Another topic that really doesn’t have anything to do with my books or stories, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about for months. Something has been stewing on YouTube and social media for years, and I never really paid much attention to the poison being slow-dripped into our veins until recently. There’s no more civility. There’s no more respectful discourse. There’s no more tolerance for different views. We’re being destroyed by a select few.
2020 was the year all of this came to a head because most people had nothing to do but turn to social media, doom-scrolling while falling deeper into their own echo chambers as those with influence used the pandemic to further gain financial success. It was a very strange period in our history. Most people have never lived through anything quite like that, and understandably, many of us tried to look to others for understanding, especially since our security and way of life was taken away in just a few short months.
In that time, instead of looking inward, many people looked to influencers, conspiracy theorists, and other fringe groups that loosely aligned to their own beliefs, further isolating them from reality and from ‘real’ people. This is a dangerous state of mind to be in, and it happened not just to the right but the left as well.
Think about the people who have all the power, money, and influence. They either are very vocal themselves, or they pay people to be vocal on their behalf, usually having the resources and reach to spread anything they want about whatever group of people they want. If it’s the left, ALL conservatives hate you and want to put you in a camp or in jail or execute you. And then when you look at the right, it’s the same message, just different nuances and social agendas.
These are the people who make up a tiny portion of the population, but they have the loudest voices. I have very conservative friends and family, and I consider myself to be very moderate in my political views. And even though we disagree on things, I still love my family.
When you’re a true moderate, you’re attacked by the fringes of society. You’re too liberal to be a conservative and too conservative to be liberal, but let me fill you in on something: that’s actually the way it’s supposed to be.
The Ben Shapiros and Blossom Browns of this country are not on your side. Anyone who makes millions of dollars while calling themselves ‘activists’ ‘political commentators’ ‘patriots’ ‘social justice warriors’ ‘liberators’–you know the people. They all used to stand for positive things, but talking about positive things all the time isn’t really all that profitable. When news networks and blogs headline positive things in our community, they won’t get as much traction as twisting a story to make it as negative and sensational as possible.
To profit from the divisions in society, you need to stay relevant, and the cause you ‘fight’ for needs to remain relevant as well. These people stand to make nothing when a society is well-adjusted, well-informed, civil and non-polarized. Unless the other side is actively trying to destroy the other, they’ve got no cause they can champion, so they use discourse to make it all come true, even if it’s not.
Liberals are coming for your guns, the gays are coming for your children, the democrats will make Christians live in FEMA camps and the conservatives will make all the trans people live in concentration camps. The amount of fear-mongering has reached irreversible levels, and now these people who actively sow discourse in our society have gotten exactly what they wanted: permanent relevance and a steady, massive stream of profit while making their imagined dystopia a reality.
I know that this blog post will never reach the masses. Only the most sensational, the most divisive–the worst humanity has to offer are placed on pedestals, while those that try to use reason are cast aside, labeled as ‘phobic,’ ‘ists’, traitors, ‘woke’, and they watch with grins as their aligned hivemind swarms, poisonous words taking action and silencing reasonable people while elevating and normalizing the unhinged.
Do me a favor, and the next time you want to label someone as an ‘other’ using these suffixes, take the time to analyze what was said. Was the person being hateful? Sometimes, yes. Most of the time, from what I’ve seen on social media, not at all. Just because someone disagrees with your stance doesn’t make them a hateful bigot or someone who wants to destroy the ‘American way of life’…whatever the hell that means anymore.
No true conservative ever wants someone else’s freedoms taken away, but the ones that take power, the ones that are funded and loud are the ones everyone is forced to keep in power, because they reinforce the narrative everyone has been given. No true liberal wants to take away someone else’s rights, but the same applies. There are no moderates in our society anymore. We’re like geese subsiding on a gavage of lies until we become so sick we can no longer move forward. “You’re either with us or against us.” This tribal mentality goes against what most countries should strive for, and that’s unity. Common ground. Common sense.
What’s even worse is families don’t talk to each other anymore. The ones who claim to want to protect families or family values are the ones that are benefitting from destroying them. One day, everyone will wake up when the damage has been done, and it will be too late. We’ll realize just how alone we are once there’s no longer a parent to reconcile with or a child to welcome back home.
We are taking up the fight against each other when we should be fighting the very people who are destroying us. Instead, we ignore and hate our own flesh and blood, our life-long friends in order to take up arms for someone else’s fake cause. Instead of co-existing, we have instead becoming intolerant under the guise of tolerance. Spiteful under the guise of ‘love’ taught by religion. We’re so fractured that we’ve become lonely, and when we’re lonely, we’re driven deeper into cults. The cult of woke. The cult of Trump. These are people that will turn on you in an instant if you dare think for yourself instead of upholding the narrative they want you to have.
United we stand; divided we fall. Talk to people on the other side. ACTUALLY talk. No online filters or anonymity. No profiles with eagles, flags, or pronouns. Just a human being in front of another human being. Being terminally online while watching these fake and horrible influencers have made us forget what humanity really is. It’s made us forget what reality is.
We need our physical, social spaces back where anyone from any walk of life can enjoy. We need the civility to debate one another and not hate one another. We’ve somehow tricked ourselves into thinking segregation was the right answer all along and that hearing any opinion different from our own is too traumatic.
There’s always going to be division and discourse, but we need to bring it back to manageable levels.