Wow!   I didn’t think anyone would follow that link!  So here’s the deal.  This is long.  If you’re the kind that reads the last page first, I marked the last page with some asterisks down below.  Scroll on down.  If you get bored halfway through, scroll down to the asterisks before you leave.  I mean, you got that far.  And thanks in advance for taking a look.  Here we go…

Not all Dems want socialism.  
Not all Republicans want a wall.
Not all Dems want abortion.
Not all Republicans are against immigration.
Not all Dems want to delete the 2A.
Not all Republicans are racists.

Here is what I observe:

If you are a Republican, then all your social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and some of those others I don’t ever use – have systematically indoctrinated you to believe that all Democrats are the same, and they all want to take your house, enslave your children, and give your assets to the lazy.  The more extreme the article, the more quickly social media has pushed it to your feed.  Also, the pop-up articles that FB thinks you might want to read have incendiary titles and obviously biased.  But since this is all you ever see, you think all the Republicans in the country – not just you – believe these things about all Democrats, and if everyone believes them, they must be true.  If true, this is life or death, so you become willing to go to even greater extremes, and to believe even more radical charges about Democrats.  You come to see the “other side” not only as bad, but as pure evil, every one of them.

If you are a Democrat, your social media feed – even though it is from the very same exact people from which the Republicans are getting their feed - says that all Republicans want to walk around shooting anyone who disagrees with them, want the old west system of justice in every city and town in America, want to break up parents and children that are illegal or non-white so they can all have a good laugh about it in their “rich person palaces”, and want to keep poor people poor so they can keep all the money.  They want these things because let’s face it, Republicans are evil.  And not only are you getting all this from your social media, but if you are Democrat, the TV media is telling you that your social media feed is spot on!  

IF the two paragraphs above are true, then social media, and to some extent the mainstream media, is systematically dividing us.  They know they are doing it.  But here’s the thing.   They aren’t doing it because THEY are socialist baby-killing gun-slinging anarchist immigrant abusers.  They don’t even care about those things.  They just want you to stay on Facebook, or Twitter, or your news channel absolutely as long as they can possibly keep you there, because the longer you’re there, the more commercials they can feed you, and for every one of those commercials they get in front of you, they get paid.  They just want to get paid, and never mind the “unintended consequence” of a politically polarized country.

To keep you interested, they show you only the things that will so incense you, so aggravate you, so scare you to death of the “other side” that you dare not stop reading!  They keep records of what you look at the longest, and they give you more of that.  In a manner of speaking they are selling guns to both sides!  And the longer it goes on, the better they get at selling, and so the more guns they sell.  Where do you think this is going to lead?

Those are the basic.  I’m going to get a little political now.  I think that we are seeing an increase in the number of people in this country who think socialism might be a better way to go.  Those people are out there.  But I don’t think that is why Joe Biden got elected President.  I don’t think there are enough people leaning that way to swing an election.  I think the leadership of the Democratic Party wanted to win this election at any cost, and if they could pull in these relatively new but numerous voters willing to try socialism, it would certainly help.  Same thing with gender identification voters, BLM voters, slavery reparations voters, abortion rights voters, and so on.  There are not nearly so many of these truly radical people out there as we Republicans are being led to believe.  What’s happening is that they are being given a disproportionately loud voice, which makes us think they are the majority.

I think the Democrats would claim to be in favor of killing Grandmothers if they thought that would pull in a significant number of votes.  Doesn’t mean they’re really going to do any of it either.  Not for one minute do I believe my neighbor who has been voting Democrat his whole life wants any of those things.  He may hate one or two of them less than I hate them, but he would never be FOR socialism.  If you really stop and think about it, I doubt you know three people who truly want ALL those things, either.  

Here’s another thing.  I don’t believe Nancy Pelosi is for all of those things.  I don’t think Joe Biden is for all those things.  They just want votes, and they want to stay in office and do whatever it is they do in that office.  Let’s face it.  Politicians in both parties very often get wealthy while in office…somehow they do.  So they want to stay in office.  Nancy cares no more about what gender you identify with than Trump does.  They both want your vote, and they are both taking calculated risks as to which voters they are willing to cultivate.

But enough about the evil Democrats.  Let’s look at the other side.  First, let’s face some facts.  Trump seemed absolutely determined to incite as much vitriolic anger and outright hatred from Democrats in Washington – and indirectly from all over the country – as he possibly could.  Yes they were out to get him, but it seemed like he thought it was his job to flaunt the fact that they couldn’t in their faces.  That was never going to make them stop.  Instead, it made them more determined.  It’s really a bad idea to demean the other team before the national playoff game.  We all know that, right?  But that’s what Trump constantly did for the whole four years he was in office.  He did it to feed his ego.  Feeding your own ego is rarely going to be the best thing for the country.  

It is easy for Republicans to blame socialists, George Soros, Zuckerberg, and/or cheating for the Democratic win.  But if we’re honest, Trump might well be responsible for more Democrats getting out to vote than Joe and Kamala ever dreamed of recruiting.  Joe Biden won because he carried the “hate vote”.  That is also a lot of the reason Trump won in 2016.  It hurts, but I am convinced it is true.  So we have had consecutive presidential elections that were less about what is best for our country and more about how to keep the other side – the evil side - from ruining the country.  That is sad, and it is hard evidence that something serious is, and has been steering us all apart for a very long time.

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So what is the net result of all this?  Your social media doesn’t care what you think, they just want to sell you advertising.  Your political party doesn’t care what you think, they just want your vote.  But both of these are doing everything in their power to convince you that the other side – whichever side that may be – doesn’t merely disagree with you, they want to sneak into your house at night, steal your money, kick your dog, and carry your children off to re-education camp.  

Historically, the only time we have seen such a directed effort to make the American people hate someone was when we were at war.  This time, we are being manipulated to hate each other for profit and votes.  It isn’t even technically propaganda!  With this kind of incitement on both sides, it is no wonder we have violence in the streets, and I don’t just mean earlier this week at the Capitol.  Violence has become almost the rule instead of the exception in cases of political disagreement.

So what’s to be done?  I submit that if is social media that is at the root of this division, then we have to start there with the solution.  So, the first thing you do, so you know I’m not making all this up, is get on Netflix and watch a documentary called “The Social Dilemma”.  It looks like it would be boring.  It is not boring, it is jaw-dropping.

After watching this documentary, it occurred to me that there is only one way to avoid being manipulated.  WAIT!!!!!  I am not saying delete all your social media accounts and stomp your phone to death like a bad printer!  No one is going to do that, and we don’t have to do that.  The way to beat this is to use the phone as the tool it originally was instead of letting the phone use us!  

Want to see what your friends are saying on Facebook?  Do not, I repeat do not, go to your feed to find out.  Facebook decided who will be in your feed.  Those friends are there to manipulate you, to keep you on Facebook as long as possible.  So instead, go to your friends list and start at the top and go through the list.  Do A-K today and L-Z tomorrow, or divide your list into fourths.  Maybe have a list of a dozen friends you want to check on every day.  Find something that works for you but DO NOT look at your feed!!!

If you do Facebook this way for a week, as I did, here are some things you’ll learn:  You don’t agree 100% with all your friends.  You don’t disagree 100% with ANY of your friends.  Most of your friends are about as normal as you and just want to live their lives, enjoy their families, and take a nice vacation once or twice a year.  Even your friends from the “other side” want these same things that you want!  You will find that you are much less inclined to unfriend your friends over pictures of their dog or cat than over some propaganda article they’ve linked that infuriates you just by the title.  You will start to appreciate that those friends posting those articles do not yet realize they are being manipulated to manipulate their own friends.  Maybe you should tell them.  You will find that when you don’t see all those posts that make you angry and afraid every day, you won’t spend your days angry and afraid.  And even better, you will stop sharing the incendiary posts that are made to aggravate the other side.  If enough people stop pouring gasoline on this fire, I believe the fire will die down, and then go out!

If you read this far…you’re are the only one!  Thanks for hearing me out.  I do know that the problems in this country are a lot more complicated than I’ve made them out to be.  BUT, I also truly believe that we are being divided so some can make more money, so others can have more power.  And if we put the brakes on that bit of manipulation first, then we can identify the next worst offender, and start dealing with that.  In the same way it isn’t just one problem, there is not just one solution.  We have to start somewhere, and this is something we can all do.  Please please please don’t take my word for it.  Go watch that video!