The "Others"

Political/economic misinformation, these days, often comes in the form of bigoted tribal narratives. When we talk about "welfare"...we are told that the recipients are "urban welfare queens" who milk the system and live high on the hog while stealing benefits... the reality is the elderly and disabled are usually who receive these benefits, many veterans (who also make up a lot of our homeless), and mostly in conservative states. When we talk about the Minimum Wage, we are told that we don't need to raise it because these are jobs held by high school kids just learning to work... the reality is that the average minimum wage earner is a 35 year old woman, trying to make ends meet for her family. When we talk about immigration, we are told that immigrants are dangerous criminals, but in reality immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens... and of immigrants, undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than documented immigrants (shocker... immigrants are usually just regular people coming to the US to work, not to commit crimes).

We have to stop worrying about the "other"...the boogeyman...stop the nail-biting and pearl clutching. Even IF we could correlate a group with some negative behavior...we should be asking WHY? What can we do to solve that problem? Not punish people for their circumstances. We have to start looking at society as a whole, fixing root causes of problems, being POLICY focused, and we need to stop placing blame and protecting egos.

Why People Do Things

When someone lies, for instance, there is a wide range of reasoning people give to explain why. Some try to make it an ideological thing...that some people believe in lying and some don't (like many economists/economic philosophers). Some people try to make it a biological thing...that some gene or hormone definitely is the reason. For all practical purposes though, it's really simple, people lie when it's too difficult not to.

If people would just extend this reasoning to most human behavior, I think we'd realize that there really aren't all these ideological or "good vs evil" battles going on...it's individuals with various stressors, states of health and being, and environmental circumstances...that all pressure people to act the way they do. Thinking in these irrational false-dichotomies just drives us further into tribalism and conflict.

Recently, there has been a lot of nonsense talk about "unity" but nobody is really talking about what that means.

If we want REAL unity we must:

• Align ourselves with REALITY, learn about evidence-based beliefs, reason, and logic.
  
  
• We must accept that we aren't all that fundamentally different from each other (we have to stop all eugenics-type thinking), and focus on our SHARED needs and goals.
  
  
• We need to stop judging people on made-up, biased, selfish scales of what is in the range of normal human preference and behavior, especially behavior that only affects themselves. On the other side, we must START punishing people for harming masses of people, destroying public health, inciting violence, implementing detrimental societal policies, or starting unnecessary, non-defensive wars.
  
  
• We must stop creating ego-driven, zero-sum institutions, and create systems that take care of our basic needs, allow us to make mistakes and grow, and generate the highest possibility of everyone reaching their maximum potential and contributing to society.

Corporate Control Of Media

I left social media years ago for this reason, but it's become undeniable that saying something these tech corporations don't like will result in suppression of your speech, no matter how true, factual, or well-reasoned it is. This has become a problem for independent journalism, media creators, activists... these large tech platforms have decided they are the gatekeepers of truth.

Now before I continue, I'd like to say I GET IT... there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet, and a lot of brainwashed people... BUT, letting giant tech corporations be the arbiters of truth, will NOT solve this problem; you will just be getting the misinformation that they approve of. I would also like to say, IT'S "OUR" FAULT. People are demanding that these platforms police content... when we should be asking that they have NO ability to prioritize or censor content. We should be creating/converting these essential Internet services into Public Utilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBoNDJadQNk

The Regime Change Wars Continue

I knew Biden was a "hawk" (or in other words, a warmonger captured by the Military Industrial Complex)... but how, after all this time, are we not seeing the obvious... they are greedy for resources, they will play the "communist" card, they will play the "dictator" card (even though, in Venezuela for instance, many independent, international entities have verified that their elections are extremely fair). The State Department signaled hostility with Russia, Venezuela, China, Iran... I'm so sick of it.
I've seen that both the left and right oppose our constant, pointless, regime-change, forever wars, and both would love to see those resources be put towards alleviating the suffering in our own nation... and I hope we can find a way to unite against these psychopaths who would see us war perpetually.

https://youtu.be/a5aucqZnM2o?t=561

"Eat The Rich"

Here you have it, from one of the only extremely rich people who sees the problem with inequality. The people must organize, the political parties won't solve it, the powerful will not introspect... we gotta "eat the rich" if we want to change the system to be sane.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0A26Pmg7sE6RAtSN5XFpE2