The themes of Biden’s inauguration were (essentially) compassion, competency, and healing the very real divisions that Trump spent four years exacerbating.
But can real unity be achieved? It never has been before (infighting has been around since the days of Adams and Jefferson or the fatal duel of Hamilton and Burr), but things could certainly get better if every American does a few obvious things…
—Don’t believe everything you see on social media (or “legitimate” media)… Half the users on sites like Twitter are bots. Many are not even based in the United States. It’s been proven that foreign actors make inflammatory statements on social media JUST to pit Americans against each other. So the next time you see “Black Panther Plus” on YouTube saying “kill all the whites” please know that he might be a Russian bot based in a St. Petersburg troll farm. Likewise, when you see “Real Patriot Now” on Twitter saying Biden should be beheaded at the national mall, be aware that there’s a reason he only has 5 followers. Also, keep in mind that social media is deliberately engineered to appeal to what you already believe and ESPECIALLY your darkest fears—that prolong engagement.
Also, it’s been revealing that “evil” tech companies have completely de-platformed Trump (banned from social media) and Apple, Google, and Amazon stepped up in a major way to disable Parler (the “conservative Twitter”), but the supposedly “legitimate” media who’s been telling us how evil these tech companies are might continue talking about Trump, airing his insane thoughts, and will play a big role in crowning his eventual successor of crazy. The media doesn’t really care if America gets better, and will be actively looking for ways to keep eyeballs glued to the news–and, of course, there’s no better way to do that than promoting fear, outrage, and division.
Move on from Trump…Yes, 71 million people (the second most of any Presidential candidate) voted for him. He is also uniquely bad for America. He is a creature from the media landscape. He spends almost no real time with actual Americans, but he does stay glued to television and spend an extraordinary amount of time absorbing media coverage, then manipulating media coverage. What is Trump more worried about? People dying in a small town in Kansas OR Tucker Carlson’s coverage of that town’s deaths? Anyone being remotely honest knows the answer.
It is horrible for the health of his base (both literal physical health from CoVid and mental health) for them to be absorbing the rages, insecurities, and grievances of a total narcissist who’s living a better life than they ever will. Trump let thousands of Americans die from CoVid over the last couple months sense he was primarily consumed with finding a way to steal the election. It couldn’t be more obvious that he doesn’t care about them, at all. Tellingly, Trump did not actually put forth a second term agenda or even list what he wanted to do. This brings me to my biggest point…
Conservative voters have to tell me what they actually care about…CoVid is not only out-of-control due to criminal mismanagement and neglect, but climate crisis is absolutely battering the red states. We’re talking hurricanes smashing into Florida and North Carolina several times a year, and the Gulf Coast was getting hit all last year with hurricanes and flooding.
But conservative voters main concerns seem to be stopping strangers from having abortions, antifa burning down their house, and I still haven’t figured out what they’re so afraid of Black Lives Matter actually doing to them, but they seem very worried about that too.
If they cannot articulate a vision for America other than “lock up Hunter Biden, refuse to admit a single new immigrant, forcibly disband BLM, pretend CoVid isn’t happening, and blast AOC into space” then I am not sure how we can give them what they want. We can’t compromise if they refuse to put forth an actual agenda of things they care about or want.