbon Dioxide is a nutrient for plants. That is the settled science. These idiots call it poison and wanted to tax it. Did anyone go to biology class?

The offer to talk is now rescinded because I don’t have time for Internet trolls like Tim or people who won’t get educated about what they spew. They aren’t going to believe facts and have adjusted it to fit their pre-determined outcome.

Evidence That Climate Change Is A Hoax Perpetuated By The Rich, your hero’s.

proof the rich don’t believe it either

So the Greenland Ice is growing and Florida is still there. The water around the statue is at the same level it’s been for 100 years and Tim is a troll it appears and is wrong. I’ve added at hastag for TIm, a social media terrorist.

THE PAUSE IN TEMPERATURE

I offer a few facts, something Tim didn’t have when castigating others on social media.

The New Pause paused last month because I was ill. Many apologies for the interruption. Now, however, it resumes – and it has lengthened from 7 years 7 months to the end of April 2022. To the end of June 2022, the New Pause is now 7 years 10 months in length:

This Pause, like its predecessor, which was an impressive 18 years 8 months (UAH), or 18 years 9 months (HadCRUT4), is, as always, not cherry-picked. It is derived from the UAH monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies as the period from the earliest month starting with which the least-squares linear-regression trend to the most recent month for which data are available does not exceed zero. Whatever the data show, I show. Or, in the immortal words of Dr Roy Spencer, speaking of his dataset, “It is what it is”. In that splendid dictum speaks all true science.

The least-squares trend, which Professor Jones at the University of East Anglia used to recommend as the simplest and most robust method of deriving global-temperature trends, takes due account of all monthly values, not merely of the starting and ending values.

It sucks when you are wrong. But the point of climate change isn’t carbon reduction (Trump reduced it more than any president), it’s controlling others and grifting money.

I feel sorry for people like him. It must suck to go through life choosing to be purposely ignorant about science. It must suck to be wrong and to not change, but when you are in that deep, there is no getting out. You’ve bought the lie hook, line and sinker.

The European Union’s parliament has decided that nuclear power and gas power from plants now qualify as “green energy.” The proposal passes the EU parliament as Russia is threatening to cut off all natural gas transit to Europe in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The news was reported by Disclose TV on Wednesday morning.

JUST IN – EU Parliament declares nuclear power and gas as “green” energy.

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 6, 2022

“EU Parliament declares nuclear power and gas as ‘green’ energy,” the news account tweeted.

It was also reported by the Associated Press in a piece that reads more like an outraged editorial.

“European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to include natural gas and nuclear in the bloc’s list of sustainable activities, backing a proposal from the EU’s executive arm that has been drawing fierce criticism from environment groups and will likely trigger legal challenges,” the AP noted.

Great Sayings – Ralph Waldo Emerson on Life

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You take with you what you’ve been through as an education.  Hopefully you learn and don’t repeat the mistakes and instead, use what you learned for good.

Nevertheless, you may not realize your capabilities unless you stretch your goals and keep striving for more.

The bad guys in the media and those who are trying to re-shape the world in their image want to take away your hope.  Don’t ever give that up.  It’s what keeps us going and not fall into trap of complacency.

Great Sayings – JFK on Lying

“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

President John F. Kennedy, Yale University Commencement, June 11, 1962

It’s hard to know what to believe these days.  The media (MSM) lies to us every time they communicate, politicians say what they think others want to hear (there are a rare few that don’t) and Social Media is just a group lynching now for whatever you say that more than 1 other person disagrees.  Worst of all are the celebtards who think they have a clue to what life is really about and get together to preach to the masses because they have a million Instagram followers.

The bottom line is if you don’t believe in something, you will fall for anything.  For me it is faith, but everyone has to find their own way and their own rock to anchor to.  Good luck.

If everyone starts repeating the same thing, use your critical thinking to decide whether it is worth going along with or if it is even true.  I question just about everything until I know the motive.  Also, I quit Twitter, Quora and only look at FAKEbook for group events that I’m supposed to show up at.

Great Sayings – Advertising vs. The News (both suck)

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”

-George Santayana

Over the years, we’ve found ways to skip ads.  We record shows and fast forward through them to watch what we want.

Lately, I’ve been skipping the news because I’m sick of the biased reporting, from either side of the story.

Advertising somehow makes having hemorrhoids, toe fungus, yellow teeth and bad breath seem better.  All of it at the cost of the fast speaker at the end telling you all of the things that will harm you when you use the cure they are selling.

The news tells you all the harm that is happening to you to make you feel worse.  So advertisements during the news hour is a recipe for depression or anger.

I hope all of this crap is just the result of it being an election year and will go away after November.  Unfortunately, since they’ve already gotten rid of Brian Williams, Bill O’Reilly, Matt Lauer, Katy Couric and the rest of the losers and the news still sucks it probably won’t.

I just don’t watch now and I feel better.  Tell me when it changes.

 

Great Sayings on Discernment – Spurgeon

Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong, it is the difference between right and almost right.

Times are weird right now.  What once was considered wrong is now right, just because.  The reverse is also true.

Don’t let what is going on tear you from your principles or the ability to know what is right.  It is difficult and it is also hard to know if you are correct in your discernment.

History is a good teacher.  It is important to have principles and stick to them.  It’s just hard to do when the world is upside down.

 

Great Sayings – What Your Enemy Fears

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer

Sun Zhu said something similar about noticing your opponents weakness and you will win the fight because they can no longer hurt you.Much of the strife we go through is fear based recently.  It caused us to leave life and self-quarantine, until it was ok to go out and riot.  It’s been going on for a week now an there will be plenty of data shortly as to whether we really need to social distance anymore, because they sure aren’t doing it in the riot cities.

Remember Greta Thunberg?  She’s not even a blip on the map, nor is global warming.  The scare mongers have moved on to the next issue. I haven’t been afraid of these things because the truth is that we live in the greatest times of mankind ever.  Yes we have problems, but that is life.

There is no need to be afraid and have unnecessary fears.  The glass is really half full.  These can be the greatest years of our lives if we stop buying into the crap that the media and social media tries to feed us.

If you put your faith in something that is a rock and then you won’t be afraid.  Think for yourself and look at the facts to decide if what is going on is real or someone’s agenda.I think we are going to become more numb to these repetitive scare tactics being thrown at us and we will stand up to scare tactics by those who are trying it.

Great Sayings – Right vs. Wrong by William Penn

We are constantly being herded like sheep by the media, politicians, celebtards, sports stars, corporations and social media to the pen of group think.  Do what we say, not what we do.  Buy this and your life will be better.  Vote for me and I’ll do anything for you (until I get elected, then my goal is to get re-elected…not help you).  It goes on depending on their agenda.

We are born with a conscience.  Even Cain knew it was wrong to kill Abel before any law was handed down about murder.

So no matter whether or not you choose follow along like a sheeple, right vs. wrong still exist regardless of what we do to convince ourselves otherwise.

Critical thinking and being strong enough to stand up for what is right is hard when you are pressured to go along to get along.  Be strong and don’t be afraid to be right.  In the long run it is best.  You will also be able to live with yourself instead of second guessing what you should have done.

The Ten Commandments Of Logic

  1. Thou shalt not attack the person’s character, but the argument. (Ad hominem)
  2. Thou shalt not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (Straw man fallacy)
  3. Thou shalt not use small numbers to represent the whole.(Hasty generalizations)
  4. Thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the question)
  5. Thou shalt not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. (Post hoc/False cause)
  6. Thou shalt not reduce the argument down to two possibilities.(False dichotomy)
  7. Thou shalt not argue that because of our ignorance, claim must be true or false. (Ad ignorantum)
  8. Thou shalt not lay the burden of proof onto him that is questioning the claim. (Burden of proof reversal)
  9. Thou shalt not assume “this” follows “that” when it has no logical connection. (Non sequitir)
  10. Thou shalt not argue that because a premise is popular, therefore it must be true. (Bandwagon fallacy)

Try telling this to the Press, celebtards, sports stars who try to cram their opinion on those because they are good a games or career politicians.  They are the worst offenders.

Great Sayings – Daniel Patrick Moynihan on Opinion vs. Facts

Everyone has both.  Some choose one over the other.  Most mesh the two together.

The difficulty in this day of being barraged by social media and a 24/7/365 news hype cycle is that you can choose to go with your bias and only see one side of any story.  This is dangerous regardless of which side you view it from.

Don’t believe the scare tactics of the money hustlers who rush people into a position like sheep herders trying to corral the flock into group think.  The tactic is shame for not subjugating yourself to the PC position of the day.

It takes courage to step out and stand for what is right, especially in the start of a crisis or an event in time. This requires critical thinking as to discovery of the real facts and applying the necessary logic to come to the right conclusion.  It also can take time.  The media and politicians will try to rush us into judgement based on opinion.

As they said in Watergate, follow the money and you’ll usually see through those who are self-serving.

Most of all, don’t be a sheep.  Think for yourselves and don’t take anything you read online as gospel, except for the Gospel.

Sooner or later, time exposes the truth.  Whether you want to believe it or not is now up to you.

Great Sayings – Mark Twain on Facts and Statistics (Covid-19)

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.”

 

Doctors Fauci and Birx predicted gloom, doom and death with the China/Wuhan/Corona/Covid/Whatever virus.  They were off not by a little, but by millions.  History will show whether they saved a lot of lives or screwed the World’s economy.  Let that be the judge and not the media.

I have railed against the media because all of them now have stopped reporting the news and now make stuff up based on their position.  They mostly miss the mark on everything also.

The last time I recall missing the target this badly was the 2016 election where at 8 am Nate Silver at 538 had Hillary winning with a 95% probability.

I could go on and on with examples, but I’ll spare everyone because we all read the internet and judge it for ourselves (for those smart enough to have our own opinion and not believe what we read).

Wise up and don’t be a sheeple.  Twain is right so go with the facts.

Great Sayings – Political Correctness

“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end.”

 

Here’s where someone is going to get offended.  I’m going to go ahead with it anyway even if there are a few people who always try to spoil the party for the rest of us.  Most people really don’t care.  Call things by whatever you want if it makes you happy.  Heck, I’ll be happy for you especially if the PC police would shut up.  I just can’t remember all the names you want me to call things I grew up calling something else.

There are so many important things than this in my life that come before being PC like cleaning my nails, sweeping out dust bunnies, contemplating my naval and much more because well, I have a life.

I already have posted that the media is biased from the point of view of the audience they want to reach, all of them.  They have their lapdogs the celebtards who gladly will tell us what we should think because of their self-inflated opinion of themselves.

The funny thing to me is that some of this PC crap is made up like in the circle game.  Reddit made up a story about the OK sign being offensive or white power or something to see if they could get the offended to bite.  Just like Pavlov’s dogs, they salivated when the bell rung.

Journalist Jokes, Because well….They Are Journalists

I worked with the press for decades.  The ones I worked with were nice people, but they had to write something that people will read, until now.  Journalists are supposed to (try to) and learn about the subject they are covering. Now they write ridiculous stories and then write the opposite.  They don’t even bother to fact check anymore.  No one reads corrections so they don’t care, and it shows.  I can’t even say this current lot are nice.  If you see below, they aren’t well liked either.

Lately, they have been circling the wagons to cover one side of the political scene or the other together.  They are exposing themselves to the public as to how little they know or how little they want to hide their bias.  A bunch of them just want to jam on the president out of spite, but they are either self-owning or he is swatting them like flies, especially Jim Acosta.

Twitter/Twitchy caught on and now instead of lawyer jokes, it is journalist jokes.  For the most part, this lot deserves what they are getting.  They are now as useless to regular people as celebtards and sports stars trying to give their opinion on something other than their sport.

The hashtag is #JournalistJokes, go see for yourselves.  Here is a list of some as a starter.  Others are more creative than me.

“Three journalists walk into a building. You’d think one of them would’ve seen it.”
“What’s 5 miles long and has an IQ of 30?” “A JOURNALIST PARADE!”
“Three journalists walk into bar and say ‘ouch’ – then write stories about how the bar is racist and phobic.”
“How does a journalist change a light bulb? He holds while the whole world revolves around him.”
And Twitchy’s pick for the winner: “What are the best four years of a journalist’s life? Third grade.”
“Why are there only 2 pallbearers at a ‘journalist’s funeral?” “Garbage cans only have two handles.”
“How do you make a journalist’s eyes light up?” “Shine a flashlight in his ear.”
“What do you call 25 skydiving journalists?” “Skeet.”
“How do you get a one-armed journalist out of a tree?” “Wave to them.”
“What’s the difference between a smart journalist and Bigfoot?” “Bigfoot has been spotted.”
“Why can’t a ‘journalist’ dial 911?” “She can’t find the eleven.”
“What do you do if a journalist throws a grenade at you?” “Pick it up, pull the pin out, and throw it back.”
“What’s the different between God and a journalist?” “God doesn’t think he’s a journalist.”

 

Hat tip WND

The 10 Cannot’s – Inserting Reality Into Today’s Politics (And Woke Culture)

Some sanity and reasonableness should be considered when putting yourself out into the social media universe. Everyone seems to think that it is now their responsibility to tell us how to think, speak and act.

Here are 10 logical statements that are not new, but should have been taught to those who think they should tell us what to do, especially by politicians, the media and celebtards.  I wish George Orwell were alive today to see how right he was when he wrote 1984.

PC culture is ruining our society and frankly is taking the fun out of life for those of us who don’t get offended easily.

It’s time for a lot of people to grow up and act like adults.  Personally, I blame the educational system.  It has a considerable lack of diversity in terms of being able to view all sides of an issue before opening there mouths or post on Twitter, which I now call Hater.  Other platforms are becoming just as bad, but the hate usually starts there.

Rep. Stephen M. Young inserted into the Congressional Record, in 1950, an article from Harper’s magazine, written by a Lincoln scholar, Albert A. Wolman, listing most of the ”Ten Cannots” and other material falsely attributed to Lincoln.

The 10 Cannots:

1) You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

2) You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

3) You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

4) You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

5) You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.

6) You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.

7) You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

8) You cannot establish security on borrowed money.

9) You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.

10) You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

How Racism and White Supremacy Are The New Godwin’s Law

Authors Note: I have a tendency to notice patterns in both a macro and micro universes. I’ve been watching this one brew for a while now.

FIRST, WHAT IS GODWIN’S LAW?

Reformulated in the Net.Legends FAQs “Usenet Rule #4”:

“Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause the thread it is mentioned in to come to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon; every thread on Usenet has a constantly-increasing probability to contain such a mention.”

It is generally accepted that whoever is the first to play the “Hitler card” has lost the argument as well as any trace of respect, as having to resort to comparing your adversary to the most infamous mass-murdering dictator in history generally means you’ve run out of better arguments. Thus, once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin’s law.

Disclaimer: This blog post does not take a position on racism, it’s prevalence, who is or isn’t or might be racist and my position on this subject. Aristotle noted that the mark of an educated mind is to entertain a thought without accepting it.  Therefore I am observing a speech and behavioral pattern of the public.  In other words it’s on them, not me.

It is also noted that a trait of people with a higher IQ is that you can argue from multiple perspectives (unfortunately so can lawyers and politicians who may or may not be of higher intelligence – especially politicians and especially millennial politicians).

The original Godwin’s Law has lost its’ sting since everyone is now Hitler, so the new talking point is racism or white supremacy. Rather than argue on the merits of the position of the person (political candidates mostly since they dominate the news) the go to is now calling the other person one of these two pejorative names.  This constant overuse has devalued the meaning of the words and rendered them ineffective at worst and boring at best.

Here is a quick search that shows views from multiple points doing just this:

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=IXpRXZrPHOqH_Qa9hbr4AQ&q=examples+of+politicians+being+called+racist&oq=examples+of+politicians+being+called+racist&gs_l=psy-ab.3…2240.2240..3652…0.0..0.186.324.0j2……0….2j1..gws-wiz.aEnMfNpKcHc&ved=0ahUKEwja48Tux_3jAhXqQ98KHb2CDh8Q4dUDCAc&uact=5

This is in direct conflict with Martin Luther King’s evocative phrase: “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  Now, it is common to hear you are a racist or white supremacist because you don’t agree with me.  It greatly devalues MLK’s position.

A General Definition of racism

1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, racial prejudice or discrimination.

While I could list any or all of the comments that have been made in public themselves could be racist in tone, one could make the case for or against whether the accused are really racist. Calling someone a racist is easy but proving most of these ad hominem attacks is harder.

One would need to know what is inside the person making the statements to know if it were really true or just talking points. I won’t and am not even sure if I can make that value judgement. These attacks are easy enough to find (see the media below).

This is not the point of this post. I am not here to call someone a racist or White supremacist (or Hitler), rather to point out a trend.

In the department of redundancy department, this discussion is that the replacement for Godwin’s Law is that you are not Hitler, instead you are racist for whatever reason or whatever you say.

Why is this the case? The overuse of Godwin’s Law has made it impotent in political circles, the media and on social media platforms. Hitler stands with few others in history, perhaps Mao, Stalin or Pol Pot as true villains. Nobody really believes that the other person is like Hitler, they are just trying to make the worst case as they flush their argument down the toilet due to lack of substance.

HOW TO WIN YOUR POLITICAL RACE OR PUT YOUR OPPONENT ON THE DEFENSIVE WITHOUT TAKING A POSITION

What most of the accusers are doing is described in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals numbers 7-13 as follows:

  • “Keep the pressure on.”
  • “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
  • “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”
  • “If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.”
  • “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

Rather than argue on a platform, beliefs and issues, it is far easier to make your opponent defend themselves, and put them off their talking points.

Example: Candidate 1) If elected, I’ll lower taxes if elected (insert any issue here because it’s about to be destroyed).

Candidate 2) my opponent is Hitler and molests collies.

Press coverage: Candidate 1 is a well known collie molester. How long has this person been molesting Collies? The first question in the next debate; Candidate 1, are you still molesting Collies?

Now insert the word racist or white supremacist for molesting collies and you get the point of why this is effective.

  • “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

HOW THE PRESS BECOMES AN ENABLER

A common adage is that sex sells, as do murders, rapes, political embarrassments and anything not good news. Guess what they will print (hint: collie molester)?

A not so recent trend is that there is a common thread where a preponderance of reporters has similar talking points concurrently. There is a groupthink that causes the media to focus on a particular phrase, word or subject. Like piranha on carcass, they hammer it home. https://www.google.com/search?q=why+do+news+anchors+say+the+same+thing&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwim9dyQxv3jAhWFB80KHeyQAE0Q1QIoAHoECAsQAQ&biw=1440&bih=825

Since the new go to in Godwin’s Law is you are a racist and/or white supremacist, it makes for headlines that sell advertising. I can also be taken as ideological.  This is the de-facto statement now to the point that it has lost effectiveness.

Having spent decades working with (and against) all forms of media, they have a tendency to take the position of them being right, even if proven wrong. A correction is meaningless as once a statement is printed, it is still in the minds of the reader. Almost no one reads the corrections.

Most are journalists who write about a topic because it is assigned to them.  In the case of social media everyone thinks they have the moral high ground.

SOCIAL MEDIA

I’m not going to spend much time here, because most people have gotten into an Internet argument. Nobody wins unless the motive of one of the combatants is to piss off the other. It won’t matter how factual your argument is because it is just Internet road rage.

If you go to the above link, you see the outcome and great advice on how to handle this.

So the net result of overusing this theme is the same thing that happens with all overuse. Godwin’s Law is becoming meaningless. The definition of what racism really is and when the word should be used to protect the oppressed has been damaged. Even Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals suffers from overuse and tediousness.

The political landscape is a train wreck of who can sling the most mud. Watch the ratings nosedive for upcoming debates.

Stay out of it on Social Media except to observe who isn’t smart enough to stay out of this pool. With each use of the attack, the meaning becomes less valid and meaningful.

I thought about calling someone a racist instead of Hitler the Simonds Law, since I haven’t found this discussion fully hashed out, but I’d rather be associated with something more positive.

Everyone is a loser who engages in this behavior. My advice is grow up or be better educated to discuss your position better than: you are Hitler/racist/white supremacist and whatever the next insult is.

It used to be that to call someone Hitler was the ultimate insult, albeit the indication that the argument is lost.  Has calling them a racist and/or a white supremacist suffered the same fate?

What Is the Hierarchy of Identity Politics?

The 2008 and 2012 election showed that a coalition of minorities was the winning formula.  As for 2016, not so much.

With all the minority identity groups out there vying for political power, social media control, fund raising and media presence; how do they stack up when they compete for hierarchy?  At some point, when the power and money is being doled out, the queue is determined by some order.  Who are these groups and how do they vie for power?

Author disclaimer: I have no dog in this hunt.  I am a pattern watcher and try to learn from them.  Human nature is hard to understand and explain due to it’s ever changing allies and favored group status depending on circumstances.  I was watching the groups at the last election and wondered how you coalesce a group of disparate people with conflicting causes as a voter block.

Who are they?

While this isn’t a comprehensive list and I am not discriminating as I just Googled it, the last election revealed the groups of Black Lives Matter (BLM), LGBTQ (apologies if I omitted a letter), Islam (including ISIS), socialists, Antifa, environmentalists and feminists.  They each compete for their cause and have usually selected an enemy with whom they are opposed to, but are now conflicting with each other in the power grab.  They for the most part have an ideological position (some more than others) and garner the lion’s share of media attention.

What happens when the identity groups who desire to command the headlines conflict for attention and finances?

 

Before the haters come out, I write this post because of my position that one of the characteristics of a higher IQ is the ability to argue from multiple positions on a subject. I will proceed with this post from that premise.

I also am merely an observer of trends. The consolidating power of the above listed groups is becoming a relevant discussion regardless of where you source your information. I’ve excluded the typical mainstream media as sources of information on both sides as their coverage is either too conservative or liberal.  Their inherent bias excludes them from this conversation.  I also excluded Hollywood and celebrities since they have a limited integration with the real world and often spout declarations for others which they do not adhere to.  When you get to the heart of their talent, they pretend to be others and to take their opinions seriously is difficult at best.

Here are non-comprehensive, yet representative examples of identity group disagreements.

BLM vs. LGBTQ

I first noticed this when BLM shut down a gay pride parade.

These are two significant voter populations when added together.

What surprised me that it was during the last election cycle and both groups made up a voting block for the same candidate.  From said article:

BLM held Toronto Pride hostage, unless their demands, which included excluding police from the parade, were immediately met.

(Pride parades typically have contingents of LGBT cops and firefighters, and booths set up by the local LGBT officers’ group at the accompanying street festival.)

Judging by their success in forcing Toronto Pride to capitulate, I suspect we’ll see Black Lives Matter groups protesting more Pride parades in the future. And as a longtime national and international LGBT rights activist, I have a problem with that.

In my internet search for protests, it seems that BLM also protested and shut down Bernie Sanders and Hillary whom they supported.  It goes without saying that they all protested Trump, but that is not the point of my curiosity as I assumed this was a given.  This alone is surprising since both are a part of the coalition of voters candidates need to be elected per the aforementioned 2008/2012/2016 campaigns.

ISLAM vs. Feminists and LGBTQ

I later observed the Muslim and ISIS positions that women are treated poorly and that homosexuals were declared wrong and being executed. On a side point, they also considered most pets as unclean and black dogs should be killed (animal cruelty), which brings in the animal rights group, but they don’t be as significant as the other groups currently.  Apparently, women don’t have the same rights as men and must be subservient.

Then there is the recent Linda Sansour dust up revealing this dichotomy:

  • What the West needs to know is that in the Muslim world, jihad is considered more important than women, family happiness and life itself. If we are told, as Linda Sarsour said, that Islam stands for peace and justice, what we are not told is that “peace” in Islam will come only after the whole world has converted to Islam, and that “justice” means law under Sharia: whatever is inside Sharia is “justice;” whatever is not in Sharia is not “justice.”
  • Rebelling against Sharia is, sadly, for the Muslim woman, unthinkable. How can a healthy and normal feminist movement develop under an Islamic legal system that can flog, stone and behead women? That is why Sarsour’s jihadist kind of feminism is no heroic kind of feminism but the only feminism a Muslim woman can practice that will give her a degree of respect, acceptance, and even preferential treatment over other women. In Islam, that is the only kind of feminism allowed to develop.

It further goes on to say:

Sarsour apparently identifies as a feminist. Sarsour’s kind of feminism, however, embraces the most oppressive legal system, especially for women: Islamic religious law, Sharia. Sarsour’s feminism is supposedly for empowering women, but it twists logic in a way similar to how Muslim preachers do when they claim that beating one’s wife is a husband’s way of honoring her.

Here is the dichotomy:

Pro-Sharia feminism is a perverted kind of feminism that could not care less about the well-being of oppressed Muslim women. Sarsour’s logic concerning women does not differ much from that of Suad Saleh, an Egyptian female Islamic cleric, who recently justified on Egyptian TV the doctrine of intentional humiliation and rape of captured women in Islam. Saleh said, “One of the purposes of raping captured enemy women and young girls was to humiliate and disgrace them and that is permissible under Islamic law.” There was not even a peep in Egypt’s civil society about such a statement.

On 7/25/17 a direct conflict happened when this occurred: An Oakland Muslim plotted to attack a gay club in San Francisco and talked about killing thousands of innocents on behalf of ISIS.

Finally, there is this non-sequitur that I can’t fathom:

“Feminist” Muslim women calling beatings by their husbands a “blessing from Allah”!

Who wants a beating?

ISLAM (ISIS) vs. Antifa

I don’t fully understand this one.  It has the trappings of a sibling quarrel at best.  ISIS is claiming that Antifa has culturally appropriated their uniforms, that being their black flag and terrorist tactics. 

Here are some details:

Based on this proof, we hereby request that the UNHRC’s CESCR begin an immediate investigation into this matter, and, if you concur that ANTIFA is culturally appropriating ISIS, that you use all means at your disposal to put a stop to it. You could start by visiting this ANTIFA website, which contains links to many of its affiliates throughout the world.

Sincerely,

ISIS High Command

PS: You might mention to the ANTIFA punks that in quite a few aspects, we are at war with the very same people, organizations and ideas, and, in fact, Western civilization itself. So, if you could arrange a sit-down over tea with us, and them, it might serve all of our interests, and provide a holistic, inclusive resolution to our complaint.

Islam appears to have support from the media and the left side of the political sphere as does the other listed minorities claiming status.  One can see the obvious conflicts.

Socialists

It appeared that quite a bit of traction was gained by the Bernie Sanders crowd.  It seemed to have enough momentum to be a winning group within its’ primary. Somehow, it was defeated by a political machine by what is being revealed as suspicious activities.

Nevertheless, a discussion of the socialism movement by Ross Wolf summarizes some of my points:

Ross Wolfe argues in The Charnel House, the identity politics that arose in the 1960s, ‘70s and ’80s developed in reaction to the identity politics of actually-existing socialism itself:

The various forms of identity politics associated with the “new social movements” coming out of the New Left during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s (feminism, black nationalism, gay pride) were themselves a reaction, perhaps understandable, to the miserable failure of working-class identity politics associated with Stalinism coming out of the Old Left during the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s (socialist and mainstream labor movements). Working-class identity politics — admittedly avant la lettre — was based on a crude, reductionist understanding of politics that urged socialists and union organizers to stay vigilant and keep on the lookout for “alien class elements.” Any and every form of ideological deviation was thought to be traceable to a bourgeois or petit-bourgeois upbringing. One’s political position was thought to flow automatically and mechanically from one’s social position, i.e. from one’s background as a member of a given class within capitalist society.

Questions I Have

If you are courting one group, how do you avoid alienating another group if there is acrimony?  At some point you step on the wrong toes.

If there is limited money, how does the donor decide who gets it without upsetting other groups?

How do you herd this group of cats to vote together when trying to win an election?  It worked twice, but failed recently and there is finger pointing as to why.

What is Racist?

In Seattle, they can’t clean the sidewalks with pressure washers because it could be racist.

Council member Larry Gossett said he didn’t like the idea of power-washing the sidewalks because it brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists.

It seems that non-black people using gifs are being racist also.  I don’t understand this one though.

Finally, who wins this victim’s game?

I found this, which is someone else’s answer and not necessarily my view, but it seems to apply here:

The criteria used to judge that is two-fold: the perceived grievance and victimhood status of the group (more = better), and the amount of room within it for ideological and political pluralism (more = worse).

So I guess you have out victim everyone else.  By doing so, it disrupts the coalition of identities required by one of the political parties to win elections.  I suppose it is a popularity contest to win the money and the status.

My final observation is that human nature is the constant here.  People are selfish enough to grab power and money when possible.  Most do not have the ability to argue from multiple positions on the same subject and are ideologues for their cause.

This alone is going to make a coalition such as the one that voted in the president in 2008 difficult.  Being a female wasn’t enough of a victim status in the 2016 election.

These are things I ponder as we wind our way down the path of being a country.

 

Blogging at IBM, a snowball rolling down hill

This time last year, we put up the developerWorks blog as the first external IBM blog site. It was a small snowball barely dropped from the top of Mount IBM.  It turns out be an end around being able to blog at IBM who now want to establish a company wide policy that will smother and restrict effective blogging communications.  Fortunately, IBM Corporate Comm’s is clueless and so behind the times and we were able to put this site up under their noses without much effort.  Since we did it without asking, it now can’t be taken down as too many people look to this site for blogs.  Many people are trying to get on to it so for now, we control the outbound blog content unlike comm’s department in Armonk which moves at the speed of smell.

Armonk communications is a bubble that can’t see past New York, led by a hot head who ran Ed Koch’s liberal political campaign.  Their lack of vision is the bane of much of the sterile communications that you read about when IBM is discussed.  While they see it as a well oiled machine, the rest of the comm’s team who actually does all the work, know that they are a ball and chain that has to be worked around to get anything done.  The developerWorks blog site is a prime example of how to work around people such as those in Armonk.

It’s funny, almost like the tail wagging the dog, as we are doing what we want, whenever we want, while the rest of every word written from IBM goes under the microscope at the home office, effectively removing any creativity or actual information that might be helpful.  If you don’t believe it, read a press release.  It is quite enjoyable to usurp the Stalin like control that they try to impose on everyone else, and act like a regular company who understands how to deal with the media.

I decided to list my blog there as I was the first official blogger for IBM analyst relations and have set many of the policies up until now, including starting and running blogging for IBM A/R.  When the corporate communications machine finds a way to destroy the effectiveness through obsessive guidelines overseen by people who have never written or likely read a blog, any control I currently have will diminish.  They are so paranoid from the monopoly trial that they manage to put effective PR into the stone ages. Fortunately, they are so obsessed with the media right now, the most effective communications program is on the analyst side as they don’t understand what it is.  Anytime they try to interfere, they treat A/R like pr and look silly.

At that point, my blog may or may not be on the corporate site depending on the rules and guidelines. Since I don’t care what they say (and best of all am not in NY, which the powers that be can’t see beyond) and have learned to be more creative about communicating through social media than they have, I’ll make that decision as needed on my terms.  I’ll likely then be on new social media platforms that are industry wide so it won’t be tough to stay ahead of them while keeping current with the rest of the world.  Since they move so slowly for fear of actually stepping out into the real world, I won’t have to worry about it for a while.

With prodding from the outside (thanks to the analyst community) and many unconnected but interesting bloggers, we got the fever. Now there is the internal blog with thousands of bloggers going at it (another IBM communication killer since the audience is IBM’ers), a mainframe blog, gamers and worst of all attention on this from the top.

What I see is momentum for blogging that started as grass-roots inertia (bottom up, not the usual top down) which I believe is best (ask RIM or Palm). Sure, we were a bit later than some companies, but it won’t be that long for us to catch up. Fortunately, I started my blog and put up the developerWorks site like we did and that is how it will be done.  All we need is a few rock stars to start writing.

Now the blog plan is prominent in the outreach plans for new products and announcements.  Normal companies do this and since I came from the outside where I honed my skills staying ahead of companies like IBM, it is important to connect on terms with the audience that are mutually agreeable and most effective.  I knew that I’d already won and would get the message of the company I represented if there were IBM communicaitons people in the room.  Sure, they were the 800 lb. gorrilla in the room, but as soon as I got time with the media or analysts, they were far more likely to work with me as A) I wasnt’ trying to write their story and B) I actually was working in the 20th or 21st century.  I’ll bet those same comm’s folks were hell with tabulation machines and IBM 360’s.

So it’s more like cells dividing, people from all over the world in IBM are jumping on this as they should. Many of the execs who are the busiest people in the world are blogging Buell Duncan and IWB.

I’ve watched trends for a while at IBM, lots of hype at first, then some catch on or fizzle out, but this one has legs…the snowball is now big, and for now the only blog site at IBM until the wonks in IBM corporate communications figure out how to sterilize this also.  The fact that I can write this clearly shows that they have no clue about social media at this point, nor do they move faster than cold honey.

If you’re reading this, you likely had something to do with IBM blogging brought to you by developerWorks. Thanks.  We offer more information on a timely basis that is more meaningful than you’d ever find from the wonks in Armonk.