How has it come to be that in America, the home of free speech, only one option is allowed by the news media on the topic of whether our elections are fraudulent? Supposedly, high anxiety in the general public has been created by the accusations that our last presidential election was fraudulent. The result is that special interests in the news media have excluded conservative contentions of fraudulence regarding that election. The exclusion itself by social media on the internet spread like wildfire. The contagion spread throughout most of the news media as it became a popular consensus. The popularity of that exclusion made it impossible for many conservative writers to communicate their opinion via electronic or print media. As far as I know, a popular consensus implemented by the media has never been a threat to freedom of speech before.
In a very confused America today only one political option seems to exist for trying to limit mass hysteria. This option calls for limiting speech by denying traditional values media access. The problem is that current political positions have polarized into rigid partisan opinions between liberal progressives versus traditional conservatives. At the same time, media has amplified its imagery to the point where existing differences are tearing the country apart. Both progressives and conservatives seem to be in denial as they think that each of their views about government is entirely right and the opposition is entirely wrong.
News media moguls have taken it upon themselves to deny access through their social networks to conservatives suggesting that our last presidential election is somehow fraudulent. I contend that the basic assumption is false that conservatives have somehow created all of the mass hysteria. The reverse progressive opinion is also anxiety-provoking because it assumes that our electoral process is perfect and needs no rules. After all, Americans never cheat or intimidate.
Nowhere do I see reasonable people analyzing each opinion for its flaws and comparing those views with honest facts that are available; both sides do seem to be in denial. This conflict has resulted in the current option but it only includes censorship of the conservative point-of-view. We have no other option to consider; the solution has been chosen for us.
This kind of polarization together with denial does not allow for freedom of speech on this issue. These days, for the first time in my life, popular opinion has shifted to the progressive liberals, media, and special interests. At the same time, this unusual popular opinion has chosen to exclude traditionalists and individualists who chose to try to communicate the traditionalist point-of-view through the media. It has occurred to me that we may have all lost our minds. We have all become unhinged.
The progressive political stance seems rigid and demonic at present but they were not always that way. They have changed, in part, as a reaction to the traditional view. The traditional view is equally rigid. Currently, our two-party system is in a rigid spiral of destruction that involves the elimination of the opposition. There appears to be no way out of this spiral until the path is completed; any opposition is to be killed. That trend appears to be designed to destroy the traditional view along with our constitution. That destruction appears to be organized as a Shadow Campaign by liberal progressives, social media, and high-tech professionals moving together in lockstep as special political interests. In essence, the first option likely developed from similar ideas.
If it is true that we as Americans have become unhinged and hysterical, we need to analyze our current mental condition and propose an honest solution to a serious social problem. Of course, trying to convince the American public that they are unhinged will not be very popular. Our current rigid political polarization makes problem-solving impossible as these political groups irrationally attack each other with the intent of eliminating the opposition. This kind of social divisiveness is a regression to a more primitive level that is ripping the country apart.
Social divisiveness has been portrayed as the primary culprit driving our stressed-out America. That stress was described as anxiety, anger, fatigue, depression, and possible psychosis. It was understood that this stress has increased beyond the limits of human endurance. For the extreme upset in the general population to be effectively managed, the divisiveness must be curbed and muted equally on all points of view; not by only censoring conservatives. Decision-making, while all of us are incredibly stressed, has created chaos. Blaming someone other than ourselves often becomes a misguided effort to solve the problem of extreme stress. The blame game does not solve problems and often leads to defensiveness and denial.
I need to explain a few things about myself before I meander on about blame. For many years I owned a business called Wellness Group. As a licensed clinical psychologist, I was in private practice and managed an average of about 14 other professionals providing psychotherapy and counseling to those who were in need. One of the many things that I learned was that people in crisis tended to project blame for their ineptness by finding blame for their problems in other people. My job was to get these patients to focus on their failings and faults instead of projecting blame externally on others. I believe it worked pretty well for individuals and couples.
That tendency to project blame is almost universal, but it is hardly ever admitted to. When patients get defensive or enter into denial they will not admit to any blame for the problem themselves. It is almost always someone else's fault. It is my thought that our present pandemic in tangent with politics from hell has created group defensive posturing conjoint with blame. I believe that projecting blame in groups is more dangerous than with individuals in therapy.
Crisis in groups works the same way as any individual crisis, and it's contagious. The larger the group, the more contagious it becomes. The worst-case scenario for individuals or couples in crisis is often divorce or separation. On the other hand, groups in conflict can result in war or other dangerous ongoing violence, including anarchy. The best example of an extremely large group in crisis that experienced unrelenting stress is the 2008 and 2020 American presidential elections. The idea that our current political problems are the result of a hated president, a Chinese virus, a poorly implemented medical plan, or the democratic party can only intensify the extent of the problem. I submit that playing the blame game will not solve our problems.
Now if you accept the idea that stress in crisis during elections can affect the outcome of those elections, then that effect must be created by something. In this case, I believe we are talking about more than one cause. The COVID 19 pandemic is the most important crisis for the American public that comes to mind. This is the first cause. Epidemics and Pandemics have hounded mankind probably since the beginning of time. Furthermore, no government or country has ever been able to cope with or manage them. It is no one's fault and no one is to blame.
It appears that dual causes exist that affect the stress most of us have experienced in this current crisis. The first stressor is the pandemic. The second stressor was created before the pandemic and is the result of the development of the internet and electronic technology. It also affected the 2008 presidential election in conjunction with a stock market crash and the 2020 presidential election together with the COVID 19 pandemic. It's pretty clear to me that the polarized political conflict exacerbated by the stock market crash during the 2008 political election created mass hysteria at an unprecedented level. Also, polarized political conflict encumbered by the current pandemic created another unprecedented panic in the 2020 presidential election. Those two emotional crisis' were originally created by a news media that magnified the emotional impact of political issues.
If the news media magnifies the emotional content of information, then why has this unpleasant emotional condition not been noticed before? The answer is that the internet and computer technology is a recent innovation. It has become one of the most powerful and startling developments of the industrial revolution. Not only have we experienced quick and easy information, but we have also experienced an upsurge in unsettling and dissonant information. Our news media has flooded our communication networks with conflicting upsetting disjunct messages that have prompted extensive panic. This group hysteria was not intense enough earlier to create significant mayhem.
There is a projection of blame by presidents, social media, and political parties that can only serve the self-interest of the people doing the blaming. The real culprit is the new electronic media that is part of the new developing Information Age. Many people, including the media moguls of the internet, exhibited certifiable bad judgment as part of what looks like mass mental illness. It's as if the internet and social media have flooded the public with contradictory, distorted, magnified, and untrue messages. The result is that we gradually have lost our ability to allow all points of view to be seen and heard.
The harmful emotional content of these messages has been magnified by the media to the point where our emotions are no longer controlled. This upset appears to represent a trend toward censorship in America: the last land of the free. And there are no laws that forbid censorship by internet social media and its search engines. It's just the reverse, no one can sue social media or its search engines.
In a recent Time Magazine article (February, 2021), a well-funded cabal of powerful people were described as working behind the scenes both before, during, and after the 2020 presidential election. It was depicted as a Shadow Campaign ranging across industries and ideologies. These people were portrayed as working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information (to the American people).
That article then emphasized that this Shadow Campaign was "fortifying the election; not rigging it." They did use the words cabal and conspiracy to describe the Shadow Campaign's activities. That article, while it tried to justify this Shadow Campaign in the 2020 election, also confirmed the existence of veiled alliances designed to affect the election by left-wing activists, high-tech professionals, social media, and business titans.
Instead of freedom of speech, media is now implementing censorship of political platforms by groups on the internet. This tendency appears to have developed as a necessity to curb the current highly stressed condition of the voting public. They have claimed that restricting access to political platforms through social networks and search engines on the internet is necessary to fortify and save the republic. Instead, it appears to me that this kind of censorship has affected our recent presidential elections by not allowing access to information about the conservative political platform. If it is true that the problem is managing overwhelming stress, then the solution is to reduce or mute that stress on all points of view associated with the conflict; censorship should cover all points of view, pros and cons. Limiting and/or eliminating one point-of-view will only increase the problem.
What does this all mean? In my humble opinion, it means that in crisis we all have become very confused, upset, angry, and stressed-out beyond human imagination. Somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of all adult Americans have been diagnosed mentally ill in the past. However, no one knows how many mentally ill people have not come into contact with a mental health professional for a diagnosis. Further, several professionals have indicated that the recent number of mentally ill people has increased dramatically during the pandemic. Is it possible that the surge of stressed-out people has reached the point where large numbers of our leaders are making bad decisions? These bad decisions may be the result of extreme stress generated by the current pandemic comingled with the flood of information through the media.
The first option then is to censor and eliminate the point-of-view of traditional conservatives. The second option is to enact laws limiting emotion-laden electronic internet information for all sides of any issue during a crisis; not just conservatives. Option one limits freedom of speech under the pretext of reducing mass hysteria. The second option reduces all or both sides of the conflict in a crisis under stress while allowing freedom of speech under muted conditions.
This cognitive dissonance laced with emotion-laden information has created unheard-of mental pain for all involved. The result is that the original idea of allowing all points of view has degenerated to censorship and punitive verbal gibberish. Whereas the solution, long ago, was to understand the truth, the entire idea of the existence of truth at all has been lost in the maelstrom of upsetting information flooding us daily. The decisions regarding what should not be allowed are being made by people who have no business making those kinds of decisions. In my opinion, it is absurd to blame and censor a specific political platform to eliminate or reduce general mass hysteria and panic.
The problem is how can we retain freedom of speech while ratcheting down the extremely unpleasant emotions regarding conflicts communicated through the news media? At present only one option is available. The first option is being implemented even now as it mutes free speech. Those groups or individuals who implement or want to implement this first option have an obvious conflict of interest.
I have argued in the past that humans always seek pleasant feelings and thoughts. Many people also avoid unpleasantness of any kind. Each individual has more or less of a tendency to avoid unpleasantness. People who are effective problem-solvers often have an uncanny ability to perceive and analyze unpleasant situations without becoming mentally ill. When very large groups become focused on unpleasant subjects in a crisis, they try to avoid that unpleasantness if they can. If they can't and they are forced to focus, the result will often not be a rational solution. Once again, the best example is the 2008 and 2020 American presidential elections where forced voting under extreme stress was present.
The second option has never even been considered. Instead of specific censorship in crisis, laws should be enacted to reduce or eliminate the money and/or time associated with conflicting unpleasant ideas communicated to the public via media in a crisis. The reduction of time and/or money for all sides of any important overly stressful issue should reduce or mute stress. As extreme panic ratchets down, public upset will naturally be muted.
Without general anxiety reduction on all sides of an issue, the bad judgment under crisis will re-occur again and again as information flooding and divisiveness still manifest themselves. Also, the problem-solving abilities of our congress will continue to be very difficult because of the large number of people involved in that decision-making process. The problem will only be partially reduced because, in our current situation, the stress caused by the news media is still present. Besides, our supposedly open republic will be damaged by restricting freedom of speech.
In America today a new age is dawning. It is important that our current crisis and the cultural changes that occur be carefully analyzed. Western civilization is at a tipping point as politicians are unable to solve our cultural problems. In America that is because of the unwieldiness of our republic. It is a government based on group problem-solving but the groups are often much too big for efficient solutions. The bigger the group, the more difficult and time-consuming the possibility of solutions. Solutions that do occur will be short-term and will be seriously compromised.
When individuals make decisions, the problems are often flawed. A small group or a few individuals can improve an individual's problem-solving ability. When large groups make decisions, the decisions get watered down, they take a long time, and the solution is compromised. Critique can be somewhat helpful in helping large groups to function more effectively if they don't overdo it.
In fact, in a crisis, I think government has increasingly become unable to exercise good judgment. Today's COVID Pandemic serves to highlight the harm being done to otherwise normal people. We have to find ways to protect the mental health of our people by passing laws that manage the intensity of unpleasantness that visits most or all of our citizens in crisis. If this means implementing limits that reduce the emotional impact of our communications while allowing our minds to function rationally and freely, so be it.
Option two allows freedom of speech to continue while lowering panic and hysteria in general during a crisis. Like sporting events, there should be rules of the game that do not interfere with the freedom of the players to participate in competitive games. A group of people called umpires or referees are trained in the rules of the game so that players play the game fairly within the rules. These referees or umpires' goal is to allow the game to proceed fairly while the players compete; unhindered. In this way, sports have general rules that allow each player to function freely within the rules of the game.
In our current situation, the game's players are progressives, conservatives, and partly politicians. The formal referees of the game are the voting public and the media. To some veiled extent the Shadow Campaigners, politicians and other special interest groups are also referee-like but they appear to be partisan and/or biased.
What is needed is a set of rules or laws that allow the game to be played freely: without rigging the game. The current rules of the game that politicians and social media play allow one of the competing teams (progressives or conservatives) to act as a referee while censoring the opposing team; thereby making it possible to rig the game. It is analogous to giving the fox the keys to the henhouse. The ideal is to have a fair and impartial outcome but the idea of allowing biased partisans to problem-solve is not the answer.
Option two is the real answer. Rules and/or laws should be created for an emergency restricting the amount of media coverage and the amount of money allocated to extremely stressful content communicated via the media. In this way, intense stress can be controlled by thoughtful limitations on content while still allowing the message to be freely communicated. The group assigned as a referee must not have political interests in the outcome of the competition.