Division and Unity Pt.3

Between when I wrote the previous part and now when I am writing this part, the George Floyd murder, following protests, and later ensuing riots happened. The first post I made when returning to writing was the one I wrote in response to a youtube video which in itself was a response to the President's actions against peaceful protesters outside the white house, in his need to get a photo op with an upside-down bible in front of a church. Up until this point the people who have been reading this as I write it have told me that maybe I am a bit too harsh in regard to Trump. Then he gave a speech claiming he will send military personnel to put down the protests and riots going on in the cities across America making no distinction between rioters and peaceful protesters. 

When I wrote that piece I included an oft paraphrased quote from Lincoln. One often used incorrectly. The quote is often used to warn of threats within our own people, but in reality the quote is about the threat of ourselves. Of our ability to force division where none need be. I say often used incorrectly because the people who tend to paraphrase it use it to divide. To make you suspect of those you might otherwise trust. Which is ultimately exactly what the speech was meant to warn you from. 

I also mentioned something about my friends who believed they needed to hold onto their guns against a tyrannical government and about how they can’t vote for a democrat because they would take their guns away. Thing is, I actually trust them to be able to hold onto said guns should a democrat get elected who claims they would try to take their guns away. I do not trust them to hold onto their guns when a candidate they are willing to vote for cries “Fake news,” or threatens protesters. That is a far subtler, insidious, and effective way to disarm a population. People divided will give up their freedoms in exchange for their safety. Sometimes far too many, too quickly for them to realize they have given away the ones they cared about most. 

There is a call for unity being herald across the nation as I write this and it is going unanswered. There is a call for leadership out there, but it too goes unanswered. A country divided is a country wounded. A divided populace is weak and easy to control. The more you hunker down into your position and the more you fight against the idea that anyone has the right to disagree with you the more weak we all become. It doesn’t matter if you support Trump, it doesn’t matter if you support the protesters. What matters is that you support the protesters’ right to peaceful protest, in whatever fashion that takes.

It is also very important to keep the protesters, and the rioters and looters, separate in your head. It is important to understand what reasons may have caused people to believe that violence is the only way for them to get a response from their leadership. Remember, Martin Luther King more than once said, “Riots are the voice of the unheard.” It is important to understand that riots do not always happen because violent people want to be violent but because helpless people want to be heard. Violence answering violence will only lead to more violence. Only when we stop and listen can we heal the wound. Only when we decry violence in all its forms and call for peace and understanding can we move forward. 

The first amendment of the American constitution guarantees the right to free speech, religion, press and protest. Those are the methods of which we can demand the government be answerable to us rather than the other way around. Anyone decrying any of those rights, from trying to shut down protests, to “Fake news,” to calling for someone to be banned from speaking publicly must be opposed on all fronts until they relinquish that stance. 

That last one might be a bit of a stickler for some people but I’ll try to help you understand my reasoning. You see if you ban someone from speaking publicly for saying something, even if you find that thing reprehensible won’t stop them from saying that thing, it will only stop you from hearing it. That doesn’t solve the problem and can even make it worse since they likely can still reach the people that agree with them. They will now likely double down and start building resentment towards people who disagree with them. Stories of people with these viewpoints being banned will spread and their community will flourish somewhere else. Mislabels will get thrown around and someone will get banned for not sharing the reprehensible opinion but sounding too close to it by the wrong person, this leads to them being pushed into the community that is flourishing but now has been ignored by many as the believe banning it from public view solved the problem. 

This doesn’t solve the problem as it just hides it from the public. This also presents a second problem, which is now the denial of the problem at all. There also is the third problem which is that speech evolves, and if you aren’t monitoring it it can change its form without you knowing. This can cause someone who is unaware, see problem two, to repeat words they don’t realize the meaning of to flag themselves to others as an ally to a community they may not agree with. Then they get banned double down and well we repeat the process. 

This doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to be offended or a right to turn away or block that person from your life. You don’t have a responsibility to get that person to listen, but I would still ask you to be willing to talk if they asked you with sincerity and humility. 

Recently on social media Kenny Deforest shared a story about Dave Chapelle and him dealing with a heckler, it was beautifully handled and you should go read it yourself. I'd rather not ruin it by paraphrasing it here. After dealing with the heckler on stage, backstage the girl(heckler) came to see him and told him how sorry she was, etc., and Chapelle responded, “you’re ok. That’s all we can ask. Know better, do better. I want to thank YOU for hearing me and listening. That’s your role. And now you know. Now you’re part of that critical mass we talked about and next time you hear a friend say some ignorant shit like you said, it’s your job to correct them and share with them what you learned tonight. THEN, you’re no longer part of the problem, you’re part of the solution.”

Behind the reprehensible speech is a person, one who doesn’t have any more of an idea what’s going on in this world than you do, and only by finding some common ground can you ever reach your hand to pull them out. Because maybe, just maybe they need a place to belong and one community offered them a helping hand and the other told them they were wrong. Even if that helping hand is only there as a tool to manipulate, control, and exploit it can feel like salvation to someone who doesn’t see any other choice. Or maybe they just don’t know any better and just need someone with compassion to educate them.

At a time in my life I might have turned that corner, I’m an Atheist and there was a time where I could have looked for any hand that would help me from where I stood. But luckily for me were the welcoming hands of Douglas Adams novels, Monty Python sketches, and Richard Dawkins lectures. Most importantly would probably be the collected miscellaneous works of Douglas Adams included in Salmon of Doubt. On some level, I thought I had processed Douglas Adams's death, well before I picked up that book, but when tears flowed down my face as I reached those final pages I came to the realization that I had not. 

I would be remiss if I did not also mention the Youtube and gaming personality that was the late John “Totalbiscuit” Bain. He had a level of integrity and honesty that was so refreshing in the youtube and gaming media scene. 

I realized at some point that that is what I want from anyone and will gravitate away from people who are not either, but toward people who are both. Even if it is only later on that they become so. That ultimately is probably my main point with all this and all its parts, I want people to have more integrity and be more honest. For people to be willing to be wrong so that we can all grow. No more, “well I want to but they won’t go for it.” That’s an excuse and we all know it. We need to be better, all of us or we risk destroying ourselves. 

At the end of the day this is all just my opinion based on how I see things, and like everyone else any part of that can change at any moment. Let’s just hope and try to change for the better whenever possible. That’s the most we can ever ask for.

Division and Unity Pt.2

We now come to more arguments of this post and here I want to make clear that I do not under any circumstances think a Trump supporter or voter, is dumb, an idiot or some sort of bigot. They are at worst, normal, everyday, regular people. If you’ve read any of my previous posts you can probably take parts of that and see what I mean here, but to make it easier for everyone I’ll put the most important points that I can think of here.

Firstly everyone has internal biases. The most relevant ones to this discussion are the part of you that tells you you are right, the part that tells you you are more reasonable, rational, and sympathetic than others, and the part that doubts everything. Now, the first two are obviously not completely accurate and are under most circumstances balanced out by the third. For example, the doubt that you’re as reasonable and sympathetic as others can cause you to strive to be better, and thereby become more sympathetic and reasonable as an individual. This means that a healthy encouragement of self-doubt and self- examination can lead to becoming a better person. 

So, what does that mean about Trump? Well, I’ll get to that, but before I do I want to address points I made in another post in the past, about romanticizing history. It is a very normal thing for people to romanticize history in a way that seems to either gleam over or completely ignore problems of the past. It’s easy to think of Knights as gallant lords and heroes, and much harder to think of them as petty landowners fighting amongst each other for wealth, social standing, and political favor with little, if any, regard to anyone who gets caught in between. 

Now with those two points together we can look at what Trump does that can get rational, reasonable people to gather outside government buildings during a pandemic. 

First thing is, he is viewed as a conservative, which I do not believe he is. I think the only reason he ran as a Republican is that he couldn’t get support to run as a Democrat back in 2008. He did seek out that support during that time from various celebrities, there was even a substantiated rumor, that one could not win celebrity apprentice unless they were willing to give support to a Trump presidency. 

Him being viewed as a conservative already starts with some people, seeing him as the guy in their corner, but it also takes with it a number of other impressions that many conservatives are told on a regular basis are true, from sources like Fox News and other “conservative” platforms that saw a massive uptick during the 2016 election and subsequent presidency. The most important and obvious claim was that all mainstream media news had a massive liberal bias, which isn’t exactly true, it had a more massive monetary bias and the two just align too often for conservative-minded people who were mostly neglected for the more liberal and moderate audiences that brought in the most money. 

The existence of an unexploited market created the massive uptick in conservative focused news, however, there were in that marketplace, people who believed conservatives would believe anything and so made up stories. The more outrageous, the more clicks and more eyes would see it and the more money it would bring in. It didn’t matter if people believed it, all that mattered was that people saw it. 

Now, many people already know or understand this, but here’s the kicker, with a media bias geared towards where the money was that was neglecting, or appearing to neglect conservative-minded people would push people towards the idea that they weren’t telling the whole truth which they weren’t, they were only telling the truth that made them the most money. Which meant that the more reasonably believed stories could be possible, and the more outrageous one? Well, they might actually have been possible too! All someone would have to do was get someone in a position of power, like a presidential candidate, for example, to say out loud that it was true. To say that the media was against conservatives, a narrative that had been building, mostly because of an unexploited market, for decades. 

So now we get to the root of the media bias problem, liberals had more money and more voting power so they were catered to. The counter problem which was pretty easy to see was that the conservative catered media wasn’t just telling people conservative catered news but was presenting it in a way that said other media companies were lying to you or only telling half-truths. Now that’s not to say conservatives didn’t see this problem, they did, but they wanted to feel represented and many other media outlets were getting worse and worse with their conservative representation. A similar example to this would be the way gay people at times consume gay media that they don’t like or don’t think is any good just for the need to feel represented if even poorly. 

Like a landlord taking advantage of the pandemic, conservative media companies realized they had a captive audience who wanted their content. Conservative news personalities who would like to probably just present news that is left out by the other networks are forced onto the same network as people who are more than willing to go on the air and voice an opinion that encourages a total bunk conspiracy theory. 

Making blanket statements like “fox news is bunk” doesn’t help the argument since fox news also has Chris Wallace. A statement more like, “Fox news exploits conservatives by making people with integrity and people willing to lie to you appear as though they are equal.” It is much more fluid and doesn’t make the person sound like an idiot, it acknowledges that there are merits to fox’s existence but that the people at the head of it are taking advantage of those merits and exploiting people's need for a conservative news outlet for personal gain. This might also be a frustration with the network said viewers might share but don’t want to admit so readily.

The main point I’m trying to make here is people aren’t dumb, they are smart, but some people have learned how to play with your biases in a way that maybe you aren’t aware of, and use it to make a profit, without even bothering to either weigh or care for the consequences. Or, potentially, they have weighed the consequences and found a way to make even more profit from it. 

I know that this is often where negativism comes in and people say “Blame so and so, it’s their fault, they did all this, call them out.” I get the need to feel that that is what you should do, on some level I feel it too, but I’d be going against the whole point of this post if I told you to do that. I know this also sounds like virtue signaling my ability for sympathy, but I tell you now, no matter how bad someone is or what they have done, I want to feel like I will never give up on the idea that there is a good person in there. Regardless of how idealistic and foolish, that might sound. Just like everyone else, I’m allowed to be a little bit selfish and conceited. I want to believe that people at their core are good, even Trump. 

That ultimately is the part that breaks my heart, because if what I say is true. Then well, I wouldn’t want to be the person who finally convinces someone who has done monstrous things on how to be sympathetic. It’s why I always get emotional during that Vegeta scene in Dragon Ball. When finally all the veneer and pride are broken through and we see the truly good person inside him, someone who has to look at the life he’s lived and knows that he can never make up for it. But that maybe, just maybe, him taking Majin Buu with him, will be enough. 

Now Vegeta is still a fictional character and as such has a great presence of mind as to an otherwise world-shattering internal narrative change. He gives his son a goodbye hug before knocking him out and telling Piccolo to take the children away. He stares out toward the approaching Buu and asks, “Will I be able to see Kakarot in the afterlife?”

“The time is past for mincing words,” Piccolo responds, “So I’ll be blunt. No. You have killed too many innocents. You will lose your body and your soul will be banished to a place quite different from Goku’s. There it will be reincarnated into a new form, but only after it has been cleansed on memories.”

“. . .I see. . . Pity. . .”

The weight that kind of realization would have on a real person, that they were responsible for the deaths of so many, and to finally feel the sympathy for them all. It’s rather poignant don’t you think? 

Now I’d be leaving something out if I didn’t mention that Vegeta just got to act like one of the guys after coming back to life, but he also goes on to become the true protector of Earth, something Goku never really was.

It does instill some sense of hope that maybe somewhere deep inside there is a good person within what would otherwise be a monster, and maybe if you get them to realize it themselves, that’s more punishment than anything else they can suffer. If even a monster like Vegeta has good inside him, maybe none of us are as bad as we appear to others, and maybe reaching toward that is the only way to bring us together. Does that mean I don’t believe in a correction system or criminal punishment? Of course not that’s ridiculous, but maybe, if we start thinking more about who people could be rather than who they appear to be, the system can be changed enough to work in a way we can all be proud of.

I’ve gone on way too long and even managed to squeeze in a Dragon Ball reference so this needs to wrap up and hopefully, maybe it has made clear some of my opinions and doesn’t just sound like mad ramblings. Hopefully, I can conclude this in part 3 but who knows at this point.

Division and Unity Pt. 1

When I wrote the Mental Health and Writing post I noted that there was a lot that I wanted to go into that detract too much from the main post or didn’t have the time to go into. This is one of those things, as will likely be many of the other posts I make within the next few weeks. Sadly, this one will involve one of my least favorite subjects, politics, but hopefully not more than necessary, since I don’t believe politics are the only way this subject can be interpreted. 

One thing I want to say outright at the start is to address the point many people very much misunderstood about me during the 2016 presidential election. I am not a Democrat, though it seems that anyone who is against Trump is labeled one anyway. Therein lies probably my most important distinction, I am against Trump as a person, not policy or political alignment. There are many ideas that conservative voters or politicians have that I could easily see myself agreeing with if I was raised in a different way or experienced a different life, so there would be, to me, a way to have a conversation and for us to disagree. Disagreement is important to form and refine your point of view, and direction of actions.

Donald Trump does not have room in his life for anyone who disagrees with him, and that at the first go is too much for him to get my vote. I can not vote for someone so against the idea of counter opinion. People disagree all the time, and to immediately dismiss someone’s idea on the grounds that they disagree with you is such a childish idea that it immediately tells me you lack the maturity for that kind of political position. Sure, there are many other things about Trump I disagree with, but many of them stem from his immaturity.

The most important thing I can tell you about disagreements, if there are no circumstances at which you could ever find yourself agreeing with someone you disagree with, you likely do not understand their position or your disagreement. Reality is very complex and everyone has a different life and different experiences, you can find common ground to relate to one another, but similar experiences can cause different reactions in different people. Someone can suffer a trauma that causes them PTSD but then someone else can experience something similar and just move past it. Some people can forgive abusers and some cannot understand how anyone could. 

This is the world we live in and we need to keep in mind how people have deeper layers than are immediately apparent. 

Now hopefully, I haven’t stopped everyone who likes Trump from reading this far, because I am going to make a few points here that sound like I’m going to bat for them, and in a way I am. My disagreements with Trump don’t mean that I can’t empathize and try to raise up and support people who voted for him. 

There are real reasons why people feel oppressed, and ways you can sympathize or empathize with that oppression. Now, it’s true that there seem to be ways that people feel oppression but shouldn’t really, under circumstances as you understand them. So people respond with anger and offence to someone feeling oppressed, who either society or studies determine shouldn’t feel oppressed. The problem is people fall through the cracks, people are unique and simply because someone doesn't have a reason to feel oppressed, from a societal or study based understanding of things doesn’t mean someone can’t feel oppressed.

A great example of this that so many people turn a blind eye to, is Celebrity depression, and mental illness. Almost universally people question, “What does <enter any celebrity’s name here> have to be depressed about?” Simply looking at the fact that this happens and how many times Celebrities die from depression or overdose-related deaths means that even though from appearances that someone should be above feeling like they can be oppressed, it doesn't mean they can’t feel it. And as a society, we need to accept that this happens so we can try to understand why this happens.

The only way to stop someone from being a racist isn’t to call them a racist, it’s to find out what makes them racist, and most importantly in this day and age if they even are. People have real concerns that do not always cross all lines, and, there we go back to my original point. We need to listen to people who disagree with us in order to change and grow our point of view. 

Now I know many of you out there are like, “but the other side does it more, or did it first.” The only response I have is, “It doesn’t mean you have to continue it.” The only way we move past this and move forward is to make people feel that you’re listening, not tell people that they are not worth listening to. That is how we come back to how people voted for Trump. Whether you agree with it or not, he made the people who voted for him believe he was listening to them. His detractors made this worse by making it clear they weren’t listening to his supporters or even trying to. Calling someone who supports Trump a racist doesn’t help anyone, it doesn’t extend the conversation it kills it, by telling everyone you aren’t listening to his supporters. 

There are two responses you can have to someone saying something to you that offends you. Call them some form of Bigot, or ask them what makes them feel that way. Only the latter leads to a way forward, a way to understanding and getting someone to come around. Only the latter can get a Klansmen to turn in his robes. The best thing that can happen from the former, is that they double down on their stance, the worst thing is when you drive them into becoming someone worse. 

Sympathy and empathy is the only way for us to understand one another and I know it’s hard, but showing sympathy or empathy to someone you have no reason you can find to do so is the only way to stop the narrative control someone like Donald Trump has on them. The uncomfortable part of this that I have to point out is that if you ever said anything along the lines of, “You will vote/have voted for Trump so you’re a bigot.” you’re as responsible for Trump’s win as anyone who actually voted for him.

The only way to defeat Trump is to stand together, to help people, to support each other in situations that maybe you don’t understand why they should need support. Now, this might seem like I’m suggesting you just support the idea of someone being a bigot, but that would be a complete misunderstanding of what I’ve already listed out as a form of support. I’ve made it clear that just calling someone some form of Bigot and closing them off isn’t helping them, it isn’t supporting them, it is another form of division and division is what makes someone like Trump stronger. 

Supporting someone who is a bigot or seems to be one, is finding out what makes them seem that way to you because maybe they aren’t a bigot just a frustrated person who just needs to be listened to so they can work through their own frustrations. Hell, even a Bigot could actually just be the same, and just needs someone to listen to them. As anyone can tell you, the best way for you to understand something is for you to try and explain it to someone else. The sure-fire way to get a bigot to see their bigotry is to have them explain it to you, and only after they have done so is there a way for you to sympathize and find a way to get them to sympathize with the subject of their bigotry. To get them to see where they are being unfair. It does not help in any way for you to be unfair to them.

The biggest response I could imagine from this, which of course is limited by my point of view and understanding, is, “Do they deserve that much?” and you know what? Maybe it’s being an Atheist that teaches me this, but I actually do not believe anyone is below deserving a path to being a better person. Everyone, even people we as a society would label as a monster, deserve a path to become someone better. Does that mean I believe that any victim should have to forgive the perpetrator? No. That’s a personal thing and not my place to say or dictate. 

Ultimately all this is my opinion and not hard rules, these are things anyone has any and every right to disagree with. I would love to hear them, so I can improve and understand things better, or grow my point of view. That is my view on unity, it isn’t agreeing, it’s disagreeing and compromising, it’s about growing and improving as both people and society. 

United we stand, divided we fall. It is a firm belief within me, that we only succeed working together. We only lose when we stop listening to one another when we stop sympathizing and empathizing with each other. Anyone who tries to peddle in division rather than unity will always turn me against them, but as I already said, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t help them see what appear to be their flaws and help them overcome them if I was given the chance, or have them expand my worldview, because maybe, just maybe their flaws aren’t what I think they are, and I need to work harder to understand them as a person.

I have to stop for now but will be back with more arguments.

I guess I'm writing again.

I was planning on returning later than this, I had a whole set of new posts and stories I’d been working on to get ready for the site; to bring it all back at once with a running work schedule that I could adhere to and a head start on the work I needed to have done. Then someone on my youtube feed posted a video, one I wasn’t sure how to react to. A once always cheerful eternal optimist turned livid with anger and frustration. It made a surreal event, one I had almost become completely numb to because I had a certain assuredness that such a thing might happen, into something I know I must and do care very much about. 

Many might know if you go back into my history on this site that I stopped posting around the 2016 election, I became frustrated and disillusioned in any action I could take of words I could use to affect change. I don’t care about any of that anymore. This is a time I cannot stay silent even if everything I say falls on deaf ears, even if it all is ultimately meaningless. 

I once told a friend of mine that if the government came for his guns he’d turn them over. That’s still a thing I believe about everyone boasting so fervently over the last few weeks about how they can about their rights, and claiming they won't be beholden to a tyrannical government. That’s because by the time the government comes for your guns they have already gone tyrannical. When they come for your guns it is too late to stand up to them, too late to effect any change with your actions of resistance. At that point, you already lost. 

Authoritarians don’t start with saying they’ll take your guns away, they start with being divisive, being anti-press and ultimately being anti-first amendment. They go after news organizations and try to control all information, they shut down protests and advocate for police violence against such things. 

That brings me to my main point here. Donald Trump has committed the act of an authoritarian in his photo op in front of St. John’s church. He had federal agents fire teargas and rubber munitions on peaceful protests so that he could cross the park unhindered. All so he could get a photo of himself standing in front of the church holding a bible upside down. One of the priests of the church was expelled from the area with the protesters. 

The warning to the protesters was far lacking in what would be expected. His speech was not about getting this back under control instead it was about violence and military presence should the protests not be brought to heel. More violence to answer the violence already in action. “An eye for an eye will leave the world blind.”

I am currently writing a piece about division and unity and why division is so dangerous. There is a lot of thought and effort being poured into it so I can get my words right. Then a thing like this happens. 

All over I see all those people who claim to be pro-rights, anti-tyranny staying silent, or even praising Trump for his courage in walking across the park in such a troubled time. When the government comes for your guns, it will come from a path you walked down yourself. 

“We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings.

We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them — they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it? — At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? — Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! — All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

-Abraham Lincoln

When we are divided and against ourselves is when we are at our weakest. It is when we are most easily managed. It is when we turn against ourselves and make each other the enemy that we are destroyed.  I’ll probably expand on my opinions later in Division and Unity, look forward to it being put together in the next coming weeks.

I’ll leave a link to the youtube video in question, you should definitely watch it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z56j06plUgs