Today I had an interesting experience. I was assumed to be an insurrectionist after posting the summary of three news articles I'd read. One of them was from the Washington Post, titled "Capitol Siege Was Planned Online. Trump Supporters Now Planning the Next One." The other thing I'd done was Google "Pentagon Resignations Today"... and note that there have been no resignations in the Pentagon since Trump replaced high ranking officials in November. That was combined with the information from this article from Business Insider: Pentagon Hindered DC National Guard from Receiving Riot Gear or Interacting with Protesters without Explicit Orders from Trump's Defense Secretary.
The argument, apparently, was that if I were privy to this information, I must be one of them.
The thing is, and the news has said again and again, that these insurrections are planned in plain site, publicly, on line. Do you want to know what the goons are up to? READ THE NEWS... not just your curated news from your online aggregates; not just what you see your friends posting on FB.
We had a small riot here in Los Angeles on the 6th. Turns out, if you check the news, it may have been happening in your cities as well. Do you want to know if it's safe for you to be out and about in your city on a day that's politically sensitive? Just take a moment and do a search of the news. Choose credible sources, like AP and Reuters and Bloomberg and Business Insider. One of the things outlined in those articles is that there will be national protests by militia groups (that's folks with weapons for those of you still wearing blinders) in major cities all across the country. You won't see me downtown in LA on the 20th! I probably won't even leave my apartment.
The problem is this, people don't realize that when their news is curated that they'll only see what makes them happy. FB prioritizes posts that get "likes" and "loves", for instance. So if you post "angry", you are making that story LOWER in priority and will see less like it.
And that, combined with the fact that a lot of reporters were outside the Capitol with the people who were angry and milling about and not as motivated (or in some cases well trained) as those who actually broke into the building, saw the insurrection on the 6th as a bumbling failure, when, in fact, trained militants with zip ties and guns got into the House and Senate Chambers.
I, along with many of my friends, were unaware of the scope of what happened until more video started coming out. Instead, most of what I saw were people yelling, smashing cameras, and rushing the steps. People stealing "souvenirs" of their Capitol Building break in, and little old ladies in Trump gear looking lost in the chaos.
Then the memes came. My favorite was the guy scaling the wall who fell. I laughed hysterically at the one that was put to the Mario Brothers music, giggled a little at the sports broadcast play by play, and generally felt mollified and amused at the stupidity of these "Trumpsters".
I can see where keeping it there, seeing nothing else, hearing nothing else, talking about nothing else, can be vastly comforting.
The simple fact of the matter is, there is MORE. There is much more information coming out about the depth of this violent act, much more about the danger, and a lot of it is damn discomforting. There is more information about the leadership and motivation of these people, and while at first the news mollified us with the idea that they saw the futility of their actions and went home with their tails between their legs, a simple online search, and new news reporting, shows that there is more.
I understand the puzzlement some people feel about how to KNOW what the other side is doing. When I wrote my Masters, I wrote about information on the web, and that was YEARS ago. It's something I've kept up with, because I've always been hyper-aware that there is bias in what we see.
Most people realize if they search for a term, it'll be later reflected in the advertising they see. Go ahead. Search the word "dildo" in a couple days, most of the pages you visit will have ads for sex toys.
Sadly, it's pretty much the same for news. I know this first hand. I had NO national news on my Google News Ap on my phone for months... in part, because I had read the news on MSN and hadn't clicked those links, and instead had been reading about Star Trek Discovery and Dr Who. Now my feed is almost all entertainment news, and I'm CONSTANTLY swiping "do not show stories about..." because really, EVERY DAY literally see a dozen or more stories about JoJo Siwa and her battle relating to a board game with some age inappropriate components.
If you rely on what you've clicked, what FB or Google or MSN sees you've interacted positively with in the past, you will not see stories outside your own little echo chamber. Everything else becomes mysterious, and in times like this, suspect.
How many times have I heard when I post about current events have I heard "I never saw that!" or "I never heard that." or "Don't say that, you can't know"? Too many. The fact is the truth IS out there. And it's not inaccessible, it's just outside what is in your habit to look at.
Look at it. Because unless you know what's really happening out there, when it comes time to choose our leaders, to make choices about who we support (businesses or politicians!) and where it's safe to be, and where we need to be to make others safe, we can't know or effect positive change if we have blinded ourselves.
I've written a lot lately (here and elsewhere) about how we are not as "woke" as we think we are. Being "woke" isn't being in the special "woke person's echo chamber club" You don't get woke once and automatically know everything going on. Being woke takes work, and it's being woke to white privilege, it's being woke to political power, it's being woke to all the injustices going on in our nation, and the environment that sustains those injustices. It's being woke to the social air we breathe every day without any awareness of. It's being woke to the poison carried on that air.
They, the insurgents, the vile and violent traitors, can make their plans in plain site because so many of us (and by us I mean us liberals and progressives) are so willing to only look at the unicorns farting rainbows and daisies sprouting up in the paths behind them. And they SUCCEED in those plans because we decide to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and look the other way when they plot treason and murder in the halls of our most sacred of institutions.
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