It is in our best interest to pay attention to the growing extremism.

“peace dove” by Jeff Attaway is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Copy

People view the world through internalized narratives. We each have limited, flawed and subjective understandings of reality, which then shapes how we expect to act and be treated in the world.

Each human experience is unique, but you can see patterns of understanding within the culture of a given group. Ideas spread between individuals. Some ideas are influenced by propaganda.

Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon both invested heavily in right wing propaganda, including using big data to target neurotic people with disinformation.

That’s not part of a healthy Democracy.

“Steve Bannon is a follower of something called the ‘Breitbart doctrine,’ which posits that politics is downstream from culture. So if you want any lasting or enduring changes in politics you have to focus on the culture.

When Steve Bannon uses the term ‘culture war,’ he uses that term pointedly and they were seeking out companies that could build an arsenal of informational weapons to fight that war.”

 — Christoper Wylie

People view the world through internalized narratives, and it is those propaganda influenced narratives that lead us to decide on our actions.

So, how do you know what someone thinks the world looks like? How do you try to understand what their likely response will be?

I’ve found the best answer is to listen to them.

I talk to the right, and what do I hear? Personal Freedom is priority number one, and that’s what the guns are for.

Some of them are saying that they distrust the government and the Bio Tech industry, which is fair. They are also saying that they don’t trust the vaccine, which is unfortunate given our desire to stop the spread of the virus.

Given these facts, forcing vaccinations directly is likely to be met with heavy resistance. Doing it indirectly by threatening employment isn’t much better. It is coercive. While already determined to be Constitutional, that will not change the opinion of the individual who feels oppressed. Who believes that the vaccine may have long term side effects.

Forced vaccinations are pretty extreme too, even if we really want to stop the spread.

Real conversation could change some minds.

Attempting to force the decision will just be one more step down the road to civil war.

We still need to focus on Truth and Justice, and give up the destructive fight for power.

We need to hold propagandists accountable. We need to address candidates who hire them. We need to address politicians who break oaths. We need to address traitors.

Once we talk, perhaps we’ll all realize how we’re both being exploited from the top in a way that is enabled by both parties.