Entries tagged "bias"

videochat tsuris and how to think about software that helps people listen

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What Trump Means

There’s been plenty of racism and homophobia and sexism as a basis for the Republican party for some time.

Most of the GOP candidates this year met with and supported a pastor who believed gays should be killed. Reagan’s history on HIV/AIDS was deplorable and the party then happily talked about tatttooing queer folks and putting them in concentration camps. There have been all  manner of dog whistle and direct racist campaigns: “welfare queens driving Cadillacs;” Ws phone campaign against McCain in South Carolina about his Black child, Will Horton ads run against Dukakis,Pat Buchanan’s racist/anti-immigrant platform, Ron Pauls writing in white supremacist publications, Ws entire get out the vote strategy based on a morality tale and anti-gay propositions across the country (including one that amended the California Constitution so I and others couldn’t be married or equal).

This is not a few people poking their nose out. It’s an ongoing strategy because these are ongoing “permitted” ways that people defuse and redirect their rage at those with less power. It’s the oldest divide and conquer plan in the book only in the United States its internal. It builds on histories of oppression so it’s been safe and easy. The GOP and a media system it’s built makes money from stoking rage and has run against the illusory “establishment” and the concept of government for a long time, while being the actual government now for decades. When all the magic they promised by being the “not government” wasn’t delivered to their constituents while stoking bias and oppression as a convenient political glue and walking closer and closer to the fire.

When you follow the path of  national GOP candidates (Reagan->Quayle->George W Bush->Palin): Trump was inevitable. Without a massive consciousness shift more will follow. The establishment lost control. News as an entertainment was built on stoking this. Undermining civility was a disruptive financial and power opportunity. The market force and shift of Internet media increased the reactivity .

Only a real change in culture and consciousness/ emotional maturity that makes a difference over time and it takes huge amounts of work. #BlackLivesMatter is doing it. It’s how we got marriage equality which is still facing backlash opposition laws in 34 states. Trump is way ahead in every Super Tuesday poll. Nate Silver is calling it for him.

The narcissism machine will keep reproducing itself only interrupted by generosity and kindness which you can’t arbitrage or game. The tragedy is when we repeat it by repeating the narcissism. Blaming the “permitted other” is learned to avoid the pain of what goes on in the family. The sad and tragic thing is what enables everything with the media and the politics of bias.

It’s why people are looking for Daddy in these campaigns and often have. It has always sold. It’s a promise that isn’t delivered and it’s weirdly anti-Democratic. As long as people’s emotional goal is someone to take care of them it’s going to be this co-dependent political thing.



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