Ephemeral Vigilance

There is an uncomfortable silence, a hole in the peoples’ discourse, where in the corner of society’s eye, where it never looks, things we have been raised to faithfully believe cannot happen are happening.

Of all the dangers to ourselves as we walk the streets in an imperfect world, threats from the unscrupulous to life, limb, and property, we are raised to fundamentally believe that these dangers are aberrations relentlessly discouraged and punished by the world we have built within our borders.

We rejected the absolute power of rulers over the ruled and placed guaranteed limitations upon ourselves to ensure this condition never exists again, and 1,354,664+ of our people have given their lives since the first shot of the Revolutionary War to build and protect this life.

And now we have an insurrection of the highest level of executive power in our government walking the streets in Portland, Oregon, the private army of a would-be king usurping the sovereignty of that state and the personal sovereignty of its people, toward that would-be king’s declaration that he will destroy his political enemies’ strongholds.

Almost entirely in a vacuum of not wanting to believe.

1,354,664+ of our people deserve a greater return for their sacrifice than the expiration of the life they built with the last free election of the United States of America in 2016.

Every person in the world that has ever looked our way with hope that they, too, can live without rulers oppressing the ruled deserve more than this.

We deserve more than this.

The end of Democracy may have come humping a flag and attacking peaceful demonstrators to wave a bible for a photo op, but that is not what the end will look like.

It will look like a shadow in the corner of our eye where we never look.

Heralded and enabled by an uncomfortable silence.

98.6 Degrees Of Separation

Our society is built on queues. At any amusement park, there are inevitably winding lines of people packed one after another in long progression, following in each others’ footsteps without a second thought. We stand in queues in supermarkets, the DMV, everywhere.

As we pass one another on the sidewalks, protocol is to step to one side or another as we pass others oncoming, passing within a foot of each other and obligated to nothing more than a nod or a smile, if anything at all.

We are bred and raised on the idea that there is safety in numbers, and faces, familiar or not, are what we count on to keep us from gloomy and foreboding walks down paths and avenues alone and vulnerable.

Our personal space is an undiscussed, instinctively passed-on and understood, sense of entitlement that roughly equals an arm’s length. We subconsciously accept and even appreciate the presence of others so long as we and they maintain a slight distance of personal sovereignty from other’s reach.

We aren’t just free people moving about our business, we are bubbles of personal authority in which we stand upon our own hallowed ground.

And those bubbles have popped.

Lines in supermarkets are now staggered 6 feet apart and, where the inevitably sprawling line crosses the corridor, one must pass through it to move along one’s business. There is a buffer of 3 feet in either direction, more than we have grown accustomed to allotting ourselves and each other, but the bubble of personal sovereignty no longer provides that we walk on hallowed ground. People’s eyes and body language betray that they resent this as a trespass.

Supermarket aisles are not 6+ feet apart. To pass someone in an aisle, you are at best 3 or 4 feet from that person, and there is an automatic huddling against the shelves as if each of us is entitled to an aisle of our own.

Sidewalks being even narrower, we repel each other upon passing with uncomfortable compulsive half smiles or try to ignore each other entirely to enable denial of the dissolution of hallowed personal space.

We don’t perform the ritual handshake, which is essentially a symbolic trust forged by mutually allowing one another onto our hallowed ground and firmly accepting each other there before stepping back to restore our sovereignty again, the relation to one another permanently changed to some extent.

We don’t hug.

We don’t visit.

We hoard things and don’t share.

We are living in a world 180 degrees from our nature, diametrically opposed to it, the most basic concepts of individuality and societal acceptance, support, and growth as a culture abandoned.

But we do it for the same reasons we have always walked together and gathered together and stood in queues together – protection and order and security.

This is the first time in human history that collectively retreating to the caves is our only possible winning move against a global adversary and everything about it feels wrong.

But it’s working and all we have to do is bide our time and when we step out of those caves again, the one thing programmed in every person’s psyche, no matter how traditionally introverted, subconsciously and automatically, will be to reach out and seek human contact again to wash away this counter-intuitive aberration.

There’s a universal truth. We have all heard it thousands of times. Like a tired cliche, we throw it back and forth as a token gesture, or we aim it as a tool of vengeance, and then forget it as soon as we say it. At best it’s a method of closure, but usually, it’s a meaningless platitude meant to skip critical thought and conversation in preference to small talk.

But it’s a fact of every facet of life right now, consciously and subconsciously.

“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. “

Ah but the servant waits… while the master baits…

The supply chain is all about logistics. It’s overwhelmed right now and it happened *snaps fingers* like that.

It costs about $1.50 per mile in freight for grocery stores to bring in one truck of goods.

Let’s assume one is coming from California (it wouldn’t, we basically get all our goods from states South of us down to Florida at the usual max), at a bit over 2,000 miles, so it costs about $3000 for one truck of goods to come to the store down the street from you through the supply chain. Max – realistically probably half that but we’ll use it and assume loading/unloading labor is added in it.

It can reasonably cost upwards of $90,000,000.00 for a private jet. Let’s say Joe Shmoe Billionaire has 5 of them. And he’s just one of today’s Pharoahs so we’re only talking about one flying pyramid.

One of those jets is the equivalent in $ to 30,000 trucks added to the supply chain. Or, rather, subtracted from it because Joe Shmoe doesn’t do his part in the fabled Supply-Side Economics magical ritual of offerings and sacrifice, he hoards it in the form of things like private planes.

$450,000,000 – almost half a $billion of value – not circulating in the economy and benefiting his whimsy instead by burning the equivalent of 15,000 jobs at $30k a year up in a bonfire to billionaire vanity. Half a $billion taken by upward redistribution over the last 4 decades, and better believe some of that came out of your pocket and you’re seeing with your own eyes how much that benefited you when you try to shop now.

Does he need that private plane more than you and your family need goods?

This is not hypothetical, and it’s gone from philosophical to bare reality – we’re past the point of any pretense that this is good for the country. The proof of it is the stark, empty shelf collection in supermarkets for nearly everyone in the country, now or on its way.

It’s not about whether Joe Shmoe is “entitled” to them. It’s about not being able to afford it because the country was very specifically not designed to benefit noblemen, lords, and kings because that recipe always results in a vulnerable peon class whether by Feudalism, Socialism, Communism, by Capitalism, or a bubble-gum and rubber-band-based system. Always.

I’ve been saying for years, “The last few generations were raised being told ‘we’re great’ but never taught what ‘greatness’ is.” So in a blind generic sense, we’ve lived decades to the endless refrain of “We’re the best at <insert literally anything here>”, “We have the best <whatever>”, “No one can do <whatever> better than we can” and we think of the world as an endless supply of things we want and need.

Well, the world is a lot smaller than everyone thought. Goods don’t magically appear when you wave a dollar bill in the air in a supermarket. It takes an actual strong society with actual strong production and an actually robust supply chain and that all happens when the peons are elevated instead of the lords and kings so the value, strength, and vitality of the society is in the society, not in a monarchy above it.

Entangled Proletariats: Spooky Communism at a Distance.

From mid-January through mid-February, Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler sold significant stocks on upticks, divesting from the market.

On February 21st, Republican Senate Intel Chief Richard Burr was secretly recorded advising people at a private function that the market was going to crash. He sold a significant amount of stock, divesting from the market, around this time.

On March 2nd, in the middle of the biggest uptick in DOW history, Republican Senator Ron Johnson sold a significant amount of stock, divesting from the market.

These are just the ones caught so far.

Donald Trump did not admit the severity of the crisis and declare a national emergency until March 13.

After his loyal Republican subjects and their super-wealthy donors were able to save themselves first via the largest organized act of insider trading in the history of the nation.

And then the Wall Street world fell apart like a wildfire, after the Republican-organized accelerant was poured all over everything with the unreal-level insider trading impact of 3500-4000 points dropped first.

It wasn’t until *AFTER* all gains in the stock market in the last three years were wiped out that the public was (more-or-less) finally leveled-with about the health crisis. First, the Republicans and their wealthy donors took the $1.5 trillion they gifted themselves with the tax scam two years ago plus all the good faith investments of all the peons, and cashed-out, leaving everyone else to get thoroughly destroyed.

The Republicans destroyed the economy, aimed a plane that was struggling to hold altitude straight at the ground, and parachuted to safety with everyone else’s money.

Remember this when the corporate entities represented and/or run by these exact same people are receiving $trillions on top of this as 327,968,615 or so American citizens fight over toilet paper like the proletariat of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s.

The Republicans have used Capitalism to do to the country what Communism did to them. Same mechanism, same result.

SHALL WE PLAY A GAME

We are all addicts.

Social interactions trigger the same dopamine pathway reward response in our brains as food and drink. We reward ourselves for social behavior, for advancing the complexity of ourselves, regardless of what form that advance takes.

This is an ideal biological function for the development and maintenance of family and friends. It’s the chemical process inside ourselves that make tribalism possible and, even, a good thing, as a properly developed relationship, done over time, is a healthy relationship which rewards all sides and, therefore, grows.

We learn from experience that a relationship that happens too fast becomes hopelessly out of balance, turns into fatigue, and self-destructs. We also learn that if we go too slow, the ties don’t bind and the reward peters out, people go separate ways.

Social media triggers these reward reactions every time we share something, click like on something, offer a comment to something. It’s not only an instant gratification system, where you can point and click yourself into a euphoric dopamine reward state as fast as your fingers can move, but it is also an easy overload. It’s far far far too fast and it’s an inexhaustible stimuli.

Voila fatigue ie intolerance and polarization.

We polarize because we have plateaued in our dopamine high and naturally seek to refine the reward system.

So we pick sides. We form deeper ties with a tribe. If one takes negative feedback that sets the reward process back, one simply naturally shifts by point and click into the circle of a new tribe. Acceptance is found, the reward system re-engages. Those that ostracized have successfully defended their tribe, they have their reward, too.

And then fatigue sets in, because we plateau again, and new tribal boundaries are drawn in the sand so new rewards can feed the addiction. Rich/poor. Red/blue. Mainstream/non. Male/female. One generation and another.

And ’round and ’round the social media dopamine overload goes.

So we ask things like “What does a president’s actions have to do with a supreme court nominee’s qualifications?”

Logically? Nothing.

Chemically? Everything.

I wonder a lot lately what defense mechanism can develop. How can we grow to be able to handle this social interaction pace that our limbic systems were not developed to handle.

One will develop, somewhere, and, by virtue of the concept of herd immunity gradually restore humanity to humanity. Presumably.

But human biological and socio-cultural development are slow things, and social media moves at light speed.

When the person you’re talking to is being an asshole, it’s because their brains are rewarding them for their tribalism. You cannot reason away this chemical fact.

You cannot fight it off. All you will do is increase the complexity of their expression and the defense of their tribe will again chemically reward them.

So long as the entire method of interaction is a system that operates far beyond our brains’ ability to handle, we will continue to be a boiling pot, not a melting one.

“A strange game.
The only winning move is
not to play.”

Look at the flowers, US economy, just look at the flowers.

Remember that time? When GWB paid for a war by printing trillions of dollars in newly-minted cash? And crude oil prices, which were strongly balanced against the strength of the watered-down dollar skyrocketed? And the gas crunch lit the fuse of the biggest recession since the Great Depression? Because the strain on the system was too great and the artificially-inflated housing bubble popped?

Good times, right?

Today, we have a brand new bubble a la the Trump tax plan, which I like to call FearlessOrangeLeader(tm)’s Blood-From-A-Stone Tax Plan.

This tax plan redistributed trillions of dollars into corporations and the upper class, where the lions’ share of it was used by corporations to buy their own stocks, artificially inflating their values and, by extension, the US economy’s value. A lot.

Meanwhile, everyone else was squeezed a little bit harder, and while record-breaking Wall Street numbers flash across the surface of that bubble to the oohs and aahs of the easily-impressed, and teeny tiny orange hands raise themselves in fists of victory before every camera pointed their way so cheering mobs can share the celebration of a new high score, some of the largest economies in the world are being poked in the eye, too. Including our closest allies.

Meanwhile, how’s the strength of the economy actually *doing*? Well, I’m glad you asked that. Because it’s important.

Real wages (and note the use of the word “real”, there) have actually declined slightly at the same time.

Just for laughs, how are gas prices doing these days? *cringes* ooo, that’s not pretty.

So anyway. Remember the last recession, how happy all the unemployed were, how many millions of people were just thrilled to see their savings and retirement plans and homes just gone in a flash?

Yeah. Imagine that in the midst of a series of ill-advised trade wars.

Actually… Don’t.

Look at the flowers, US economy. Just look at the flowers.

Whomseoever Pulleth This Finger

Not all that long ago, in decades not very far away…

People stood together because of common goals, even if they disagreed on how to achieve them.

It was so weird.

Today’s way is much more exciting. We don’t really get anything done because we have two Drunken-Uncle Parties taking turns steering the wheel as hard as they can in one direction, then the other, arguing the whole time about which one of them is the bigger asshole.

But it gives 24-hour news agencies something to do. Otherwise, we’d be stuck back in the reality that a half an hour here and there of half-listening to actual nightly news coverage was often more than enough.

It’s interactive, too, thanks to social media comments.

For a brief time, when the internet was born, we passed through an actual Information Age. It didn’t last. Point-and-click is an instant-gratification interface method.

And now we play life like a video game. Constant input, constant output.

So people don’t stand together because of common goals anymore if they disagree on how to achieve them.

Everyone’s too busy trying to beat the high score.

But like ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway”, everything in the digital world is made-up and points don’t matter, and all we’re really doing anymore, the more we point-and-click, is giving the political bookies better data so they can create more accurate spreads.

And the house always wins.

So, basically, we really suck at this video game and just *have* to learn to stop falling for it every time one of those Drunken-Uncle Parties tells us to pull their finger.

The Militia’s Last Stand: How Disney defeated the patriot machine without firing a single shot.

What if I told you…

…that nearly everything you learned about the Revolutionary War, including a hopelessly impotently incorrect idea of what a militia is – is wrong?

‘Not so!’ you say. ‘I distinctly remember many days in grade school spent on this subject, learning about the Boston Tea Party and the Sons of Liberty and Paul Revere and how the militia repelled the British forces and saved freedom, democracy, and apple pie!’

Do you? Do you really remember that? Or do you remember the movie, “Johnny Tremain”?

Johnny Tremain was a 1957 Disney fictional movie that was presented relentlessly to several generations of impressionably young students in an attempt to engage their interest in learning about the Revolutionary War. Most of us over, say, 35 (yes, pulling that guess out of thin air) have seen it, and multiple times. Many who have, skip back to that movie as the automatic bookmark in our minds that conjures up and represents a comfortably-secure synopsis of the topic, including what patriotism, a militia, and ideal global-conflict resolution are.

We certainly don’t skip back to notable snooze-fest lessons that we tried to stay awake through in the history portions of our classes, it’s the treat represented by eschewing the droning lesson plan for an afternoon to sit together in the dark and watch this movie that stands out. Lessons packed with fact are gone forever, never having successfully made a dent in that painfully bored grade-school apathy and, instead, this fictional movie stands as the foundation of multi-generational misunderstanding.

There were only a handful of channels on TV, we didn’t have smartphones, the internet didn’t exist. Movies in class or a school auditorium were a very big deal and they were memorable.

If you know nothing of the Revolutionary War at all, you will learn from this movie that a militia is a well-regulated standing force of patriots willing to come together to overthrow the government.

Does that sound familiar? That’s the current misunderstanding of the intent of the 2nd Amendment. Right there. And guess what? Do a little math, and you see that the gun rights argument itself, based largely on that misunderstanding or total lack thereof, begins to flower into a socially-invasive weed right around the time young kids seeing that movie for the first time after it was released grew into adulthood.

In fact, to use another movie reference to ease the discomfort of reconciling historical truth because we are an infotainment culture since Kennedy defeated Nixon thanks to TV coverage of their debate, consider the movie, “Last of the Mohicans”. In the fort, the militia has been called together – for the common defense of the homeland against a domestic enemy. Not to overthrow the government, but to stand as part of its last line of defense.

That little nagging feeling trying to eat away at your God-given right to suspension of disbelief is called, “cognitive dissonance”. Surely, those two things can’t both be true, it just doesn’t feel right, so it’s a good thing we’re just talking about movies and movies, of course, take liberties with accuracy for something we vaguely understand is called something like “poetic license”, and it’s okay for them to be incompatible. It’s how movies work. Duh.

So… Which one of them is canon? Which is the correct version of the idea? Are either of them? Wait, how did we get to the point of wondering if our foundational basic understanding of this word is real? That violates decades of patriotic bias and can’t be right.

Well, this is what happens when movies define our worldview. It’s uncomfortable, it threatens our sense of that aforementioned God-given right to the suspension of disbelief, and through the murky dichotomous layers of half-digested but determined preconceptions, there seems to stand in the fog a figure that surely must be un-American waiting for the unreconciled to reconcile.

The crib notes version of the truth of the word is that the 2nd Amendment was written by people that understood what it was like to have the homeland outside your front door turned into a warzone and they took steps right in nearly the very beginning of what’s become a practically deified document to make sure a fundamental part of the freedom and liberty they were designing was a provision to make sure that, when all else fails, the People are enabled to stand together as a last, potent, line of defense.

That’s what patriotism is, spelled-out in a few brief sentences – we will not lay down our right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness though every instrument of organized governmental defense be engaged nor even overrun. We will stand as free people to the last.

This is why the idea of repealing the 2nd amendment is worse than foolish.

While we’re on the subject, consider the 3rd amendment, as well, since these amendments are a set. The 3rd amendment is why your home is your castle.

Taken together, the intent of both is that you have the right to defend your castle and, therefore, that any enemy that ever seeks to invade and conquer the United States must factor into their planning not just the capture of strategic points, not just the defeat of a mobilized army, but also 300+ million people resisting from every direction simultaneously to the last of their patriotic, Constitutionally-enabled, ability.

This is a far cry from the idea of a government-overthrowing militia that generations of citizens learned from a fictional Disney movie.

The entire gun-rights argument is framed completely wrong. The 2nd-amendment was never intended to dictate how to regulate the militia, only that the right – and responsibility – for the components of a militia must always exist because, considered and understood properly, it truly is the ultimate guarantee behind the entire concept of the nation.

Since the 2nd amendment was never intended to dictate what “well-regulated” means, and thanks to another fundamental Constitutional principle built-in as infinite ability to amend and grow the document, there actually is no universal standard by which we have given ourselves the right to dictate to people what they can stock or carry and how.

It is, actually, entirely arguable that such regulation is the right of each state. The lack of codified federal regulation does seem to imply that in a separation of state and federal power, it is left to the states. Ultimately, it’s always been meant to reflect what The People want and know what? There’s not even an attempt to figure out what that even universally is, just a whole lot of people mistaking being loud with being right.

What well-regulated means, what one has the right to stock and carry, the framers left to future generations to decide, not knowing that someday a company built on the strength of a squeaky-voiced cartoon mouse and peoples’ willingness to embrace suspension of disbelief would take lessons learned at the expense of their still-fresh grief for lost comrades-in-arms, ie fathers, sons, neighbors, and inspire a national fight over something that nearly 100% of those in government and in the voting age wholly misunderstand.

So while we look like the fools we actually are to the rest of the world, arguing over these things instead of finding consensus and instituting change that settles these issues according to the process we’re supposed to be all about loving to flag-waving death, and the framers are turning in their graves, it all has to start with one thing:

Get a grip. The first step to getting out of a hole one’s dug for themselves is to stop digging.

Accept that the 2nd amendment is being stretched far beyond what it was ever intended for. It has not failed.

Let’s stop using an idea of what it all means garnered from a fictional Disney movie as the basis for disarming The People. I don’t care who you are or, with deep sympathy, what you may have lost, there’s no scenario whereby that makes any sense at all.

New regulation is necessary to settle the massive dispute over what gun rights are and where the boundaries of the right lay. Instead of mindlessly calling for abolition on one side and no restriction whatsoever on the other, advocate for what you feel is personally reasonable.

That’s how it works.

Too bad Disney never made a movie about how not to be a self-entitled spoiled-brat US citizen that thinks having an opinion means everyone has to abide by it, be it on one side or the other.

It seems the preferred way of absorbing information about important things is to digest them in cartoon or movie form.

The Hunger Games: Elite Edition

Twelve score and 2 years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that sacrifices will be made upon the altar of privilege to the great God of the White Establishment…

Wait. No. That’s not right.

Or is it?

This nation has protested. This nation has marched. This nation has petitioned. This nation has raised activist dins from within and without government halls. This nation has waged massive and sustained media campaigns. This nation has filed civil suits. This nation has demanded indictments.

This nation has honored nonviolent methods of reform across the spectrum.

And still, the thin blue line toes its line. And still, The People suffer the summary executions of their family, friends, and neighbors for stealing candy bars. Reaching for their IDs as asked to by their stand-by executioners. Being black in a white neighborhood.

And still, the thin blue line toes that line.

The Thin Blue Line

The thin blue line isn’t an actual line. It isn’t even an arbitrary one. The thin blue line is the automatic denial on the part of law enforcement agencies behind which they enjoy mutual protection for all their sins, complicit in murder after murder of civilians – on camera, no less – without fear of retribution and without any intention of changing.

When a video of a crime shows an indistinct but reasonably identifiable suspect perpetrating that crime, even if we’re talking about a 40 second video, we call that “evidence”. In fact, if we have video of a crime being committed, we tend to fairly universally refer to it as damning evidence.

When we see a video of such suspect killing another human being, the law enforcement agencies bring their unlimited power to bear to go after that suspect in the name of justice.

But when we see a 40 second video of police officers clearly executing a citizen, we are told by law enforcement – wait, you can’t draw conclusions from a 40 second video.

Isn’t it ironic that a 40 second video (or far far less) is plenty to convict a non-badge-wearing civilian for a crime, but we’re told that it isn’t enough to even accuse an officer?

As this nation has peacefully railed against this blind denial, more and more sons of grieving mothers have fallen to the inappropriate standards of authorization of the use of deadly force which law enforcement paradoxically insists it needs in the face of dangers which statistically do not exist.

Police Lives Matter

Yes. They do. However, the Police Lives Matter movement exists to perpetrate a fraud in reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yes, I’m declaring that a fraud. Openly.

I’m doing so because every conceivable metric in the world that measures officer safety agrees universally that it has never been a safer time in the history of the nation to be a police officer. Meanwhile, statistics exist all over the place that, particularly, black youths are being snuffed out. But they don’t want to give up the post-Patriot Act power they’ve been given, so toe that thin blue line, making themselves accessories to murder after murder of civilian and creating the very demon they allege to stand against.

So while we’re all watching citizens being dropped like flies, we’re told that it’s because it’s so dangerous to be a police officer that it’s necessary to sacrifice a possibly innocent person if there’s a chance that an officer might be in danger.

Voila the inappropriate shift of the standard of the use of deadly force.

Voila the increase in outrage over our law enforcement agencies operating contrary to the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and the presumption of law enforcement that their role is to take it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, and executioner.

They have turned streets into The Hunger Games. And Dallas District has, apparently, declined to participate any more.

Hopefully, where peaceful and nonviolent methods of reform have failed across the board, what happened in Dallas will make the establishment wake up and there will be no repeat.

But already, I’m seeing representatives of law enforcement double-down on the illusion that there’s an imminent danger to them that they aren’t, themselves, creating.

Cause -> Effect

This is an analysis, not a rally cry. Nonviolent methods of reform are the intent of every part of the design of this nation; they should be the mechanism for all change.

However… When nonviolent methods of reform fail across the board, there’s a reasonable expectation that The People are going to begin to use their 2nd Amendment rights to stand up to the injustice. That right, after all, is far more suitable to overthrowing out-of-control law enforcement (magistrates) than it is realistically suitable to rebelling against the strongest military the world has ever seen.

The effect sucks. It’s disgusting watching our peacekeepers being targeted.

Ask yourselves, though – just what is it going to take to get that thin blue line erased and our pre-Patriot Act police presence back again? Because that is most definitely the cause. Nonviolent action? Okay – which ones? The gamut of them have been wailing against the establishment for years to no effect. So you tell us – do we need to say “pretty please”?

Innocent until proven guilty. Peacekeepers.

Remember?

Six Degrees of Separation: Anti-Social Media

My Cultural Anthropology professor abandoned the syllabus a few times and, instead, gave us very intriguing hour-long soliloquies about “evil anthropologists” (occasionally punctuating the speeches by warning me against becoming one lol).

It was before Facebook existed, in fact before MySpace, too, AOL chat was dying out to Yahoo chat and sociologists had barely begun looking at their social impact at all in any serious way.

In the roots of mass social manipulation were (and, so far, remain) the parts of society conceived of by these “evil anthropologists”, the “cool-setters” or “trend-setters” as he liked to call them sometimes, “assholes” as he’d call them other times.

These are the people that, for instance, gave us the Nike swoosh. An almost accidental-looking visual brand that, using rudimentary mass-social tools like non-interactive TV, had achieved a historical god-like status which granted it adoration when put beside identical, or even superior quality, items not so-branded. And on the authority of this programmed artificial devotion, Nike sweatshops were born and continue to operate to this day.

The evil anthropologists, essentially, were those C. Anthropologists that had abandoned their objectivity and violated the most basic tenet of the field of non-interventionism and pure observation. They had, in fact, become Sociologists which, in his mind, were nothing more than Peeping-Tom-Cultural-Anthropologists – mass manipulators by any other name,

k guilty on the long-ago charge of becoming an evil cultural anthropolgist; I have totally used the once-in-a lifetime opportunity of social media’s inception and roll-out to not just study but to tinker with not just my own culture, but every culture out there that’s connected via these networks, but I’ve only tinkered and I like to think in a positive way which forces people to think against the grain of their own beliefs and/or social programming.

Which is why I very firmly defy the branding of Facebook et al as “social networking”. And defy the branding of our age as “the information age”.

Because I’ve looked with a sociologically manipulative eye at the way each function, and conclude that they should be labeled “Anti-social media” and “the disinformation age”, respectively.

And that’s not born of cynicism; it’s an objective conclusion. I might quite seriously write a book on it sometime soon.

Everyone has an almost instinctive knowledge of Facebook’s deleterious effect on individuals and groups alike, but very few take it seriously so even knowing better they suspend their intellectualism and allow it to affect them anyway.

In this way…

We have concentrated the knee-jerk color code voting that was already endemic, while social momentum (ironically, and against design) is beginning to drive in directions contrary to the electoral polls.

Cognitive dissonance makes the internet-world go ’round.