Today's post is by a guest author, my son. I edited the post very lightly.
What
to do...
Trumpism will expand its base of believers and
practitioners if it is not strenuously opposed, just like Nazism, Communism,
Capitalism, Liberalism, and every other -ism. Trumpism is an idea. Ideas can
only be defeated through the greater popularity of a competing, alternative
idea.
Ideas have currency because of the moral values which
underlie their motive, reasoning, logic, and their intent. Ideas can also
sometimes have currency due to the experienced reality of the outcomes of
actions based on them, but that comes later (it takes time) and is frequently overlooked
through selective perception and/or other cognitive biases.
Still, there are concrete steps which can be taken and
are not token echo chamber participation.
The Lies Must Die
Without truth and agreed upon knowledge of reality, we
are truly doomed. A democracy cannot function meaningfully without an informed
citizenry – they wouldn't know what they are voting for. No organization can
function effectively without accurate knowledge of the state of the world –
including corporations and governments. Employees are citizens too! If citizens
are not informed then neither are the bureaucrats and employees because we are
the same.
We must be pro-truth. We must fight "alternative facts".
We must build defenses against lies intended to be recognized as lies, and
against lies which we desperately want to believe. We must increase trust and
understanding.
I propose creating the Foundation of Truth –
Snopes and Politifact on steroids – a nonprofit NGO institution with the goal of
nothing less than being sufficiently credible and authoritative to be an
original reference source for Wikipedia articles, journalism, student homework,
and academic papers.
The truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, made freely available to everyone.
·
It needs to be squeaky clean and utterly
transparent.
·
It must be entirely funded privately (no funds from
any government) and publicly (every donation recorded publicly). Initial
funding will probably have to come in the form of a large grant from one or
more philanthropic foundations.
·
The board must be independent and competent beyond
reproach – nonpartisan, experienced in effective management, experienced in
logic and science, without conflicts of interests, without scandal, etc.
·
Its operations should strive to be inclusive at
the grassroots level. Everyone should be encouraged and empowered to ask
questions, submit evidence, and suggest and review answers. Technically, this
would probably look like a cross between a wiki (see: Wikipedia) and a Q&A
site (see: StackExchange).
·
I would like to see it get cutting-edge machine
learning to sniff out forged information (e.g. shopped photos and videos), and
search out original information sources (e.g. identify where viral shares originated).
·
I would like to see it create a worldwide
network of journalists and scientists – people whose careers and lives are
dedicated to searching for and explaining truth.
·
I would like to see it making its own grants to
those willing and able to answer interesting and important questions.
Proof of Popularity
People are more likely to publically espouse thoughts
which they personally perceive to be popular, and are less likely to publically
support positions which they believe are unpopular. Politicians are people and
will also bend their representation towards perceived popularity (at least among
those who matter to their reelection). Marches, protests, and communication
campaigns (e.g. phone calls), among other actions, communicate a proxy for
popularity (the squeaky wheel gets the grease). Voting communicates popularity
more directly.
Counter-Memeing
The culture of the alt-right among younger people is
expanding. As some have mentioned, this is bad.
The alt-right culture often propagates its views through internet memes –
crude humor that encapsulates racist, religiously bigoted, culturally bigoted
or misogynistic views.
"Breaking down the barriers of acceptability through
humour is now a deliberate tactic of the far right", (George Monbiot). This has to be dealt with, and shutting down
free speech / free expression isn't the way to do it (and it probably wouldn't
work – attempting to ban it would only increase its subversive humor value).
Most of the people who enjoy this content are not
evil. They just have a dark sense of
humor and do not have the life experience to personally understand that “what makes
other people upset" does not equate
to comedy gold. A good comedian tells
jokes for the audience, but many internet posters are posting for themselves.
Declaring something the originator considered to be a joke to be unacceptable
only reinforces the originator's certainty that "makes other people upset"
is true, that they've broken a taboo or norm.
The content is not innocent, but it is not treated as
propaganda within the communities which are generating it. It is mostly created
in order to gather positive internet feedback (upvotes, likes, shares, reblogs,
etc.) in certain communities which find basically all transgressive content
(e.g. rape jokes, pedophile jokes, racist jokes, sexist jokes,
genocide/holocaust jokes, suicide jokes) to be funny. There needs to be a cadre
of people who go online to where these are originating from and submit better
(more popular) yet acceptable content – the antithesis to paid trolls; create
and upvote good stuff, downvote bad stuff, and report the literally illegal
when it shows up.
Political Social Media Site
People need a common place to engage with politics, safe
from retribution by their real life social network (semi-anonymous), with ready
access to facts and expert opinion (tooled and moderated), and structured to be
an outlet by which elected officials can be reliably informed about people's
thoughts and preferences.
Third and a Half Party
Lobbyists and special interest groups (see: NRA) are very
successful in America. Third parties are not. While it may be tempting to
organize an insurgency into the Democratic party the way the Tea Party mutated
the Republican party, this would likely only make the 2-party system even more
divisive. We need to split the difference to be effective on the requisite
scale.
I propose creating a political organization with a
complete platform of values, a comprehensive set of preferred policies, and
willingness to compromise on policies in ways which do not outright violate the
platform values. Although it may eventually raise up its own candidates, it
will start by funding elected officials who successfully promote the platform
values.
The Candidate We Need
Four years may seem like a long time, but it is not. We
need to find a 2020 candidate. We need someone who is not a different billionaire
(Bloomberg, Zuckerberg). Not a "swamp" insider (pretty much anyone in
DC from before 2008). We need someone who is as likeable as a comedian / talk
show host, and preferably someone young enough to fill a post-presidency role
in supporting and promoting civic values and greater positive political
engagement (see above organizations).
