We the American public are being manipulated by foreign actors and some of our own politicians to divide us. We know that the Russians, Iranians, and the Chinese are injecting narratives into our feeds with the explicit intention to push us further into opposite corners.
For those on the right, these actors are stoking anxiety with lies. They are painting us on the left as radical militant socialists who will take away freedoms. For Democrats, they seek to shape our view of those on the right as insane, immoral, and beyond redemption.
Their aim is to remove from both sides all empathy and compassion so that it becomes much easier for us to see each other as enemies. From there, it's not too far a reach to imagine yourself physically attacking someone who you've been convinced is your enemy. They're also sowing distrust of our institutions. This is the playbook for how a country becomes destabilized and goes to war with itself.
We're living through an age of tech-accelerated misinformation, misdirection, and manipulation. Our social media platforms are driven by continuously self-tuning algorithms powered by profit motives that drive individualized "engagement." The best way it does that is by presenting content that draws out strong emotion – and the most engaging emotion it has found is *anger*. It uses the reward centers of the brain to keep us hooked. In large, we are latching on to content that confirms our biases and politics and the effect of this is a gradual dehumanization of those with whom we disagree.
Foreign actors are leveraging these tools to wage war and we're not really talking about it.
Before you completely write off those who don't agree with you, before you decide to cut folks out of your life, and before you decide that those who voted for the other candidate are monsters who need a good lashing - know that there are aggressors who *want* you to do that and have the means to manipulate your mind and your behavior so that you are more willing to do that. And know that the tools to help them do that are only getting exponentially better as each day passes.
What I'm seeing happen in our country is alarming and it goes much deeper than who people voted for.
Two recent documentaries that are influencing my views and I would highly recommend:
The Perfect Weapon - This is about cyberattacks that governments (including our own) are waging around the world to manipulate people, take down infrastructure, and destabilize nations.
https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-perfect-weapon
The Social Dilemma - This is about how social media has gotten out of control from even the people who created them, how the revenue model drives undesirable behavior in algorithms, and how bad actors are using this for their own nefarious purposes.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
I welcome a respectful discussion on this post and I am also more than willing to talk over the phone/zoom to explore these ideas further.