Tag Archives: Trump

Using our power to make a difference

If you are into the concept of democracy, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Those of us who might be in a position to make a difference, yours truly included, are too comfortable and lazy to do what it takes to safeguard democracy. Others have totally lost faith in their ability to affect political change.

Countries are up for grabs by leaders who are ruthless enough to ignore all rules as they forge on relentlessly towards absolute power.

The Russian people excel at outsourcing power. They have totally given up on the concept of making a difference. They do not see themselves as political actors. This “Putin has the power, makes the decisions, they have nothing to do with me” way of thinking allows ordinary Russians to go on with their daily lives without any concern for e.g. the war against Ukraine, the efforts to eradicate the Russian opposition and the discrimination of many minorities. According to the majority, it’s all Putin’s doing. They themselves have no say and therefore no responsibility.

Democracy is not dead in America – yet. However, unforgivably many politicians are too comfortable and too lazy to even try to make a difference although they could. The Republicans have all but outsourced their power to Donald Trump, who will grab it and twist it out of recognition. Despite this, many of them maintain that they have nothing to do with Trump’s outrageous behaviour. In addition, too many voters have lost faith in their ability to affect meaningful political change.

Will this laziness and loss of faith result in the loss of the unity, democracy and rule of law that their forefathers fought for?

Where is the EU, when all of this is taking place? It is slowly waking up to the fact that many of the world’s problems may spill over into its lap sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, EU members are no strangers to ignoring a problem until it gets out of hand. It’s the “too comfortable and lazy to react in a timely fashion” effect all over again.

At times, I feel like I am watching a political reality show that seems to be moving unstoppably towards a tragic ending.

The Chinese have always had an eye for playing the long game. I can’t help but admire the ingenuity of it, as I watch Xi Jinping meet key political players all over the world; creating expectations, hope, fear and overall confusion.

As the saying goes, when you realise you are in deep s…, don’t move. This is probably China’s goal: to ensure that as many players as possible stay put and just allow the long game to play out. By the end of the day, the rest of us will find ourselves in the position of bystanders. The force will not be with us anymore – we will have given it away.

Giving power away is not always bad. My first image above is of George Washington surrendering his resignation as wartime leader; and thereby ensuring that the country’s future leader was decided by democratic vote. Something that an increasing amount of key world leaders are keen to avoid these days.

I wish to end this blog on a positive note, so I include a few more pics from my latest trip to New York and Washington. It was a trip of farewell in many ways. However, hopefully not a farewell to the U.S. we used to know – a leading Western democracy.

This trio of pictures serves as a reminder that the angle we view things from changes the picture we see. It is also a reminder that what once was destroyed can be rebuilt with time and effort – even though it will never be the same.

My final picture is a reminder of the fact that, while man can strive towards the skies, nothing rivals the beauty of nature. The need to safeguard our environment is one more reason not to give away our power to make a difference.

My AI assistant (by courtesy of WordPress) kindly gave my feedback on this blog. It suggested that I should add some examples on how to make a positive difference. Sadly, I am still struggling with the how myself. My first step has been to admit to myself that I am part of the problem. I think we all need to find our own way from there. Where there is a will, there is always a way.

Divine intervention

Years ago my four-year old son came home from his day care centre in a huff. Someone at the centre had taken on the daunting task of explaining God to four-year-olds. My son’s take on the matter was that God resided in heaven and heaven was somewhere in the clouds.

If the story of Amazon kicking Parler off Amazon Cloud had broken that day, my son would probably have seen it as divine intervention.

However, as that story was to unfold some 40 years later, my son’s mind was instead wrapped around the – in his mind totally impossible – idea that people searched for God. How could that be true, he questioned. There is no ladder tall enough to reach the clouds.

On a more serious note, when global mega-actors like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon finally restrict the results of their own actions – their enabling of the spreading of fake news, hate and violence – there is nothing divine about their intervention. They are just scrambling to safeguard their backs.

It’s like the call for non-violence that Trump finally made. Too little, too late, and guided purely by self-interest.

None of these people should have been given the power they have today: not Trump, not the decision makers of Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. I think we all see it clearly, but have no idea what to do about it.

Yet the problem needs to be addressed. There has to be a reasonable way to make sure that social media giants can’t act as gods of free – or censored – speech on their platforms without any real outside control. Owners come and go, platforms easily remain, whether benign – or not.

It’s not only about allowing calls for hate and violence on worldwide platforms. It’s just as much about the ability to suddenly turn the off-switch on a president, however misguided he may be. None of these decisions should be solely up to a few decision makers, whose primary loyalty is to their investors.

Since self-restriction is difficult, there has to be enough outside pressure to ensure that the fine line between free speech and criminal, systematic misguidance is drawn by institutions that have been set up for that purpose with due process.

No border safety measures and defence programs are more important than this. The ever-existing missile threat may prove to be a small problem compared to the threat posed by the potential to subtly and systematically spread disinformation to billions of people.

This has to become a priority for decision makers, however long their to-do lists already are.

Trump did teach us something valuable. The Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has the right of it: We need to look infinitely harder at who we elect, including examining the candidate’s character and ethics.

However, since this is easier said than done, we also need to look infinitely harder at how lying and bullying could become the presidential norm overnight.

My favourite newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, published a remarkably thorough info package on the what, where, when and why of the Epiphany of Trump’s Presidency.

I am not referring to the Christian holiday Epiphany – although the dates do coincide. I am referring to the storming of the U.S. Capitol; the sudden manifestation of the essential nature of Trump’s presidency: Self-inflicted chaos.

One of Helsingin Sanomat’s excellent articles explained how the angry dissent that Trump built on has been steadily growing online since the early days of the web. What the article forgot to mention is that extremist groups become big much more easily, when they have access to big platforms with algorithms that speed up their growth.

Trump could write the manual on “How to lie and bully your way to the White House”, but he could not have succeeded in creating the chaos of today without Twitter and Facebook.

It’s time to move on and make sure that votes still matter, that good government still matters. We need international co-operation and legislation to ensure that reason prevails on and off social media in the future.

Note: My featured image is an excerpt from Angeles Santos’ painting “A World”. Since the painting is from 1929, it’s safe to say that is was never meant as a commentary on Trump or social media. But somehow it fits our world today. Sadly, my camera never caught the whole painting.

Finding a way back

Sometimes it takes a while for reason to prevail. I wrote my blog Bowing to fear and unreason in December 2016. It remains to be seen whether I was right. Will America find its way back from the abyss of fear and unreason that it has been dragged into these past 4 years?

As my blog of 2016 proves, it is no mystery how America ended up where it is. The country has been there before. I hope I was right in my conclusion too. Democracy is still alive and well. The system will correct itself with a little help from the American people.

Hopefully there will be a day of reckoning for the active promoters of the fear and unreason that Trump’s travesty of a presidency brought about.

Now trending: hate and self-interest

Hate and self-interest are trending. Internet and the social media have provided the nasties with the means to find each other and create outlets for their bigotry.

Since they are truly nasty, in a way that this old lady doesn’t care to be, they do not hesitate to use these tools aggressively and successfully. Continue reading →