We Must All Speak Out!
A mathematician speaks truth.
This is my ‘Growing Up Southern’ post which bears repeating here. At the end I will mention what we must also do in education.
Truth in today’s media climate is very difficult to find – by design. Media manipulation is now a science; although you won’t find it listed as a college major. Prima facie evidence being Musk’s claim that he got Trump elected – which he did. The algorithms for swaying public opinion have been honed by the advertising industry and the GOP – MAGA in particular – has been applying these to political views with considerable success. A quarter of a billion dollars applied with algorithmic precision to the handful of well-identified swing states can – as should now be apparent – swing a presidential election.
The result is a totalitarian regime – here in the good ol’ USA: Such is the power of mathematics! Every totalitarian regime lasts as long as the people under it allow: Which is why we must all speak out! The damage being done daily is massive and will take years, decades – perhaps generations – to counter. Our position in the world is crucial as this fight against the modern version of brainwashing which defines media manipulation makes its presence known in democracies and pseudo-democracies around the globe. If we can’t counter this who else can? Possibly nobody!
Trump is currently breaking plenty of laws and issuing executive orders in direct defiance of the Constitution – impeachable offences. The only question is if and when enough Republicans realize this is not our America and impeach him. Of course that will not solve the problem. If you think he plans to leave peacefully if impeached you haven’t been paying attention. But that is grist for another mill; first he must be impeached to at least stop the bleeding, for orders of an impeached president are clearly not legally enforceable.
The only force that can drive enough Republicans into a sudden awareness of conscience is public opinion. This powerful force has been shown to have an Achilles heel – media manipulation. The Oligarch class that is behind the rise of totalitarian government has been trained in the art of manipulating public opinion to their own purposes while investing billions – billions that are not necessarily available to the legitimate governments that are fighting them: Just one of the many edges available when you OWN the media!
How do we fight this?
WE MUST SPEAK OUT!
When what the media says is obviously contradictory, the only thing apparent to the observer is somebody’s lying. This creates the confusion about truth which is the foundation of manipulation. The most effective counter to this is to communicate with your neighbors – speak out! This also requires each of us to do the work to actually find the truth – something that was far less burdensome when the media believed it had a responsibility to report the facts truthfully.
The importance, indeed the absolute necessity, of doing this is due to the fact that the regime currently in power has no interest in governing the country: With the toadies that are currently attempting to run the country this will continue to become increasingly evident. In 2020 Trump spent all of his time and effort trying to find someone to blame for the pandemic – but did virtually nothing to address the pandemic. This time they did not wait for a natural disaster but instead took an economy that was the ‘envy of the world’ and are in process of creating a world-wide recession. It is pointless to argue whether this is part of a plan or pure incompetence as the grifter that Trump has been his entire life is concerned with only one thing – how much he can increase his own bottom line. For that he needs control and from his view the path to control requires chaos; at which he is a master. The truth is counter-productive to chaos.
The old adage that the truth shall set you free has never been so appropriate – it IS why the current regime has not a truthful word to say. Pure incompetence was the cause of the Trump ouster in 2020 and it is my belief that a recession – caused by incompetence – will again cause downfall: And this time it appears the entire GOP may go with him. What and how we get through this is critical. We claim to be a democracy – hell we claim to be the greatest democracy the world has ever seen: We are about to find out if we are worthy of the legacy that Americans of every kind have worked, fought and died to create for two and a half centuries. If you think somebody else is coming to save us it’s time to hide – which is what you’re actually already doing.
I will be protesting this Saturday while Trump’s fascist military parade is occurring – I can’t imagine better timing.
Even more important than the overthrow of the current regime is how we – democratically – prevent its repeat. The oligarchs have found that money applied mathematically can influence elections; both American and others. We MUST reduce the power of dark money in democracy because we can’t outspend them; which amazingly is the approach currently being used. Why the best way of supporting my candidate in a democratic America is donating money is anathema to me.
The readily available tool is Ranked Choice Voting. For those unfamiliar this would greatly simplify our election mechanism by eliminating primaries and run-offs; which is badly needed from purely financial and time constraints. The best part of RCV is it opens races to multiple candidates of whatever party and in such a system extremism performs very poorly – regardless of how much money they have. Thus it becomes extremely difficult to influence such a race with money.
The way to reduce the power of money in an election; something the oligarchs understand – make it not cost effective. WOW! And that’s only a bonus to pushing extremists out of Congress!
In education the biggest mistake would be to try and go back to where education was – how far back is frankly irrelevant. The chaos created by MAGA must be seen as an opportunity: Local control of education has always been the bedrock of public education and the federal government DOES NOT have any business telling us what should or should not be taught in public schools. The only exception is what the Constitution requires; which is why the Department of Education is necessary. Congress should provide money for education to ensure the resources for Constitutional compliance are there, but how to spend that money should be decided locally with at most state restrictions. Schools and especially teachers must be freed from the morass of standards, testing and regimentation that schooling has become and at least allow localities the option of doing school differently – and the vast majority of such restrictive law is federal. Worse, all these laws have engendered a bureaucracy which gorges on the available money measuring compliance to standards that should not exist, ensuring that insufficient funds will be available to actually teach anybody anything.
Our duty is clear: We must seek out the truth; we must find a way to engage our neighbors; we must talk common sense solutions to real problems. How you go about it is as varied as the types of Americans, but:
WE MUST SPEAK OUT!
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