The Alternative Facts that Led to Insurrection

Most of us know someone who occasionally slips in a talking point from Rupert Murdoch’s editorial pages. It’s not fair to cast them immediately into Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.” We’re all to blame for those opinions being pushed and so often believed; every one of us who has ever tolerated alternative facts shares in the guilt and responsibility for their current gross manipulations. 

Today we have big oil shouting their concerns for the environment and the world's sustainable future. We have banks desperate for us to know how much they want to help us make the most of our money. We are ruled by the promise of trickle-down economics, now thirty years old and yet to start trickling. We have overtly sexualised underage models promoting everything except the age of consent. We have public utilities privatised and ruled by investors, and we have allowed science to take a back seat and be overlooked unless its outcome makes a profit. 

Capitalism is the most efficient model for harnessing human greed and ingenuity. The downside is that it rewards the carnival barker and their exaggerations and half-truths.  P.T Barnum is immortalised for his ability to double talk his way into profit, and his success reveals complicity in allowing all those variations of the truth to go unchallenged.

At first, it was treated as a joke. How cheeky we said when the Superbowl seat we paid for arrived in the mail – a small two-inch seat with the words Superbowl printed on the backrest.

Then we never asked for the Ponds Institute’s address or questioned why tobacco being toasted seemed more significant than smoking causing cancer. When the fossil fuel industry set our planet on fire for profit, and the Ponzi scheme of economic growth required a global economy to keep the wealth growing, we just nodded and accepted the situation, pacified by larger televisions and technological wizardry. We no longer pause to think about containers with false bottoms or packaging of mostly air. We overlook discounts that drop the price while reducing quality or size. We’re so used to looking the other way that there was no mechanism in place to stop America’s election being declared invalid for two whole months. Everyone who could have done something was looking the other way out of habit.

Russia, China, Poland, Brazil, the Philippines and others have created pseudo-democratic states that have long lost the battle to alternative facts. Their governments declare everything being done is for their people. They care so much they are willing to kill those people to ensure their beneficial system remains in place.

We have allowed our truth to be skewed incrementally over many generations. A considerable percentage of our populations believe nothing can be done to redress the inequality of wealth and power; that the system is both too big and too broken to change.

Simultaneously, the patriarchal, white, wealthy, Christian, cis-gendered, abled, skinny privileged members of society are screaming they are being attacked. They’re not. They’re just being asked to share – to enjoy the same benefits as others. Suggest women should have equal rights, and those who currently hold power will shout about being attacked and victimised. Suggest systemic racism, and they defend, deflect and undermine. To someone standing at the top of the pile, being asked to be equal feels like an attack.

Suddenly the truth is being massaged to sell a product or hide an inconvenient truth to maintain the current system’s foundations. We didn’t arrive here overnight. It took decades and began with the smallest and seemingly most trivial incursions on the truth; “It’s advertising. We expect them to stretch the truth.” “They’re politicians; they’re not expected to keep their promises.” We allowed ourselves to end up here by allowing the truth to be continually tested and pushed further away from fact. 

We have all fallen victim to the seemingly inconsequential effect of micro-aggressions against facts.

Microaggressions are trivial misdemeanours against anything. They can exist in all forms: speech, action, attitudes, stories, emotions, bureaucracy, etc. Complaining about any single issue comes across as trivial and paints those complaining as being overly sensitive or out of touch with the real world – a snowflake. When there are tens of thousands of these subtle, nuanced, inbuilt negative comments, actions or attitudes, adopted and accepted by a community as acceptable, whatever target of these negative micro-aggressions loses standing. This can certainly happen to a minority: women, people of colour, LGBTQI+, those with disabilities, the overweight, elderly and on and on. It has also happened to the truth and a lack of factual information being reported when that information paints the rich and powerful negatively.

Micro-aggressions against the truth come in many forms.

‘What-about-ism’ is used by those being called out to highlight any hypocrisy by those arguing against them. “He says he wants tighter gun controls, but he has a gun licence.” The two issues have no direct correlation, but pointing out the person wanting to limit access to firearms also owns a gun sets up a false narrative that their argument is disingenuous.

Appealing to the extremes is also popular in replacing facts. “If we allow gay marriage, we’ll end up with people marrying animals.” This plays to the fear of an issue being a gateway for far worse things.

A straw-man argument is where an entirely new proposition is raised, and an alternative proposition is refuted rather than the original. “We should promote riding bicycles in cities to reduce emissions and slow global warming.” “When you give cyclists priority on city streets they run red lights and endanger pedestrians.” The straw-man argument often has merit and needs to be addressed, and a good straw-man argument will seem to be related, but both issues existing don’t cancel each other out.

False equivalency is an argument that draws two things together because of shared characteristics. “Why are you suddenly so alarmed by Donald Trump telling thirty thousand lies when Hillary Clinton has at least that many missing emails?” Once again, two issues don’t need to be mutually exclusive and can each be addressed. The advice given to four-year-olds of two wrongs not making a right never grows old.

Arguing from false ignorance is also used incredibly effectively by those with large platforms who intend to manipulate, incite, and fear-monger to gain and maintain an audience rather than have a genuine debate on an issue. This is how most shock jocks work. “How do our energy prices keep going up? Every year we pay more. Is this a result of the ‘do-gooders’ radicalising and demonising fossil fuels? It may well be.”

There is no argument here. It’s a series of statements designed to guide thought without ever citing factual information. Fox News uses this question led journalism all the time as their question mark chyron guides viewers from behind the network’s cloak of false ignorance – “Hillary Clinton – Guilty?” “Climate Change – A hoax to harm fossil fuel production?” Could be, we don’t know, we’re only raising the question.

Fox News has quietly transitioned out of their slogan, “Fair and Balanced,” to “The Most Watched, The Most Trusted,” and now, “Standing up for what’s right.” They’ve also transitioned their news to run early with prime-time now ‘Opinion’ although the personalities presenting opinion seem, in every way to be traditional news presenters.

This is how so many people have been courted and seduced into a world of the grand conspiracy theory.

It’s easy to dismiss the believers of alien lasers, JFK Jnr coming to save us, of a paedophile Kabul of lefties operating out of a pizza shop or any derivation of the more traditional conspiracies that involve minorities, religions, immigrants and foreigners organising coordinated attacks against a lifestyle that is felt to be disappearing. That lifestyle never actually existed, except in the romanticised memories of youth that seem simpler, more comfortable and happier.

It’s much harder to dismiss those we respect and love who only occasionally throw out a ‘Fox-bomb’ of misinformation into a family gathering, bringing a conversation to a dead-halt. It is hard to be the dissenting voice and draw the ire of ruining the family gathering. It is hard to raise an opposing opinion to those who are often more experienced and sometimes better educated. It is arrogant to assume your opinion is more valid than theirs and a cardinal sin to lump all opinions that differ to yours into a ‘basket of deplorables’ or any other condescending phrase.

We have travelled a long road to get to where we are today, and it is not all Donald Trump's doing, or Fox News, or big oil, or big pharma, or any of the other major ‘players’ that have taken advantage of political and social winds to build a market. We are all complicit. Every slide in ethics and quality, every excuse to forgo service and value, every unchallenged assumption or opinion in the face of facts that we’ve allowed to go unchecked has brought us to this place.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with someone wholeheartedly buying into the politics of the left, even though I have seen with my own eyes a generation of people raised under socialism and accustomed to a living wage, bereft of motivation and drive to better their lives.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone wholeheartedly buying into the politics of the right, even though many free-market policies tend to help those already making ends meet while reducing the standard of living for those who are not.

Perhaps you fall somewhere in the middle, taking a few of the better policies from both sides to satisfy the capitalist and socialist at war within. Both sides have advantages and bring benefit to many – but not all.

I’m not sure it’s possible to satisfy everyone. This is why governing a large, modern population is so complicated and often is reduced to the politics of compromise. The human race survives off personal greed and diversity. These strengths make universal policy if not impossible, then highly improbable.

I think it’s wrong to argue against any idea or cause because of partisan politics. I think it’s wrong to disallow an opinion on any grounds without clear thought and a thorough investigation into merit and weakness. It’s inexcusable to go forward with any idea, big or small, without exploring, studying and considering the facts. Truth matters. Things that can be proven should be accepted in the face of that proof. Arguments based on expert analysis deserve to be considered. People’s measures and tactics to argue a cause need to be understood, identified, exposed, and disclosed. Opinions and news need to be labelled and separated. We need to be reminded and educated to think for ourselves. Everyone needs to be encouraged to form their own opinion and reminded of how to find and use facts to inform those opinions. 

Don’t tell Pop he’s racist. That’s rude and shows a lack of diplomacy and respect. Give Granddad the facts without spin or argumentative trickery; just the facts. If he still thinks we should only allow immigration until the point where we have all ‘their’ recipes, then let him know you disagree and diplomatically let him know his ideas aren't welcome because he's ignoring quantifiable facts.

People are allowed to have different opinions, but make sure they also have the facts; unbiased, unspun, un-manipulated facts – because facts matter, science matters, experts matter. Opinions without the facts included belong on the other side of the shop with the rest of the fiction. 

Donald Trump and the Angry Voter

Recently a rich man with a microphone declared Millenials could afford to buy a house if they stopped eating at cafes. Given a trip to a cafe is around twenty dollars and the cheapest house is about three hundred thousand, there was a wave of incredulous anger from Millenials.

The middle-aged, privileged white guy was from a group of like-minded souls who also loudly claim there's no issue with racism, no religious or sexual intolerance and certainly no sexism in our communities. When an indigenous appointment was made to champion issues of indigenous people, the same group pointed out being born in this country made them indigenous, so they saw the appointment as an attack against them.

That's how those in the best seats see most issues involving others asking for a fair share - as an attack against them.

It's that extraordinary lack of awareness from those in power that is incubating so much anger amongst so many people.

Brexit came and went and the media concentrated on the few who never bothered to find out what Brexit actually was. The sound bites were of people admitting, had they taken the time to find out what leaving the EU entailed, they would never have voted to Brexit. No one spent much time concentrating on how many voted out of anger; a protest by the powerless against those in power; of people feeling locked out of a system that is slowly stripping away their enjoyment of life; a system that excludes more and more with every generation; Voters who wanted change to anything else.

The past twenty-five years have produced unparalleled global economic growth. Globally we are richer than we have ever been before and yet, as individuals, more of us are being relegated to jobs where the staples of life need to be budgeted and personal sacrifices are made on a daily basis.

Governments have lost the ability to represent the people because of a convoluted and complicated process making it impossible to get anything done that doesn't benefit, in some way, those with enough power to influence the vote.

This leaves your average person with no representation.

There would be no need for government if you could rely on everyone to do the right thing and ensure safeguards were respected and the weak were never exploited. We all know that's not human nature - some people need to have common sense decisions legislated in order to do the right thing in the race for that extra dollar.

If that's not the government's job, then why have a government? And that's why people are so mad. More and more it seems the entire regulatory system has lost sight of the individual and sided with those racing to earn that extra dollar.

People are angry. They see their own circumstances getting worse, their real wage decreasing, their job opportunities shrinking, their children's futures being traded away. Leaving the European Union was a vote to change the system; a vote by many to vent their frustrations and express their festering anger.

Now it's America's turn. Donald trump is the protest vote; Hillary represents the entrenched system. If Trump wins he will be a single term president because the protest is in the vote, not in the presidency.

The problem is the system is too entrenched to wind back. Like global warming, it's too late to undo the damage. It's the lobbyists and party politics that forbids either side from supporting a good idea. There are favoured industries and the provision of resources and safeguards are delivered unequally across various industries and demographics for any number of vested interests.

We should have protested when the legal decision was handed down declaring companies were people - that was the point of no return. If companies are people, they are the very worst amongst us. They are certainly not the people we want governing us and yet, that is where we've landed.

Our government bends to accommodate big business and we, in turn, are being governed the way a business governs itself. Big business is responsible for a complicated system of tricky political shuffling, that spins itself as righteous while delivering nothing that helps the average, conscientious, hard working, individual and everything that helps a large corporation flourish. That's why so many are angry and frustrated and ready to cast their vote to the wind - it's another vote for anything else.

The motives driving a large company, the arbitrary indicators they use to make decisions, the monetary bonus system encouraging immoral behaviour, and the corporate structure that keeps those decisions at arm's length from those the decisions impact upon, explain why so many are left feeling helpless, shut out and simmering for change.

A company strives to be successful - to make a profit and to increase that profit year on year. It expands and invests and grows. If all goes well it becomes a large corporation or even a multi-national. It buys up smaller companies to become even larger. Where you once had thousands of small companies across a nation providing a similar service or product and striving to satisfy their individual customer's needs to grow their customer base, you now have a single company. A single big company that really doesn't care about any individual customer.

If it's lucky enough to be a new technology company with intellectual property that gave it an open market, or if it grows big enough to be declared "too big to fail" it may find itself with a relative monopoly - a duopoly or oligopoly. Either way, competition to keep it in check is sparse or relatively absent. We've been here before - Teddy Roosevelt used the Sherman Act to break up the huge corporate monopolies that he felt were acting on greed above all else in making their corporate decisions - and given their monopolies the only way to reign them in was to break those companies up - to reverse their growth.

Donald Trump is no Teddy Roosevelt. Donald Trump is his own billion dollar, multi-national corporation. No one seems to think a relative monopoly is a problem anymore - in fact, it's seen as the pinnacle of success in our current markets - these logo marked behemoths take on the rest of the world and are championed by governments with a sort of nationalistic pride.

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If you break down the corporate mentality it's easy to see why those outside the corporate clubs are growing so disenchanted. Once a company reaches giant status and controls a large percentage of the market it becomes relatively bullet proof. It now has power, influence and, alongside its fellow giant corporations, the means to control the economy. The companies are left to make crucial life changing decisions that affect us all. Through political influence and economic power, they have become the government by proxy.

Corporate decisions that affect so many use one overriding measure - their share price. Their spin departments put other concerns front and centre, boasting of all the good they do - the oil companies fund projects to protect the environment, the fast food industry sponsors athletic events and clothing and high-tech companies fund education for young people in third world nations. Bless! But their core business undermines that work a thousand times over and is driven by that one number - their share price. No one is truly gullible enough to believe that's not their primary concern, regardless of what their very expensive corporate slogans, altruistic philanthropy and catchy tag lines might tell us.

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Over time, in an effort to keep their share price rising, the company cuts. It cuts staff. It cuts expenses. It cuts everything it can cut - right down to the dollop of jam on your favourite biscuit - see it getting smaller? And the actual biscuit also gets smaller, maybe only by 25grams, but your biscuit of happiness is shrinking, also the layer of chocolate covering your biscuit of happiness is thinner - cut, cut, cut.

In difficult times the corporations shed jobs like leaves in autumn and in good times they hire back, but not the people they cut in those bad times. Those people are now adrift. Their years of dedication to the company count for nothing because a company is a person without morals or emotions so it has no loyalty. When it hires back it hires younger, newer graduates who work for less than those fired. Maybe they even start an intern program offering debt-ridden graduates the honour of working for free to gain experience. Either way, it's a net gain. Happy shareholders - bigger bonuses.

And when the company has cut everything it can possibly cut - they cut contingencies. Yes, you heard me, they cut the fail-safes - the time, the money, the people built into their system to make sure what they do is done, not just well, but safely - cut, cut, cut.

The company is a person with no moral compass remember - its compass comes directly from the health of the share price and the pumping heart of a healthy share price is an increasing profit. So they run their production line or provide their service on a razor's edge. They don't remove the fail-safes completely - things like maintenance still exist, but they only budget for just enough. Protocols get tightened, reduced or cut altogether so by day's end they have not one cent being spent above the absolute minimum needed, not one minute of anyone's time unutilized, not one extra bolt used to secure the machine.

And everything is calculated on the perfect execution and running of their production line, or provision of service. Of course, this also means if a butterfly flaps it's wings once more than predicted in their optimal modelling - everyone suffers. Well, maybe not everyone - those running the company still get paid and receive their bonuses - but you, the consumer, the end user, the client, you don't get what you thought you were getting. You certainly don't get what you paid for and you absolutely don't get what your taxes paid for.

Instead of leaving in place or even building in contingencies to their process, the company now runs workshops and training sessions with glossy posters that declare really warm and comforting platitudes towards staff, such as, "We're part of your team" or "We're all in this together", but really - that's not true. The company know full well they're now working on a razor's edge and that things will go wrong.

But the cost of those things going wrong, the things that cause the consumer time, money and aggravation, are cheaper to cover up and apologise for than the cost of ensuring they never happen in the first place.

The bottom line is it costs a company less to inconvenience people for a short time than to run with contingencies in place to prevent those shortfalls from ever occurring. It's a net gain to the company to have the consumer periodically inconvenienced. They'll swear they're sorry - but really they're not, because, in the long run, it's a win to their bottom line, a boost to their share price and an increase to the manager's bonus incentive scheme.

Of course, every now and again a catastrophic failure occurs and maybe a few people die. Maybe lots. Maybe none, just lots of injuries and people's livelihoods get taken away. The number crunchers will calculate how often such a disaster is likely to happen and calculate the net gain made by averaging all the years that disaster didn't happen. Can you say shareholder happiness - can you say bonus?

When one of these corporate catastrophes does occur the company reverts to a routine we're all very familiar with - the after the fact investigation and transparent report. When something collapses and takes people's lives the company will hold an investigation and declare it the most rigorous in recent history, their training and safety record will be held up as 'world class' and they'll publicise how they've gone above and beyond what they are 'legally' required to do to ensure such a thing never happens again. They may even hire a respected former judge or politician to head up the investigation and make it truly independent. That's how much they want everyone to know what happened was an unavoidable freak event, that, even though it wasn't their fault - they will fix and make certain it is never repeated.

Harvard Busines Review Article

The truth is the disaster happened because the company cut everything they could possibly cut including all but the bare minimum of contingencies - but... net gain, shareholder happiness, bonuses coming. You know the drill.

So who in the end are the winners and losers? The company wins, those managers who hold onto their jobs win, the shareholders, and a handful called in to investigate the disaster all come out ahead.

The losers are the people injured, killed or who lost their livelihood - they obviously lose. Then the workers blamed for the incident - they're screwed - even though the cuts made by the company forced them to cut corners in order to keep their jobs.

The customers of the company get screwed every time the lack of contingencies cause a problem. This turns out to be quite often because the projected optimal running was calculated as an average and averages make things seem orchestrated and manageable on paper, when in the real world products and services are used by consumers in bursts, with peaks and troughs to usage for any number of reasons.

The moment one of these reasons comes along - the whole system fails and people are inconvenienced and get frustrated, but as long as it's not too many - the company doesn't really mind. They have millions of customers - they're a duopoly remember, or at worst an extremely lucrative oligopoly; too big to fail also means too big to care. A large corporation's true response to a frustrated individual is - "Bite Me."

Of course, if you can attract a few thousand to join your outrage then the company will roll back the "bite me" remark. They'll issue an unreserved apology and find someone in the chain to blame, citing their recent HR training program that clearly listed "bite me" as an inappropriate response. Shareholders happy, managers happy, bonuses on track.

Have you ever tried to contact a company you're unhappy with? Chances are you can't find any details of how to contact them. YOU'RE AN INDIVIDUAL! Have you not been listening? They do not care about you individually. Get yourself 9,999 followers and then they may listen. You'll still have to solve the problem of how to contact them - but if you post your complaint on social media and get noticed by ten thousand others, the company will most likely contact you.

If you do try to go it alone and contact a large company to complain about your individual frustration - you sweet, optimistic child - chances are the best you'll do is to get the automated phone labyrinth that always starts with choices allowing new business to jump the queue.
"If you're calling about our new premium football channel, press one. for all other enquiries, press seven, for the levels of hell you're about to travel."

You press and progress and get some music and press again and finally get to speak to a call centre in a third world nation where real people are trained to care about individuals at two-thirds the price.

Call centres, bank tellers, retail and service attendants are now some of the lowest paid and highest stressed people in our modern economy. The system of cutting everything that can possibly be cut is responsible. These workers who are nowhere near a job they want to be in, nowhere near a job that leads to a career or attracts a bonus of any kind are the ones who have to deal with an increasingly angry public.

From - Secret Diary of a Call Centre - Kindle

They are then asked to work overtime, "Could you work longer because it would really help us out?" And sure, once or twice is fine, but when that request gets made every single day to at least one employee - it's not to help them out, it's an orchestrated managerial tactic that exploits workers by trading their loyalty and goodwill for a management system that doesn't cater for any excess.

The company would rather run short whenever a wave of customers arrive than spend on one worker too many. Again, it's a way of saving, of cutting costs. Why have a superfluous worker standing around for six hours out of eight when you can just emotionally blackmail a worker already working to give you an extra two hours of their leisure time? That's a big tick for the supervisor, a gold star for managers and happy shareholders - once again we've arrived at bonus time.

Of course, there are two economies - the skilled and the unskilled. Have you ever considered that a law firm will not question an invoice from another lawyer for $250 per hour for a professional opinion, but they'll question and complain about every single invoice their cleaners lodge at $20 per hour?

That lawyer is worth $250 an hour, by the way, they worked very hard at university learning all the intricacies of the law and then passed the bar and have years and years of experience in order to become an expert in a specific field, so their opinion carries a high price. I'm not arguing they aren't worth the money. I'm questioning why the cleaner has to fight for their fee of $20 an hour to scrape the shit off those lawyer's toilet bowls, but the lawyer's fee is paid without any question.

And here's the real point of this whole rant - more and more millennials, having done the work, thrown themselves into debt getting qualified - are graduating to a choice of not having a job or cleaning our toilets - either metaphorically or literally.

Do you want to know why Brexit happened? Why Trump is now in striking distance of being the most powerful man in the world? It's because more and more people are cleaning up shit left by those with the greatest wealth and the most privilege. If Trump wins, it's not a vote for Trump, because as Obama points out, Trump is well and truly part of the entrenched system and very unlikely to help those on an hourly wage who have been left behind - the vote for him will be a vote in anger, a protest from a huge and growing number who have no other way to voice their anger but to vote badly.

Even more worryingly, if Trump doesn't win - the next Trump will. Maybe he'll be savvier and make less - 'grabbing pussy' remarks. Maybe time will erase Trump's memory enough for the next Trump to get to the door of the White House on a slightly re-written pathway of platitudes. Either way - keep allowing the cutting of benefits flowing to individuals in favour of further benefits to the already privileged and Trump will get they keys to the city very soon.

Maybe it won't be this time and maybe it won't even be this Trump, but it will be a Trump - a strongman on a platform of change at any cost - and that, by the way, is very close to the definition of revolution. If that happens the middle-aged privileged white demographic will really have something to complain about.