Popular Opinion, Media Influence & The Truth

I just read in succession 4 email newsletters. Interestingly enough they all touch on a similar theme. It is the same theme I have been not only considering but practicing for some months now in my own personal life. I want to share just a bit of my thoughts here. They largely center around the title ‘Popular Opinion, Media Influence & The Truth.

There is a way to filter through the enormous amounts of noise in our world and ultimately dig down and get to the Truth. At least I firmly believe this to be true. To set aside preconceived notions and start the hard task of daily ‘work’ (I use work in the best sense of the word), to find the hidden layers inside of ourselves that enables us to learn to love, appreciate and honor those around us, or at least agree to be civil, is the task that is before us.

I am bombarded by emails and other intrusions into my life by people who have an agenda. Is this bad? I don’t think so at least in part. How do you navigate a world where agendas rule the narrative? One must have an agenda just to bring balance to a matter…if nothing more than simply that one side is not allowed to ‘run away’ with the narrative themselves and turn it into a truth that is not readily provable.

In our chaotic times of pandemics and elections and riots and protests, race confusion, sex confusion, freedom confusion, media power, censorship, lies and so much more we need to find a place where we can be stable and hopeful. One of the newsletters I read this morning begged for people to find some common ground with their friends, neighbors and close communities and learn to understand the whats and whys of someone else’s perspective. 

I have been doing this for some months now as I have been feeling a burden to understand why anyone that I love and respect might believe so radically different than myself…or, to see how someone with a completely different personal narrative (story) might see the world and experience their lives differently than I do. In this same newsletter the gal searches herself (and grieves) to see how she has contributed to the idea of white supremacy in our culture. Although I appreciate her overall message I think this is just another way of playing into the cultural narrative. The only pertinent question I believe is worth asking at this point is how do I personally interact with those around me. Am I willing to put my own beliefs on the line when confronted with someone else’s true experience.

In the end it is not about this sort of broad spectrum narrative that we all seem to want to cling to so carefully. We have this sense of needing to belong and thus naturally lean into the side that holds similar beliefs as we do. We share the overarching narrative within our own hearts and somehow think we need to force that onto others never seeing or understanding the truth of what is actually happening. It’s as if we are pawns in a bigger game that is run by people with large agendas for power.

Of course we all want to be right. It is pretty much embedded within each human to feel that way. It is why family members turn against family members (and friends against friends) over many of these issues. It is seemingly much more important for us to be right than be in relationship. I am sure there is a fairly clear pathway as to how this happened but I am not sure that matters nearly as much as addressing the question of ‘what do we do now that we are here?’

1) Recognize the problem. There are extremes at war and they are quite happy to have those in the middle as their pawns and soldiers giving support and money and what not. Most of the media have taken sides and they use their influence in the war. They are part of the extreme. Since we literally have no other viable way to ‘hear’ or ‘see’ events that are unfolding we unfortunately need to rely on the media for some of our information. We can, however, recognize that the media is a major part of the problem and not a part of the solution and then filter our senses to interpret input as a result.

2) Do the hard work. It takes work to keep an open mind and to dig into the resources available to try and find the truth of a matter. In our current state of affairs I don’t believe we will be able to entirely access the truth but we can at least find a place where we can be at peace in our understanding that there are nuggets of truth in every narrative (predominantly) and we are smart enough to uncover those with diligence and hard work. Without the hard work we are all subject to popular opinion. We will choose to listen to the popular opinion that supports our world view and then the agenda of the extreme elitists is satisfied. Public opinion is important and so most of this war is geared towards swaying public opinion. If you do not do the hard work you will be swayed in all likelihood.

3) Come together with those close to you and work toward understanding. This is something I have taken very seriously. I am predominantly an introvert and although I don’t live by that label it largely rings true for me. I am not a fan of groups, crowds, noise from too many people gathering together and the lack of control over whether or not I am able to find a quiet space, escape the crowd or group, or simply choose to go to bed if I want. That may all sound strange but I live with other people who are different and thus I, at times, need to ‘suffer’ the tide of people for much longer than my comfort would choose. But, nevertheless, in those times of discomfort for me I am trying to consciously engage in conversations that are uncomfortable for me with people that see life very differently than I do. I am not talking about radical right versus left differences predominantly (although that is happening plenty for me right now as well) but I am talking about dramatic differences in how to see and approach this world that we share with so many other people who have different experiences and beliefs and stories. And this too has been a matter of diligence for me. I am going out of my way to talk to people who have entirely different stories than my own. I have chosen to want to understand, or at least listen so that I might possibly understand just a bit more than I do now, in order to be able to appreciate someone else’s personal narrative and in turn appreciate them instead of follow the typical current narrative and vilify those who seemingly disagree with me. I say ‘seemingly’ because at the heart of the matter I have found that the vast majority of people appear to have the same cares and concerns that I do and simply because they have a different approach at addressing those cares and concerns is not a reason to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. There seems to be some win/win possibilities in nearly every issue and those outcomes are made possible only by understanding.

4) Ignore the greater narrative of unity. This may sound contradictive (my own word) but it is not. Let me explain. When the media, the government, or anyone in control is currently talking about unity and coming together they simply want people to comply with their narrative of the world. There is no indication whatsoever of wanting understanding or win/win scenarios. There is only the endgame of comply to show unity or ‘show your true colors of division.’  Complying and becoming unified are diametrically opposed ideas. At this point in our culture, short of a heroic style of an honest and truth-filled unifying man or woman (which I don’t see anywhere on the horizon), the wider concept of unity is a crock. In our political sphere the powers that be want to win and be in control. That is all. But, does this mean we ignore the events of our day? Well I think that would be foolish. As I mentioned earlier, we ought to be trying to drill down into the truth of a matter as much as we are able. This means reading, studying, understanding what is going on behind the scenes and so much more. It takes due diligence but I believe it is necessary to being able to do the other hard work of opening lines of honest communication with those in our own personal circles.

I want to share just one example. First it is clear that our country is fairly evenly divided and people are doubling down on their political support. That is just a fact that needs to sink in for everyone no matter what we want to believe. Some things make sense to me and I can’t understand why or how someone believes differently but as I said that is the hard work that we must engage in right now. Anyhow, this past weekend there were rallies across the nation to bring attention to the fact that there is tens of millions of people in our country that do not trust our latest election results yet. Most of those people (those not on the extreme) are mostly concerned with irregularities and giant questions that have arisen as this past election unfolded (I will talk more about this in a moment). First, I have some first hand reports as to how one of those rallies actually unfolded. (We must consistently remind ourselves that the extremes are going to make the news feeds and youtube videos and so forth as that is where our corporate attention is grabbed).

At the capitol in Sacramento about 500 (an approximated number from someone that was there) peacefully gathered to listen to speakers and rally around the idea that they believe the voting irregularities are unusually numerous and need to be addressed. As I mentioned in one of my most recent newsletters I too believe that we need to address these irregularities to be sure that future elections are honest and also if we don’t actually address those things than any president sworn in on January 20, 2021 will not be fully legitimate and will always need to bear the burden of having an asterisk by their name. This is not good for our standing in the world and we owe it to ourselves to get all of this squared away now. This is a manner of doing the hard work, not listening to the media elites and not being distracted by popular opinion. Anyhow, there was a clash at the California state capitol and at least one video shows Trump supporters spraying mace or something similar at a coalition of anti-protestors from BLM and other groups I would imagine. (Incidentally I am constantly amazed that the BLM groups that show up to riot and protest and whatever almost always are 95+% white people. I find this very strange but I don’t necessarily have a full understanding of the movement so I hold it merely as an observation at this point). It it hard to say what that picture actually represents as there is much more to the story that the media seems unwilling to report.

So I wanted to share what really happened at that rally and see if it doesn’t at least shed a bit of light on the way the media handles these types of things. From the beginning of the rally there were police officers present to, I would imagine, keep the peace in case there was a clash of ideologies. My source tells me that these police officers were very pleasant and the event was entirely pleasant and peaceful until another group showed up of about 20-30 people. They were obviously there to show their displeasure of the rally and so the police set themselves up as a barrier between the two groups. Remember the one group with the license to rally (or protest or whatever you may want to call it) was about 500 people and the people to protest the protest were a much smaller group. There were loud words exchanged, as you can imagine, but mostly non eventful for a time. At one point the smaller group, that I was told was a mixture of BLM supporters and perhaps one or more other groups, retreated as a group and had a meeting of sorts. They were all congregated together for a time at which point a group within the group put on face masks and then shortly thereafter a fight broke out (or what looked like a fight) and then a very strong spray such as tear gas or mace or something similar was dispersed. This spray was so strong it affected a large portion at the rally as well.

A photo was released showing a Trump supporter or two spraying a couple of people in the other group with masks on. There are a couple of things very odd about this. One, there were no police between the two groups. This is noteworthy because the entire event had a line of police between the two groups, as I understand it. Two, the picture shows that the people spraying (people wearing Trump paraphernalia) were only spraying at others with masks on. This whole thing is highly suspicious as there were people I know (about 5 or more) who were present as this whole thing unfolded and not once did anyone from the rally cross the police line to engage with the other group. Also, the ‘Trump’ supporters were only spraying at people with gas masks on. The questions one has to ask are: 1) where did the Trump supporters come from if not from the Rally? And… 2) why, if they wanted to truly harm other people, would they only spray people with masks on?

No one seems to care about the truth in this matter. It very much appears that one of two things actually happened. Either Trump supporters simply showed up who were not actually engaged in the rally and knew that some opposition would actually be there and their intent was solely to do harm to others (which begs the question why were they only spraying others with masks?) or it was a set up simply for the media to report how ‘evil’ the Trump supporters actually are and here is proof. 

If the first scenario is true then those are the far right people that ought to be ignored as much as possible. If the second scenario is true it is the far left setting up a scenario to diminish the peaceful people gathered there for legitimate reasons. Either way it is an issue of either the far right desiring to do harm or the far left desiring to do harm. I don’t personally care who (although the evidence seems to point to a set up by the far left more so than anything else) as both of these sides ought to be ignored so the rest of us can get down to the hard work of engaging with the desire to find some win/win scenarios where we can all move forward in ways that aid us all in our own personal lives as we navigate these difficult times.

I am not sad for these difficult times. I think we ought to embrace them. I think the circumstances give rise to opportunities for good change. I believe that good change can very much happen within small circles of friends, family members, neighbors and such but I also believe we all need to stand up to the far right and the far left and say ’no more’ to them. They are creating an impossible situation in our country and it will ultimately likely destroy us. For the time being I believe we need to bring some legitimacy to our recent election. There are far too many questions to dismiss them. I think that would be unwise for our future. 

I have so many questions about this election that I believe to be legitimate that I think should be answered for the sake of legitimizing our President for the next four years and for protecting the integrity of future elections. I have found so many instances of media reporting that are either misleading or out and out lies on both sides of the coin. There are far too many questions that need to be addressed and if we don’t do that we are going to be in trouble. There was fraud. There was cheating. There were irregularities (far too many of them). There are too many questions. This election is far from over. I personally am not terribly concerned with who is our next president nearly as much as making sure the process of voting is legitimate. 

I could go through probably dozens of different scenarios that ought to raise the hair on the back of anyone’s neck and cause terrible concern but I am far too long at this point and so will perhaps deal with those issues another time. 

Thanks and blessings!