My late father was trained as a flight engineer on Halifax bombers during WWII. He was a member of the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) that became part of the RAF's bomber command. His older sister, my aunt Leonie, was a radio operator at bomber command and her husband, my uncle Bill, was also a member of the RCAF. He trained pilots in Britain.
My mother's father was too old to serve in combat but he was a fully fledged electrician to he spent the war as a sergeant in the RCAF installing radar equipment.
Near the time of his death in 2022 my father told me that his greatest disappointment in life was that the United Nations was not able to put an end to wars.
He lived through the first Trump administration. He said that since the US was a democracy it would eventually sideline someone like Trump. He had some faith in the US electorate.
I think he would it would have broken his heart to see the re-emergence of the far right wing in so many western countries. He and his generation were obliged to fight and die in order to defend themselves and their allies against the consequences of the rise to power of far right wing political movements.
I think it is pretty clear that Musk has embraced these right wing movements and has supported Trump because Musk sees an opportunity to impose his will on a world that he disparages. I think he sees himself as a superior being who believes that he can fix what ails the world.
Even people who have been living under a rock for the past 50 years know what a Nazi salute looks like. And if there was any doubt that Musk has "drunk the Kool-Aid" his open support for many emergent right wing parties in Europe should put paid to that notion.
It is absolutely true that the gesture for sending love is to touch one's heart and swipe your arm in an arc towards your audience with palm up. Palm down is a military gesture.
I have the distinct impression that a dormant axis sitting among us and ready to redeploy what was ultimately its most potent and dangerous instrument, the studied and well-oiled machinery of propaganda, has managed to win, not the battlefield, but certainly the heart and shouls of western democracies. This is why I find it significant that the political architecture has been so engineered that it has managed to balkanised our polities and turned even our parents, brothers or nephews into their ideological agents.
I think that any society is willing to accept propaganda as fact when a large portion of that society is angry or frustrated or simply feels that the world that once was fair is no longer fair. Far too many Americans feel that they are no longer on the "arc" that leads to the traditional notion of prosperity. Rather than turning to experts for guidance they now see that said experts wield too much influence in a world where things have gone "bad". The thinking is that the experts must be corrupt, or at the very least, in league with the ever shrinking portion of the population that is seen to be prosperous.
With respect to current levels of balkanization I have to wonder if what we are experiencing now was the norm in the 19th century when every political party had its own newspaper. I don't know if this was true in every western country but in Britain, the US, and Canada almost every city had daily newspapers aligned with each of the major political parties. One of my ancestors was the editor of "the" Conservative newspaper of Liverpool.
Radio and, then, television changed how news was curated. Broadcasting required a huge capital investment that could only be made by large corporate entities. Broadcasters sent their news across entire countries paid for by advertisers who wanted to sell their products, again, all across the country.
The big broadcasters were always focused on the great grouping of people at the "centre" of the political spectrum so all news was "shaped" so that it reflected widely accepted norms and great care was taken not to offend anyone. I believe that this led to a great de-balkanization which was the norm I grew up in.
The emergence of cable television in the US made it possible for smaller news/entertainment sources to get access to almost all the homes in the US. The same was true here in Canada. This created an opening for "news" that catered to much smaller target markets -such as disgruntled people on the right. I think re-balkanizations started with cable news in the US.
Now, of course, virtually anybody in the west has access to the eyes and ears of everyone who speaks English, the new lingua franca.
In essence the art of gossip has been elevated to levels never before imagined. I see the current balkanization as a direct consequence of people switching from paid for news curated by journalists to free gossip generated by virtually anyone. "Influencers" get instant feedback regarding how well the "message" they "sent" a few hours ago appealed to the masses. The "massage" can be modified in real time to reach out to AND maintain an ever larger audience.
Silos are making some people rich so new silos will be constructed with every passing day.
I think that the public rejection of modern journalism is a big part of the problem. I think we must also realize that such professional journalism probably only emerged sometime in the twentieth century.
My late father was trained as a flight engineer on Halifax bombers during WWII. He was a member of the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) that became part of the RAF's bomber command. His older sister, my aunt Leonie, was a radio operator at bomber command and her husband, my uncle Bill, was also a member of the RCAF. He trained pilots in Britain.
My mother's father was too old to serve in combat but he was a fully fledged electrician to he spent the war as a sergeant in the RCAF installing radar equipment.
Near the time of his death in 2022 my father told me that his greatest disappointment in life was that the United Nations was not able to put an end to wars.
He lived through the first Trump administration. He said that since the US was a democracy it would eventually sideline someone like Trump. He had some faith in the US electorate.
I think he would it would have broken his heart to see the re-emergence of the far right wing in so many western countries. He and his generation were obliged to fight and die in order to defend themselves and their allies against the consequences of the rise to power of far right wing political movements.
I think it is pretty clear that Musk has embraced these right wing movements and has supported Trump because Musk sees an opportunity to impose his will on a world that he disparages. I think he sees himself as a superior being who believes that he can fix what ails the world.
Even people who have been living under a rock for the past 50 years know what a Nazi salute looks like. And if there was any doubt that Musk has "drunk the Kool-Aid" his open support for many emergent right wing parties in Europe should put paid to that notion.
It is absolutely true that the gesture for sending love is to touch one's heart and swipe your arm in an arc towards your audience with palm up. Palm down is a military gesture.
I have the distinct impression that a dormant axis sitting among us and ready to redeploy what was ultimately its most potent and dangerous instrument, the studied and well-oiled machinery of propaganda, has managed to win, not the battlefield, but certainly the heart and shouls of western democracies. This is why I find it significant that the political architecture has been so engineered that it has managed to balkanised our polities and turned even our parents, brothers or nephews into their ideological agents.
I will write that post soonish.
I think that any society is willing to accept propaganda as fact when a large portion of that society is angry or frustrated or simply feels that the world that once was fair is no longer fair. Far too many Americans feel that they are no longer on the "arc" that leads to the traditional notion of prosperity. Rather than turning to experts for guidance they now see that said experts wield too much influence in a world where things have gone "bad". The thinking is that the experts must be corrupt, or at the very least, in league with the ever shrinking portion of the population that is seen to be prosperous.
With respect to current levels of balkanization I have to wonder if what we are experiencing now was the norm in the 19th century when every political party had its own newspaper. I don't know if this was true in every western country but in Britain, the US, and Canada almost every city had daily newspapers aligned with each of the major political parties. One of my ancestors was the editor of "the" Conservative newspaper of Liverpool.
Radio and, then, television changed how news was curated. Broadcasting required a huge capital investment that could only be made by large corporate entities. Broadcasters sent their news across entire countries paid for by advertisers who wanted to sell their products, again, all across the country.
The big broadcasters were always focused on the great grouping of people at the "centre" of the political spectrum so all news was "shaped" so that it reflected widely accepted norms and great care was taken not to offend anyone. I believe that this led to a great de-balkanization which was the norm I grew up in.
The emergence of cable television in the US made it possible for smaller news/entertainment sources to get access to almost all the homes in the US. The same was true here in Canada. This created an opening for "news" that catered to much smaller target markets -such as disgruntled people on the right. I think re-balkanizations started with cable news in the US.
Now, of course, virtually anybody in the west has access to the eyes and ears of everyone who speaks English, the new lingua franca.
In essence the art of gossip has been elevated to levels never before imagined. I see the current balkanization as a direct consequence of people switching from paid for news curated by journalists to free gossip generated by virtually anyone. "Influencers" get instant feedback regarding how well the "message" they "sent" a few hours ago appealed to the masses. The "massage" can be modified in real time to reach out to AND maintain an ever larger audience.
Silos are making some people rich so new silos will be constructed with every passing day.
I think that the public rejection of modern journalism is a big part of the problem. I think we must also realize that such professional journalism probably only emerged sometime in the twentieth century.