Bandwagons...
On Wednesday at Dollar Tree I was talking to a coworker about how I grew up in Arizona and she said she had lived there for 5 years recently. The topic started by taking about Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his corruption and how we agreed how corrupt his office is, especially how his entire family is involved with the jail at the expense of the taxpayers, and his treatment of 'illegal immigrants'. Anyways we were agreeing on pretty much everything until the topic changed to immigration.
I was taking the libertarian route like I normally do but she suddenly switched and was totally against illegal immigration, despite everything she was saying about how bad Sheriff Joe was in his dealing with immigrants. I couldn't believe that she believed all the claims used against legal and illegal immigrants, particularly the claims that they come here to have their children as "anchor babies" and leach off of social welfare. Despite my counter that I have never seen such proof of claims, she insisted that it did happen and had seen it personally (a claim I doubt because it just hasn't been substantiated in statistics.)
This whole conversation really got me thinking that she's been following the news just enough to know about some of the issues and has accepted the common trends as fact because these themes have been reported on so often as of late. And has closed her mind to even small amounts of doubt to what she's been hearing. This has me worried that most people are following these trends because its easy to not pay attention to them except when they're made important by others.
This brings up a few articles written by Jon Roland that I really appreciate even though they're only partly related to the topic at hand.
http://www.constitution.org/elec/elect000.htm Approaches to Electoral Reform, this one focuses on the problems that developed in the 20th century, particularly with the competition between political campaigning and all other forms of entertainment. Before the advent of the radio and television, people often traveled to hear great debates or read them in the newspapers and then talked to their neighbor about them because there was great interest in them because it had a value in keeping people's attention occupied. This doesn't exist today and I believe its why newspapers write articles like they do today and why politicians act the way they do now with their avoidance with intellectual debate (ever notice that on CSPAN, just one member of Congress on television ranting on and on by himself when 'debating' a bill).
http://www.constitution.org/col/03317_diffusion.htm Diffusion of Innovations, this article focuses on the problems with selling an innovation or message. Particularly how innovations are adopted as people divide themselves into groups. Its really hard for me to influence this woman because of how repetition likely convinced her; without me having to spend a considerable amount of time and effort, which I frankly don't have nor is it worth it for just one person.
There's allot of stuff that is involved and right now I'm convinced that the current lack of attention paid to politics is in direct correlation to the complexity to our problems. We've deferred our political debates for entertainment's sake and now we live in a dysfunctional world where Congress can legislate on issues it has nothing to do with, just so its members can seem popular and get reelected and this fosters the paternalism that now exists in government.
-- John O.
I was taking the libertarian route like I normally do but she suddenly switched and was totally against illegal immigration, despite everything she was saying about how bad Sheriff Joe was in his dealing with immigrants. I couldn't believe that she believed all the claims used against legal and illegal immigrants, particularly the claims that they come here to have their children as "anchor babies" and leach off of social welfare. Despite my counter that I have never seen such proof of claims, she insisted that it did happen and had seen it personally (a claim I doubt because it just hasn't been substantiated in statistics.)
This whole conversation really got me thinking that she's been following the news just enough to know about some of the issues and has accepted the common trends as fact because these themes have been reported on so often as of late. And has closed her mind to even small amounts of doubt to what she's been hearing. This has me worried that most people are following these trends because its easy to not pay attention to them except when they're made important by others.
This brings up a few articles written by Jon Roland that I really appreciate even though they're only partly related to the topic at hand.
http://www.constitution.org/elec/elect000.htm Approaches to Electoral Reform, this one focuses on the problems that developed in the 20th century, particularly with the competition between political campaigning and all other forms of entertainment. Before the advent of the radio and television, people often traveled to hear great debates or read them in the newspapers and then talked to their neighbor about them because there was great interest in them because it had a value in keeping people's attention occupied. This doesn't exist today and I believe its why newspapers write articles like they do today and why politicians act the way they do now with their avoidance with intellectual debate (ever notice that on CSPAN, just one member of Congress on television ranting on and on by himself when 'debating' a bill).
http://www.constitution.org/col/03317_diffusion.htm Diffusion of Innovations, this article focuses on the problems with selling an innovation or message. Particularly how innovations are adopted as people divide themselves into groups. Its really hard for me to influence this woman because of how repetition likely convinced her; without me having to spend a considerable amount of time and effort, which I frankly don't have nor is it worth it for just one person.
There's allot of stuff that is involved and right now I'm convinced that the current lack of attention paid to politics is in direct correlation to the complexity to our problems. We've deferred our political debates for entertainment's sake and now we live in a dysfunctional world where Congress can legislate on issues it has nothing to do with, just so its members can seem popular and get reelected and this fosters the paternalism that now exists in government.
-- John O.