When I was a child, I played football (soccer).\u00a0 I don’t remember the coaches’ names, the team name, the field, or any of the players. I do remember getting bullied for our Raspberry jersey color, and getting cheated by a referee being related to the enemy team.\u00a0 I don’t recall a lot about boy scouts when I was young, but I do remember my father’s disappointment when I decided it wasn’t for me anymore.\u00a0 I, however, am a disabled veteran with significant memory issues and am a people pleaser.\u00a0\u00a0 It wasn’t all doom and gloom; I remember a martial arts place in Florida with fondness.\u00a0\u00a0 I remember several video games for their music or story elements and treasure them still today.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 sharing them – my martial arts or the games\/music\u00a0 – was often problematic.\u00a0 I don’t think I realized it at the time, but the lesson I was learning seemed to be ‘if I can’t do it and enjoy it by myself, don’t bother.’<\/p>\n
I had a knack for academics, and generally picked things up quickly.\u00a0 At some point in my insatiable thirst for knowledge and understanding of how people work,\u00a0 my questions started making people bristle with discomfort.\u00a0 I was asking the existential questions many young minds do with sharpness and brilliance.\u00a0 I was met with dismissal and rejection,\u00a0 anything but satisfying answers. \u00a0\u00a0I was living a dead-end life, working dead-end jobs, and had just departed a long-term but ultimately dead-end relationship.\u00a0\u00a0 September 11th had just happened, and it didn’t feel right to me.\u00a0 Even as a young man, fresh out of high school, what was being presented to me couldn’t have been the whole story.<\/p>\n
My life up until this point has seen plenty of ‘behind closed doors’ drama,\u00a0 different versions of the truth,\u00a0 being brushed off, or sacrificed for their agenda.\u00a0 Why would I think anything different now?\u00a0 This is the age wherein AM Talk Radio and Fox News have begun to radicalize a generation, and we wouldn’t understand what damage that would do for a while.\u00a0 The Tea Party was only the beginning, and while President Bush Jr. would gain temporary support from a wounded nation, the wake of destruction left behind is something from which we haven’t recovered.\u00a0 In fact, in some areas, it is still ongoing in the present tense today.<\/p>\n
I left the country.\u00a0 I was able to leave behind the cultures of ‘F— you, I got mine’ as well as ‘You do it my way, or you’re wrong.’\u00a0 The price I had to pay for that experience is something I still regret every minute of every day and was not all worth the price of admission.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 guilt shame and regret aside,\u00a0 I come back to my ‘home’ country to find it scarcely recognizable.\u00a0 Growing up,\u00a0 I thought we had disagreements, but we could at least agree to follow the processes and work out a compromise.\u00a0\u00a0 We would follow the rules in place and work towards the common interest that we were all on the same team.\u00a0 I was wrong, and it was only about to get worse.<\/p>\n
The Talk Radio Hosts and Fox News have now been joined by an army of social media trolls and bad faith actors.\u00a0 Foreign operatives,\u00a0 special interest groups (religious groups, corporate groups, etc.), and people who haven’t the slightest idea what they’re actually saying find an out-of-context quote or soundbite and forward it on because it fits their narrative.\u00a0 Akin to many religions,\u00a0 the conclusion comes first and whatever cherry-picked ‘evidence’ that supports it is shared and appreciated, whereas whatever does not support it is rejected and denied.<\/p>\n
The polarization gets worse, with the radicalization of one side become extreme to the point of dangerous.\u00a0 Mitch McConnell, who openly celebrates shutting down the senate and sabotaging an entire branch of government, is hailed as a hero in select circles, contrary to the health of the country at large.\u00a0 The Senators who support him mostly get to fly under the radar quietly and get away with insider trading abuses.\u00a0 They refuse to vote on most any bills coming their way out of some party line principle and get to pass the buck as if they are powerless in this situation, a patently false idea.<\/p>\n
Finally, the radicalization that started after Nixon’s impeachment and continued through Gingrich and took off with the Talk Radio Hosts and Fox News reached a fever pitch with Trump’s entire history.\u00a0 The election cycle,\u00a0 the lies, the impeachment, the crimes, the family, the handling of COVID-19, and more.\u00a0 Every day it is something new, and it will take years to unpack.\u00a0 We have reached a point wherein a vocal minority of the country is so embedded in the trump team identity; they refuse to be wrong.\u00a0 If they admit Trump is wrong,\u00a0 then they are wrong.\u00a0 If they are wrong about this, where else do they need to examine?\u00a0 The shame isn’t just that we are in this position,\u00a0 but how we got here.<\/p>\n
For decades,\u00a0 the people who tend to be the most likely to wrap their identity in team trump,\u00a0 are the ones who also vote for the people who are cutting school budgets.\u00a0 They also tend to vote for those cutting social services, infrastructure, human rights, and the foundations of what makes a modern society great for the overwhelming majority of us.\u00a0 While they are hurting themselves, they look at their “enemies” and try to take solace that they are being wounded too.\u00a0 Instead of understanding, we could be lifting ourselves up together; they would instead harm everyone and accept themselves as collateral damage.<\/p>\n
Poll after poll and study after study shows if you remove the name of a policy and the party name of the originator, most people tend to want progress.\u00a0 The labels people put on things has somehow become more important in the minds of many than the actual substance of what’s underneath the label itself.\u00a0\u00a0 When I was young,\u00a0 I had learned all about independence and self-reliance, but through unfortunate examples.\u00a0 I learned early about tribalism and dismissal for asking the wrong questions or trying to learn the wrong things.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 I experienced other groups and cultures.\u00a0 I found people willing to hear and be heard, change, and be changed.\u00a0\u00a0 I found what I suspected all along; we can’t do this on our own.<\/p>\n
We evolved as social creatures.\u00a0 We’re happiest with other people; we’re at our best with other people.\u00a0 Some of us enjoy large groups, while others enjoy individuals or smaller numbers of people social contact is important.\u00a0 I don’t understand the fear that leads someone, let alone a healthy chunk of a generation, to become radicalized to the point wherein someone like a trump would not only be elected but protected.\u00a0 If most of us had someone in our lives that behaved as he does, we wouldn’t tolerate it let alone celebrate it. We wouldn’t segregate ourselves based on that person and create an alternate reality just for that person.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that’s where we live.\u00a0 I still feel like I’m in the cultures of ‘F— you, I got mine’ as well as ‘You do it my way, or you’re wrong,’\u00a0 but the people who believe in them the most understand they’re unpopular and they’re trying to rig the system as hard as they can.<\/p>\n
They don’t represent the will of the people in national elections.\u00a0 They don’t represent the majority in senate votes (how sad is that),\u00a0 it’s only through archaic systems set up by slaveowners and was widely respected through ‘tradition’ why we are having these conversations.\u00a0 When certain groups realized they just could do whatever they wanted as the will of the people doesn’t matter so much anymore?\u00a0 We live in troubled times.<\/p>\n
How does one tackle radicalization?\u00a0 How does one decouple the identity from living vicariously through something else (religion, cult of personality, etc.)\u00a0 It’s not easy, for sure.\u00a0\u00a0 The first step in any problem is to identify the problem.\u00a0 Let’s be open about poverty in America, for starters.\u00a0 We can continue to talk about fair taxation on the wealthy and the corporate, but let’s have a honest discussion about poverty in the heartland.\u00a0 Let’s discuss the 3rd world conditions Americans face in parts of the country.\u00a0 Let’s not just bury the report and pretend it doesn’t happen.\u00a0 People voted team trump because they wanted change, and we got change alright, just not necessarily the change we wanted.<\/p>\n
Whether we want to admit it, The United States of America is never going back to the way it was.\u00a0 Between the Bush Jr and Trump Presidencies (the McConnell senate too),\u00a0 COVID-19 and social isolation,\u00a0 Russian Interference on Facebook and Twitter,\u00a0 Anti-Vaxxers and Flat-Earthers, The Prosperity Gospel Megachurches, life just isn’t ever going to be the same.\u00a0 More automation is coming too, so logistics and service industries get ready for that.<\/p>\n
Every day is a new opportunity.\u00a0 A crisis is rarely fortunate; it wouldn’t be a crisis otherwise.\u00a0\u00a0 However,\u00a0 a crisis does provide us a chance to implement drastic, and often needed, change rather than the gradual slow changes with which people tend to be comfortable.\u00a0 We are already making changes due to the crisis itself,\u00a0 let us make all the adjustments now, and deal with it.\u00a0 For over a decade, I’ve been pushing for a ‘New Deal’ for the 21st century. What better time than a global pandemic to take a good look at it?\u00a0 Businesses are closed due to quarantine, and many are starting to ask for bailouts.\u00a0 The bailout requests are irritating to many everyday citizens, and they should be.\u00a0\u00a0 Where are the everyday citizen bailouts?<\/p>\n
We can tackle radicalization,\u00a0 teach that we’re all in this together, and provide everyday citizen bailouts all at once.\u00a0 We can make some modernizing sweeping systemic changes now.\u00a0\u00a0 We can honestly discuss American poverty,\u00a0 education, health care, internet access, infrastructure, energy, and more.\u00a0\u00a0 When this quarantine is lifted,\u00a0 if we just let those with money buy up all the assets on the cheap as the markets soar back to where they were before, and nothing changes, this will be a terrible opportunity lost.\u00a0\u00a0 If there is no accountability,\u00a0 no answers,\u00a0 if we just get dismissed for asking the ‘wrong questions’ like Trump at a press conference, or me throughout my life?<\/p>\n
I know where my hopes lie, but I also know what I think is more likely to happen.<\/p>\n
Monk Anchorwind | 21 March 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a child, I played football (soccer).\u00a0 I don’t remember the coaches’ names, the team name, the field, or any of the players. I do remember getting bullied for our Raspberry jersey color, and getting cheated by a referee being related to the enemy team.\u00a0 I don’t recall a lot about boy scouts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[291,168],"class_list":["post-27429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-considered-thoughts","tag-291","tag-hope"],"yoast_head":"\n