CommentsVIEW FROM HERE - No government can function without social messaging. To the extent the government replies on power, however, facts and transparency are not tools for communication.
Rather, social messaging devolves into pro-government propaganda to convince the populace that everything is alright when almost nothing is right.
Suppose Timothy McVeigh, Osama Bin Laden and the January 6th Insurrections Were Right
They all thought something was seriously wrong and that their violent actions would rectify matters. While they were right that something is seriously wrong, they were wrong that their violence would improve anything. In this respect, they were similar to twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof who murdered nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina in 2015. He later said that Blacks were a threat to Whites, and no one was doing anything about it. Like Charlie Manson, he believed that his actions would spark a race war. The science of social messaging realizes that those at the extreme are harbingers whose message should be heeded.
McVeigh, OBL, the Insurrections and Roof Are Not Alone in Their Belief Something Is Very Wrong
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle also felt that something was seriously wrong with mankind and special precautions need be taken to ward off disaster.
Unlike the violently murderous approach, they focused on how to construct a fair and just society. The Bible also frets over mankind’s impulse toward evil. God tells Noah to build an ark to save his family as God is about the destroy all humanity due to its wickedness. Later, God decides that such wholesale destruction did not solve the problem as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah showed. Thus, God used surgical strikes of fire and brimstone, while that approach punished the Sodomites, God failed to reform humanity.
The Founding Fathers Also Felt That There Was Something Inherently Wrong
Before discussing the US Constitution, we need acknowledge that without violence, there would have been no US Constitution. In fact, when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the American Revolution was already under way. It had begun more than a year earlier on April 19, 1775 with the battles at Lexington and Concord. Thus, the belief that violence can lead to dramatic change has historical basis. These revolutionists, however, were extremely well educated and had a firm grasp of where prior governments had gone wrong. Their first attempt to fashion a government, the Articles of Confederation, proved naively ineffective. The Articles were too libertarian to create a functioning nation.
The US Constitution based itself upon two principles: (1) the Declaration’s individual inalienable rights, and (2) only power can constrain power. These documents had a revolutionary social message – that the individual’s inalienable rights were paramount. When men have the right to replace any government which fails to secure inalienable rights, the government has to adopt social messaging which is not devoted to keeping the ultra-wealthy remain in power. Instead, the government needs to lay the facts before the public.
As psychologists and sociologists will explain, however, publishing facts is not sufficient and at times facts can result in their rejection as a basis of action. Even in the best of times, emotion is more persuasive than logic, but when those who are in charge place their power above that of the common welfare, manipulative emotionalism rules the day. Then, the public treats social messaging as Fake News,
Today’s political parties abhor two things: (1) individual rights and (2) constrained power. Both the GOP and the Dem strive to gain total control and banish the other. Both believe that the other is evil and that only by destroying the other party can they alone save the nation. Neither has any use for facts – just the pretense of facts. While the Dems speak more about science, they use it as a club to bash people they dislike. They forget that while science is valid, scientists are men who often lie for personal gain.
For a while Joe Biden was making progress with his centrist policies until he was sabotaged on May 13, 2021 by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s statement that vaxed people could go maskless. This proclamation was not based on science or wise social messaging. Her statement launched the fourth Covid wave and pushed Biden into attacking the GOP voters, thereby ruining his centrist approach. Why Biden did not immediately fire Walensky is not known. Let's be very clear about this: The vax does not stop the Delta Variant! The only thing that will stop the Delta Variant is a mask and Walensky turned masks into a political football. When Biden allows Walensky to remain at the CDC after her sabotage of the national welfare, something is seriously wrong.
The Social Messaging Around Covid is Nearly Incoherent
We’ve had the Delta Variant for quite a while and matters were improving. If the dramatic increase in Covid cases was due to the infectious nature of the Delta Variant, we would not have had a steady downtrend in cases since January 2021. The CDC had to know the degree of infectiousness and had to know that something was holding it in check. The only thing was widespread mask wearing!
The correct social messaging was straightforward. The goal should be that everyone mask up until we reach herd immunity. That was Joe Biden’s goal for July 4th. It took either an incompetent or a saboteur to make not wearing a mask the national objective. Just as easily mask wearing could be a sign of unity, of E Pluribus Unum, of a free people voluntarily working to save the lives of fellow Americans. Instead, Walensky made vaxed people, i.e. Dems, into heroes who who need not mask up and the unvaxed GOP into the pariahs who had to wear the Scarlet Letter of a mask. Gee, what could go wrong with that messaging?
(Richard Lee Abrams is an attorney and lives in Los Angeles and is a regular contributor to CityWatch.)
