Tag Archives: republican

August 15, 2017 · 9:03 am

How To Tell When A Protest Has Failed (Besides Violence)

These days, it seems as though America has a new favorite pastime. It’s not baseball. It’s not football. It’s not starting flame wars in the comments section of a Justin Bieber music video either. It’s protesting.

Ever since the migraine-inducing side-show that was the 2016 Presidential Election, there has been a lot of protesting going on. I’ve even commented on some of them. First, there was the women’s march. Then, there was the March For Life. These were more about ongoing issues, though. Other protests, in recent months, have been more vocal, to put it kindly.

It seems everybody’s tribal instincts, which are the same instincts I’ve said will destroy us all if we don’t confront them, are in overdrive. Everybody is picking a side. Everybody thinks their side is the side of truth, justice, and thong bikinis. They all see themselves as George Washington taking down an army of Hitler clones with nothing more than a pistol and the American spirit.

Obviously, they all can’t be right, but they all can be wrong. They can all be horribly misguided as well, some more than others. I understand why protesting is a big deal. People feel very passionate about certain issues. Some issues definitely warrant that passion.

Issues like civil rights, the right to marry the person you love, or the right to craft sexy erotica/romance novels without some government bureaucrat micromanaging every page are worth fighting for. People have fought for those rights in the past. While there have been setbacks, progress usually sides with those who aren’t assholes.

That’s what makes the recent surge in protests so frustrating. I can see the passion. I don’t deny it’s there. I also don’t deny that the people feel strongly about what they’re protesting. I do, however, question the merit behind it.

It’s as though people have just skipped the part where they look at the issue they’re protesting, think critically about the implications, and adjust their message accordingly. That’s kind of a big deal in any protest. From Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr., the ability to craft and convey the right message was critical to their success.

These days, every issue being protested feels like an extension of a petty flame war on a Harry Potter message board. The attitudes involved can best be summed up with this simple chorus.

“Your worldview doesn’t agree with mine so you must be a terrible person!”

It’s not about justice, although most will claim it is. It’s not about one group feeling marginalized, although most will claim it is. It’s not even about righting a wrong, although all will claim it is. It’s about the world not lining up with someone’s particular ideal, as though the world is somehow obligated to cater to your feelings.

It doesn’t matter which side of the political spectrum you’re on. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a card-carrying anarchist. If the crux of your argument is that the world isn’t doing enough for you beyond not putting you in chains and making you lick lead bricks, then your protests are empty.

This brings me to the most recent string of protests that have rocked the news. Unless you’ve been living in a windowless basement for three days, playing Call of Duty, eating only frozen pizza, and shitting in buckets, you’ll know there has been some pretty major protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.

I won’t get too deep into the substance of the protests. I won’t even break down the two opposing sides. I’ll just acknowledge that these protests, unlike the Women’s March or the March For Life, got pretty ugly. One person is dead and others have been injured. By most measures, it’s a protest that went wrong.

I’ll even go a step further. I’ll say that the protest has outright failed for both sides. I get that’s just my opinion. It’s probably not a very popular opinion, but this is how I feel about it after taking a few days to process the events. I get that the opinions of an erotica/romance writer barely amount to a wet fart in a shit factory, but I still feel compelled to share it.

As to why I think it failed, I’d like to explain by setting up a checklist of sorts. Think of it as a basic criteria for determining whether a protest actually has some substance behind it and warrants further debate. It doesn’t always have to result in a law or formal declaration of victory. It just has to be something that furthers the human condition in some meaningful way.

For the sake of not digging too deeply into inherently unsexy topics, like politics and social injustice, I won’t make the list too long or too specific. I’ll try to make sure it can fit on a notecard. That way, if you see a mob of protesters walking down your street, you’ll know whether they’re worth joining.

  • Can the protester cite a specific law or policy that they’re looking to overturn or pass?
  • Can the protesters cite a specific event or incident that warrants outrage among decent human beings?
  • Can the protesters refer to documented injustices by real people who harmed real victims?
  • Can the protesters claim a greater goal than just shaming certain groups?
  • Can the protesters’ agenda be accomplished in a manner that doesn’t subvert basic human nature?
  • Can the protesters’ claim to utilize methods that don’t personally attack opponents in lieu of arguing their point?

Read over these six questions. Think about them carefully and don’t just answer on a whim, which I know can be hard since that’s how our brains are wired make most decisions. Try to go beyond caveman logic for this because if you’re going to join any protest, you should make sure it’s the right kind.

If, after all that contemplation, the answer to all six questions is no, then there’s no getting around the truth. The protest and the agenda behind it is a failure. It’s either doomed to fail or has already failed. It doesn’t always means that it ends in violence, but it often does and, as we’re seeing in Charlottesville, that tends to override any meaningful debate.

In a sense, Charlottesville is a case study in a protest wherein both sides can’t claim much moral high ground. One side is yelling, “Look at our tribe and how great it is! Acknowledge its greatness and celebrate its glory!” The other is yelling, “Your tribe is awful! You people should be ashamed of who you are!” This is not a meaningful argument, nor is it one anyone can win.

The biggest flaw in both sides is that both sides are reducing the other to some kind of inherent wrongness. There’s no effort at all to understand or even talk about the substance behind their sentiment. Just being part of that particular group somehow makes you a horrible human being and that’s it.

Well, I’ve got news for both sides they would be wise to heed before their next failed protest. Human beings are extremely complicated. An individual is more than the sum of their tribal affiliation. While it’s in our nature to lump groups of people into certain tribes, that can often blind us to the real, genuine sentiments of our fellow human beings.

Granted, some of those human beings will be petty assholes who just want the world to carry it on its shoulders so it can sleep in every morning. You’ll find dishonest, disingenuous assholes in every tribe. It’s just part of the erratic nature of humanity. However, the vast majority of people are genuine. We couldn’t have survived as long as we have if we weren’t.

The world is chaotic and our caveman brains aren’t wired to make sense of it for now. We agonize over the chaos of the world, which often can be unjust, because we feel the need to do something about it. However, if that something involves just demonizing other people instead of actually dealing with them as human beings, then you’re not protesting anymore. You’re just whining.

1 Comment

Filed under Current Events

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 14, 2017 · 6:26 am

Dr. Doom, Perfect Rulers, And Ultimate Peace

There aren’t a lot of official rules on this blog. I try not to micromanage the what, how, and why of the content I talk about, beyond my sexy novels. However, there is one rule that might as well be a law of physics . If a particular topic can apply to comic books, then I will apply it to comic books.

I’ve already done it so many times on this blog, from sex-positive superheroes to showing why Magneto is the original Walter White to using an X-men comic to explore concepts of a balanced romance. While I love writing and talking about erotica/romance, I’ll still use every opportunity to tie it into comics.

For the past few days, I’ve been talking about fascism and repressive government. It’s a somewhat relevant topic, even after the 4th of July, because everybody seems to be throwing that word around these days. Liberals think conservatives are fascist. Conservative think liberals are fascist. At this rate, even anarchists will call each other fascist and fail to see the irony.

The concept of fascism is pretty complex. It has a dictionary definition, but that definition tends to get obscured by anyone who thinks a different political opinion is a threat to their own. Major conflicts like World War II have conditioned us to associate all the evils of the world with fascism. If your ideology seems bad, greedy, or evil in any way, then it must be fascist.

While that is a very childish approach to political rhetoric, relatively speaking, it also underscores the reason fascism and authoritarian governments exists in the first place. As George Orwell explored in “1984,” these kinds of systems emerge anywhere people seek security and peace in the midst of war and conflict.

We see it happen all the time throughout history. There are many occasions where a repressive regime has arisen out of bloody conflict. Some of those regimes are still around and frustratingly contentious. At their core, thought, the dynamics are the same.

In times of chaos, conflict, and scarcity, people seek power and influence. Once they have it, they seek to maintain it at all costs. They’ll try to control anything and everything, from the amount of bread everyone gets to how they conduct their sex lives. It manifests in many different ways, but the underlying principles are the same.

At the end of the day, the biggest problem with the systems surrounding fascism and repressive governments is that they still depend on flawed, petty humans with caveman brains. Sometimes, the rulers themselves are mentally unhinged. Sometimes, the people around them are petty, corrupt, or just plain incompetent. Often, it’s a potent mixture of the two.

In some sense, we can thank our own inherent flaws as humans as the ultimate weapon against a fascist, authoritarian state. George Orwell may have highlighted the darker elements of humanity, but he grossly overestimated peoples’ ability to manage others competently.

That leads me to Victor Von Doom, the alpha and omega of Marvel’s long list of iconic villains. In any list of the top villains of all time, Dr. Doom usually ranks near the top. A series of sub-par “Fantastic Four” movies have routinely failed to do justice to the breadth of Doom’s villainy. However, once you understand his roots, you understand why he is the ultimate counter to George Orwell’s dystopian fever dream.

There are too many details about Dr. Doom’s life and history to do him justice in one post. WatchMojo does a fairly good job of summarizing where he came from, but for the sake of this post and how he relates to my discussions on fascism, all you need to know is that Dr. Doom is the perfect ruler.

I don’t just mean that in the sense that he has the power, charisma, and resources to rule a country. I mean that, by almost every objective measure, Dr. Doom is the perfect ruler. Put him at the top of any government, be it a democracy or an authoritarian state, and he’ll make it work. Moreover, he’ll do it in a way that’s terrifyingly efficient.

That’s because Dr. Doom isn’t just some evil sadist who just wants to control people for the fun of it. He’s one of the smartest human beings to have ever lived. He didn’t just master science as a kid. He mastered science and magic. Even Lex Luthor can’t make that claim. He just mastered science. Compared to Dr. Doom, Lex is an underachiever.

Beyond just being smart and mastering things few can ever hope to master, Dr. Doom is extremely driven and makes no bones about it. He doesn’t just think he’s superior to every other human being on the planet. He knows it. If anyone dares question it, he won’t just prove them wrong. He’ll do so in the scariest, most intimidating way possible.

This isn’t just someone you respect. This is someone that scares the hell out of you, but for all the right reasons. As arrogant as he is, he doesn’t see himself as a villain either. Even Stan Lee, his co-creator, doesn’t see him that way. In an 2016 interview, he said this about Marvel’s greatest villain.

“Everybody has Doctor Doom misunderstood,” Lee said. “Everybody thinks he’s a criminal, but all he wants is to rule the world. Now, if you really think about it objectively, you could walk up to a policeman, and you could say, ‘Excuse me, officer, I want to tell you something: I want to rule the world.’ He can’t arrest you; it’s not a crime to want to rule the world. So […] it’s unfair that he’s considered a villain, because he just wants to rule the world. Then maybe he could do a better job of it. So I’m very interested in Doctor Doom, and I’d like to clear his name.”

Therein lies the greatest irony of Dr. Doom’s villainy. Sure, he wants to take over the world and he routinely clashes with Marvel’s most iconic heroes in the process. However, it’s why he does it that makes him stand out.

In one iconic story from 2010 fittingly called “Doomwar,” his true motivations for conquering the world come to light. In that story, Dr. Doom encounters a god-like being named Bast, also known as the Panther God. In that encounter, Bast reveals something critical about the future of the world.

As anyone who has ever followed Marvel comics for any number of years will tell you, there are a lot of alternative universes and timelines. Some are dystopian, even by George Orwell standards. Some are just different in a few minor details.

However, the Panther God saw all these universes and timelines and came to one inescapable conclusion. The only timeline in which humanity was free from suffering and want was a timeline in which Dr. Doom ruled the world. In a sense, that almost makes Doom a hero. Then again, he’s still the same guy who once sacrificed the woman he loved for more power.

Beyond those overtly villainous details, there’s a lot of merit behind that vision and not just because it came from the Panther God. Dr. Doom already knows how to run a country and a government. For much of his history, he’s run his fictional home country of Latveria and, by all accounts, he’s run it very well.

He ran it so well that, when he took over the country, every soldier and citizen that had been fighting for the previous ruler just stepped aside and let him take over. He didn’t force his people to love or respect him into submission. He proved himself. He did such a good job that nobody in Latveria besides the previous rulers wanted to stand in his way.

He didn’t just stop at taking over his home country either. Dr. Doom helped it prosper. In another iconic line of Marvel comics, Dr. Doom turned a country of bankrupt peasants into one of the top 10 economies on the planet within a couple years. That’s the kind of growth that even hardcore libertarians have to respect.

Doom does this because, and this is worth emphasizing, he’s extremely smart. He’s not just smart in that he can outwit gods and cosmic forces. He’s smart in that he knows how to manage a country, a people, and everything in between.

He does this largely through an army of loyal robotic minions, including specialized robots called Doombots. They’re not just ordinary killer robots either. These robots actually think, behave, and act as though they’re the real Dr. Doom. It’s kind of a running gag in the Marvel universe. Every time Doom is “defeated,” it’s often revealed that they just defeated a Doombot.

Beyond being a clever plot device, it also ensures that Dr. Doom’s government never has to worry about insubordination, betrayal, or corruption. His robots, gadgets, and ability to use mind control ensures he maintains perfect control of his government from top to bottom.

Unlike the ruling party in George Orwell’s “1984,” there’s no need for a massive professional class of bureaucrats that need to be constantly monitored. There’s no need to set up a kind of thought police to ensure nobody even thinks about undermining the party. For Dr. Doom, that would be redundant. No matter what any of his citizens think, he knows he’s smarter and more resourceful than any of them.

In addition, the party in “1984” didn’t care much for the welfare of the people. They only cared enough to ensure the stability of their rule. Dr. Doom, on the other hand, does express a genuine concern for the well-being of his people. He will go out of his way to make sure that his people are free from suffering and want. Sure, they’ll still fear Dr. Doom’s wrath, but that’s the only thing they fear.

That, more than anything, is what makes Dr. Doom the perfect ruler. He’s so smart, so capable, and so resourceful that no other human in his home country or any other country could come close to matching him. On top of that, Doom actually produces results. The things that are typically impossible for a government to do, such as providing prosperity for all its people, are easy for someone like Dr. Doom.

Thanks to Dr. Doom’s expertise, cunning, and willingness to cross any line, anyone under his rule will be safe and prosperous. They won’t have to fear anyone harming them because they’d have to go through Dr. Doom first, a man who one-shot the Incredible Hulk and battled a race of space gods. With him, a border wall is both unnecessary and redundant.

Under Doom’s rule, you are as safe as it’s possible to be without locking yourself in an adamantium cage. You’re also probably as free as you’ll ever be. While Dr. Doom is a despot, he’s never shown an inclination to micromanage his citizens’ lives. He doesn’t tell them who to love, how to love, and what to do with their free time. So long as they acknowledge his authority, they can do as they please.

He doesn’t get involved in his peoples’ sex lives. He doesn’t try to run the economy. Near as anyone can tell, he doesn’t even demand that certain words be censored from TV and movies. In that sense, Dr. Doom is less tyrannical than the FCC.

Sure, his citizens are still at Doom’s mercy. If, at any point, they become a threat to Doom, he’ll kill them without a second thought. However, Dr. Doom is not obsessively paranoid like the Stalins and Kim Jong Uns of the world. He’s too smart, too cunning, and has too many Doombots on his side to worry about such trivial things. He is, for all intents and purposes, a benevolent despot.

There is no real-world, or even fictional, equivalent to Dr. Doom. However, much like Superman, Dr. Doom presents an ideal of sorts. He is everything people want in a ruler. He is smart, charismatic, imposing, strong, capable, resourceful, logical, and fair. He has the means, vision, and drive to do everything that people want their government to do.

In that sense, it wouldn’t even matter whether a system is fascist or democratic. So long as there’s someone like Dr. Doom at the top, it’ll work. There are still many parts of his character that make him undeniably villainous. However, it’s hard to deny his ability as a ruler. To live under his authority is to live in perfect freedom and security.

Remember that the next time you get into a debate about fascism or democracy. In the end, the only truth path to perfect governance is through Dr. Doom. That’s enough to make both the Avengers and the Justice League cry.

All Hail Doom!

12 Comments

Filed under Comic Books, Jack Fisher, Superheroes, Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 13, 2017 · 7:02 am

Why Fascists Want To (And Need To) Control Your Sex Life

Whenever I bring up a topic on this blog, be it advances in biotechnology or news on the “Wonder Woman” movie, it’s only a matter of time before I explore the sexy side of that topic. Sometimes that also involves the kinky side, but sometimes sexy and kinky aren’t mutually exclusive issues in certain topics.

Now, when it comes to issues of fascism and totalitarian governments, it’s hard to make that too sexy. However, it’s hard to discuss these issues without also discussing the implications on our sex lives. Even the most repressive governments still need people having sex o they can make babies that will eventually become works, soldiers, etc.

Throughout history, the government has always had some interest or policy in our sex lives. From state-sanctioned fertility festivals in Ancient Rome to rigid traditions in Ancient China, there’s always been some amount of government between the sheets. So those yelling for government to get out of their bedrooms probably don’t realize just how long it has been there.

For the most part, a government’s only real interest in your sex life extended to whether or not you were producing children that would become soldiers, workers, and tax payers. Beyond that, it could care less what you do with your genitals and how you do it. Those governments usually lacked the power, resources, and will to micromanage.

There were some exceptions, primarily with the sex lives of rulers and aristocrats. Since preserving the royal lineage was of the most vital importance, often leading to massive upheaval in a kingdom, they had to micromanage to some extent. If they weren’t producing heirs to the throne or to inherit the family land, then that was a problem. The entire premise of “Game of Thrones” is proof of that.

However, the world has changed a great deal since the days of kings, feudalism, and fertility rituals. Industrialization, modernization, and a better understanding of how our sexy anatomy works has changed how the people and the government approaches matters of sexuality. Sure, some people in government still have a poor understanding of certain lady parts, but our knowledge is more comprehensive for the most part.

It’s because of that knowledge, though, that a fascist or overly authoritarian regime has an even greater interest in controlling your sex life. At least the kings and emperors of the ancient world lost interest at the part where your sex life made the babies that would become soldiers and workers. Modern rulers with a keen interest in controlling a population know to go much further than that.

The best example of this is how Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy approached its citizens’ sex lives. For these governments, it wasn’t enough for people to make babies that would become soldiers and workers. They had to make perfect, super-babies and a lot of them. That whole “master race” ideology wasn’t just about subverting minorities. At some point, they need to have the race they prefer to propagate.

Sometimes, they did this through incentives. Giving birth to a healthy, racially pure baby in Nazi Germany came with all sorts of benefits. However, those benefits sometimes hid the heavy hand of the state. Women in this society were not expected to work. Their sole focus was supposed to be on producing more racially pure babies.

It wasn’t much different or better for women in Fascist Italy. While it didn’t rely heavily on concepts of genetic purity or racial supremacy, there was this ideal espoused by the state. The perfect woman, in their eyes, was supposed to be poor, subservient, and doing everything she could to give birth to as many babies as possible.

Beyond simply controlling the population, these fascist states also sought to control the nuts and bolts of family life. There was only one ideal family structure and one form of acceptable sexual activity. Any citizen that deviated from it in any way, be it homosexuality or watching certain types of porn, was prohibited.

Again, it goes several steps further than the prudish policies we sometimes get in non-fascist states. In America, we had policies like the Comstock Laws that effectively made talking about sexual issues a crime. Even today, issues surrounding sex education, which are prescribed by the government, are subject to plenty of controversy.

However, it’s that very presence of a controversy that highlights just how different a fascist state approaches sexuality compared to a non-fascist one. Say what you will about America and western governments. At least it’s possible to have a debate about sexual issues. It’s not always productive, but having that debate won’t get you killed.

The same can’t be said in a fascist state because controlling sexuality isn’t just necessary for population control. It’s a primary component of maintaining its overall power. A fascist state, by definition, needs to exercise a lot of control over its people. In general, people don’t like to be controlled. History shows it’s hard to control people. Even organized religion is finding this out.

For any fascist state to maintain control, it needs to be able to control the two most important drives in human beings, namely survival and reproduction. It needs to make sure that the citizens are completely dependent on the state to fulfill those drives.

It’s somewhat easier to confiscate food and use hunger to keep people in line. If someone is hungry, they’ll say or do anything to get a good meal, especially if a government dangles it in front of them as incentive.

The same applies to sex. Through policy, policing, and public shaming, it can dissuade people from exercising their sexuality in ways that the fascist state does not sanction. Like hunger, those who are horny will do anything they can to fulfill that basic drive. Some religions have already weaponized this drive. A fascist state would make it part of a larger system.

It’s because of that systemic approach to sexuality that it’s hard to claim that modern conservatives or liberals are seeking to control sexuality on the same levels as a fascist state. I know I make a lot of jokes about Rick Santorum’s views on sexuality, but he’s never favored creating an entire bureau of government to ensure that people have only the kind of sex that he approves of.

I also make a lot of jokes about how sex-negative radical feminism is making us more sexually uptight. While those on the more extreme liberal side of the spectrum may protest and shame those who dare exercise a form of sex they don’t like, they don’t actively ask the government the manage the sex lives of others.

That’s not to say both sides don’t have ridiculous, harmful, and often detrimental views of sexuality. They’re just not even in the same hemisphere as a fascist state, which would use human sexuality as a method of controlling its population.

It’s not just that a fascist state tends to be inherently prudish and tradition. It has to control things like sexuality because it has to control the people to achieve its goals, be it stability or some sort of racial agenda. So if and when the day comes when you need government approval to have an orgasm, you’ll know you’re living in a fascist state.

4 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 12, 2017 · 7:01 am

George Orwell, 1984, And The Perfect Totalitarian State

There were a lot of reasons I hated high school. I’ve listed more than a few of them on this blog. Somewhere on that list, but nowhere near the top, involved the books I had to read. To say they weren’t very sexy would be like saying a baseball bat to the head isn’t a very good massage.

However, every now and then, my English and social studies teachers managed to assign a book that didn’t make me want to make me stick my head in a deep fryer. One of my favorite non-sexy books of all time, which also happened to be a homework assignment, is George Orwell’s “1984.” It’s a book that always seems relevant and insightful, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

When I read Orwell’s depiction of the ultimate dystopian future, I see it as the ultimate thought experiment, of sorts. Orwell wrote this book in the 1940s, a time when there were actual, dystopian totalitarian regimes operating in the world. Sadly, one of them was a chief ally during World War II.

He had a lot to reference in his time, much more so than we have today. Other than North Korea, most people today aren’t as familiar with rigid, totalitarian governments. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there’s an entire generation of people whose idea of a totalitarian regime is relegated to detention at a high school. They can’t even begin to fathom the kind of world that “1984” described.

That’s a good thing in some respects. In a sense, those governments are almost impossible these days. The rise of the internet, modern technology, and complex geopolitics makes it next to impossible for a regime to be as totalitarian as “1984.” North Korea comes close, but even that regime is wholly inept compared to Big Brother.

However, I believe there’s a unique value, of sorts, when it comes to understanding what makes a totalitarian regime work. I also think there’s value in knowing the tenets behind it, the ways in which it operates, and why it takes hold in the first place. Even in an age of people protesting the removal of the McRib from McDonald’s menu, we’re not immune from the threat of a totalitarian regime.

With that in mind, let’s dig a little deeper into Orwell’s extreme thought experiment that played out in “1984.” If you haven’t read the book or had even worse English teachers than I did, you might not be familiar with Big Brother, how it operates, what what it represents. You might have heard the term, but you might not be familiar with what it is.

For the sake of providing context, here’s a quick video from the Alternate History Hub channel on YouTube. It’s a channel that focuses primarily on alternate history scenarios, which I’ve touched on before, but it also provides remarkable insight onto other subjects. Given how many totalitarian regimes are involved in alternate history, it makes sense to explore the ultimate extreme, as it played out in “1984.”

It’s hard for most people in the industrialized world to imagine a system like this. The idea that facts, history, and the very thoughts we think are all controlled by this all-encompassing, all-powerful government seems insane. It’s hard to imagine living in a world like that. It almost seems impossible. In a sense, it is.

No government in history has ever come close to wielding the kind of power that Big Brother does in “1984.” Some have tried. There’s the first emperor of China, the sun king in France, and our old frenemy, Joseph Stalin. They only ever succeeded in part and often failed in the long run.

That’s because, as we’re seeing with the ongoing health care debate in America, human beings are impossibly chaotic creatures. We all have so many different needs and wants. We’re all petty about different things and apathetic towards others. No two people are completely wired the same. We all think different thoughts for different reasons, sometimes with downright kinky undertones.

It’s because of all that chaos/diversity within the human condition that no government can hope to achieve what Big Brother achieved in “1984.” It would require so much power, so much micromanaging, and so much information that it just wouldn’t be practical for any one human or party of humans.

Again, that won’t stop some from trying and that’s where Orwell’s thought experiment becomes relevant. In looking at the structure of Big Brother, we can observe the nuts and bolts of the perfect totalitarian regime. We can see what the ultimate fascist is seeking when they want to create an all-power, completely centralized government.

Impossible or not, the features of this government reveal some common themes that have a basis in the real world. Those are themes worth understanding because they help us know when someone is trying too hard to emulate Big Brother. Without getting too deep into the book, here are the key features of a perfect totalitarian regime.

  • There’s a single, unambiguous ruling party and no opposition of any kind

  • The ruling party makes up a small percentage of the population, never more than one or two percent

  • The members of the ruling party rarely, if ever, interact with the public directly

  • The public consists of two classes, a professional middle class that never makes up more than a quarter of the population and a working lower class that usually makes up over two-thirds of the population

  • The middle class is educated to some degree, but wholly controlled by the ruling party and is completely dependent on them for their livelihood

  • The lower class is uneducated, under-informed, and easily manipulated

  • All economic activity is controlled or guided by the party, ensuring the middle class has just enough to do their job and the lower class has just enough to propagate

  • The ideals for family structure and social structure are imposed by the party with any variations being deemed deviant

  • The lower classes are allowed to be more deviant and decadent in order to keep them content with their state

  • The middle class is held to a higher standard of conduct to ensure their loyalty and submission to the party

  • The flow of information, the accepted knowledge of the world, and the entire history of the state is dictated by the party and accepted by the masses

There are probably more features I could list, but these are the core elements of Big Brother and the society we see in “1984.” Now, some people will attempt to apply these features to whatever state, country, or office environment they’re in at the moment. Some might actually apply, but never to the same degree as Orwell depicted.

The biggest takeaway from these traits, as well as the themes in “1984,” is how a society structures itself in the face of such overwhelming control. At the top, there’s always a ruling class. That class has only one primary purpose, which is to preserve its power. From the Galactic Empire in “Star Wars” to the battle for the iron throne in “Game of Thrones,” preservation is always the top concern of a totalitarian regime.

Part of preserving that power means relying on a professional middle class, of sorts, to deal with the bureaucracy and administration of the state. It’s in this area where totalitarian regimes tend to be most vulnerable. History has shown that authoritarian states like Nazi Germany were anything but efficient, which in turn undermined the ruling party’s primary goal.

It seems like a paradox, but it’s more a matter of pragmatism. A state needs people to run these massive, complex machinations to maintain so much control. To not impose such control would mean granting people freedom and that’s dangerous to any ruling party that wants to preserve control.

This is why those in these middle class professions are subject to such greater scrutiny. A poor, unemployed man taking a piss on a street corner creates no controversy. However, if a highly educated professional did that, it would be a major scandal. We often see this in how major corporate scandals play out.

In a sense, the lower classes have more freedom in this system than the professional middle class. That’s because the ruling party doesn’t really care about them. They don’t have to because they’re not a threat.

Uneducated, lower class people are too stupid and gullible to really pose a threat. So long as they work and breed, the ruling party has no reason to micromanage them. They don’t care if they have orgies in the streets, drink paint thinner for breakfast, or wear horse masks to work. Their only purpose is to work and breed. If they do that, then the ruling party couldn’t care less.

In a sense, the ruling party will always be at odds with a certain segment of the population. In order to exercise control in an authoritarian regime, there needs to be a sizable number of loyal, competent underlings to carry out the functions of the state. Finding people who can act as such underlings with perfect loyalty is difficult, if not impossible.

It’s hard to say whether Orwell knew this on some level. Keep in mind, he was heavily influenced by what he saw around him, a massive world war and the rise of communist states. Perhaps he had studied how powerful, repressive governments had operated in the ancient past and saw parallels in the present. Perhaps he saw that as an inevitable recourse for humanity.

I choose to have a more optimistic, albeit cynical view of human affairs. I don’t believe a system like Big Brother could ever take hold in a world where people can’t even agree on pizza toppings, let alone a singular vision for human civilization. I also don’t believe any government is equipped to exercise the kind of control that Big Brother did in “1984.”

However, that still won’t stop some from trying and the very process of trying can be very dangerous. Seeking order within the chaos is a very human trait, but one that can easily get derailed by pettiness and corruption. That’s why Orwell’s lessons in “1984” are more relevant than ever and may always be relevant to some extent.

6 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 7, 2017 · 10:31 am

Why You Should NOT Take Documentaries Too Seriously

Throughout my life, I’ve gone through various phases where I become immersed in certain genres of movies. For a time, I was really into slasher movies. Then, I picked up on the distinct sex-negative themes of those movies and lost interest.

At another time, I became immersed in documentaries. Not surprisingly, that interest also coincided with me getting a subscription for Netflix, a service that puts you in immediate contact with documentaries of all kinds. From government conspiracies involving aliens to stories about porn stars after their career in porn ends. There’s something for everyone is what I’m saying.

On top of that, I also went through a phase where I was pretty big into government conspiracies. It wasn’t just that I believed them to some extent. It was the story around them that fascinated me. Given my love of telling stories, which has since manifested in some sexy novels, it checked all the right boxes for me.

It’s true. There was a time when I actually believed that the government was covering up evidence of an alien presence on this planet. There was also a time when I genuinely believed that the government colluded to manufacture wars from Vietnam to Iraq. I actually believed the government, and people in general, were capable of such confidence. I’ve since learned to temper my expectations.

While I’m no longer a fan of documentaries, I do watch them from time to time. However, I watch them with an overly critical eye. With every documentary I see, even if it has a message I agree with, I still assume that it only offers a tiny part of the story. Chances are a good chunk of this message is a result of cherry picking, clever cinematic, and outright lies.

Now, that’s not to say that the people making these documentaries are total frauds. I don’t doubt for a second that Michael Moore and Morgan Sporlock genuinely believe in the work they’re doing. They wouldn’t sink so much time and money into it if they didn’t. However, these men have agendas. That’s the flaw in every documentary.

This leads me to what specifically inspired this post. Last week, I couldn’t sleep so I decided to fire up Netflix and find some random show. Usually, certain documentaries help make me sleepy, usually the ones that narrated by soft British voices from the BBC. For some reason, I ended up watching a new documentary that came recommended on my list. It was called “What The Health.”

The premise of the documentary was simple. Pretty much all the food you enjoy eating, from fast food to candy to beef jerky to fried eggs, is terrible for you. It’s not just bad for you health-wise. It will give you cancer. I swear on Pamela Anderson’s tits that’s the actual message.

Kip Andersen, the director of this documentary, has a simple message. If your food has any animal products, then you might as well be sprinkling plutonium on your food. It’s also worth mentioning that Kip Andersen is an ardent vegan with a very pro-vegan agenda. He is to health conspiracy theories what Alex Jones is to government conspiracy theories.

That’s not to say that “What The Health” is completely devoid of facts, but it is very much an extended slate of pro-vegan, anti-meat, anti-corporate, pro-hippie propaganda. Even by liberal standards, this documentary is pretty slanted. It would be like a anti-gun control documentary that claims not having a gun makes your penis small, your tits shrink, and your asshole itch. It’s that bias.

Again, I don’t doubt for a second that Kip Andersen believes in what he’s saying. He comes off as the kind of guy who just obsesses so much over his health. That’s what gets him up in the morning. That’s what makes his dick hard at night. What sexy novels are to me, health is to Kip Andersen.

The problem with that, which also happens to be the problem with every documentary, is that it’s produced with an agenda in mind. The size and scope of that agenda varies. There are some documentaries that try to be objective. Most of those produced by PBS tend to be fairly balanced, but even they can fall into the same Alex Jones trap every now and then.

What bothers me about documentaries like “What The Health” is that it’s produced in a way that really preys on our caveman brain’s biggest flaws. There’s just no way to shrug off something like cancer. Pretty much everyone, myself included, knows someone who has suffered from cancer. According to the CDC, cancer killed nearly 600,000 people in 2014 alone. The suffering these people endured cannot be understated.

The problem is that cancer is such a complex disease. There are all sorts of genetic, environmental, lifestyle, disease, and chemical factors that go into it. There’s no one single virus, one single gene, or one single food group that causes it. The human body is too complex, as anyone who has ever studied the female orgasm can attest.

The message “What The Health” sends is not only horribly skewed to the hippie end of the political spectrum, but it’s downright misleading. It gives the impression that cancer and disease have a singular cause. All anyone needs to do to avoid is to just shun animal products, become a vegan, and eat cardboard for the rest of their lives. The fact that this is the same lifestyle as the director is just a hell of a coincidence.

I won’t deny it. “What The Health” does a damn good job of painting itself as credible. However, every documentary does that to some extent. They parade out all these doctors and experts in the field, making bold claims that they can legitimize with their PhDs and titles. However, it’s worth remembering that, as smart as these people are, they’re still human.

It’s also worth remembering that doctors do get things wrong more than we care to admit. There’s also a distressingly large amount of medical research that turns out to be wrong. Like I said, the human body is extremely complex and our caveman brains aren’t wired for that kind of complexity.

On some levels, Kip Andersen and Michael Moore exploit those flaws in our brains. They know how to craft a message that seems credible. They craft a slick, polished narrative that appeals to certain fears and misgivings that everybody has to some degree. They create a false or half-true narrative that preys on our desire to understand the world.

What often happens is that they’re very selective about the information they present. In a sense, they’re taking advantage of the same paradox I pointed out with health care. It’s not just very difficult to offer all the facts in a simple, two-hour documentary. It’s physically impossible. There isn’t enough film on a reel or enough seconds in two hours to convey all that information.

As a result, the message in every documentary is incomplete. In some cases, they’re so incomplete that someone else will try to verify those messages, only to find out how wrong they were.

This actually happened with Morgan Sporlock after his hit film, “Super Size Me.” That movie, much like Kip Andersen, had a very clear agenda. It was anti-corporate, anti-fast food, pro-nutrition. Sporlock even put himself in the line of fire, eating nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days. The proof seemed so clear and apparent.

Then, another documentary called “Fat Head” by Tom Naughton tried to replicate Sporlock’s experiment. There was just one glaring problem, though. The math didn’t add up. He literally could not eat as many calories as Sporlock claimed in “Super Size Me.” You can push an agenda all you want, but if the math doesn’t add up, you’ve got a problem.

On top of that, other people have done similar experiments and come up with different results. A science teacher armed with none of Sporlock’s movie-making resources was able to eat nothing but McDonald’s and actually lost weight. When there’s this kind of inconsistency on all sides, chances are there’s something missing from the story.

Again, I don’t believe that these people do what they do entirely out of malice and greed. Some might, but I choose to have a higher opinion of people in that respect. I think Andersen and Moore sincerely believe the messages in their documentaries, just as creationists ardently believe in their message, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Now, you can choose to side with men like Moore, Sporlock, and Andersen on various issues. That doesn’t make you a bad or foolish person. However, it’s important to understand that documentaries are not the same as verified, scientific research. They are movies, made for the purpose of telling a story and gaining an audience. They may contain some elements of truth, but they will never tell the whole story.

1 Comment

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 3, 2017 · 6:23 am

Pro-Life Vs. Anti-Sex: Why The Difference Matters

I promise I’m almost done talking about abortion on this blog. Again, I hate talking about this issue. I want to be very clear about that. As a man, I have nothing to contribute to issues of women’s health. I couldn’t be less qualified to talk about this issue if I were a disembodied squirrel.

With that said, there is one last component to the abortion issue I want to address. Unlike the various other complexities of this exceedingly controversial issue, this issue does affect me, albeit indirectly. It affects me because it involves attitudes towards sex and, being an erotica/romance writer, that’s kind of critical to my job.

Granted, sex and abortion are link. Without sex, abortion is a moot point. Abortion without sex is like a car without an engine. One doesn’t work without the other. It’s in this inescapable link that we find a stark divide in the pro-life/anti-abortion movement. It’s a divide in which one side is honest and the other has a mansion built upon a foundation of  wet horse shit.

There are those on one side of the abortion who can call themselves honest and genuine. These are the people who genuinely believe that abortion constitutes murder. They believe that the concept of personhood begins at conception. At the moment the sperm meets the egg in a woman’s womb, the issue ends for them. That’s a human life. Ending it in any way is no different than murder.

That’s a perfectly clear, easily understandable position. It passes through the Simpson Filter with ease. It makes ethical sense, even to our caveman brains. It appeals to both emotion and logic, a rare combination in any bit of political discourse. Granted, the actual science of when life begins is not at all settled, but as a clear position on an issue, this part of the pro-life is both clear and genuine.

If this was where the argument ended, then there wouldn’t be anything left to talk about. I could end this post here and go back to talking about the joys of sleeping naked. Unfortunately, there is another contingent of the pro-life crowd and they’re about as genuine as a Nigerian prince.

This contingent of the pro-life group will make the same claims. They’ll say abortion is evil on par with any notorious spammer. They’ll even march with others who sincerely believe that life begins at conception and abortion is murder. However, in the back of their minds, being pro-life is a form of glorified clown makeup. It just a convenient excuse to hide the fact that they’re anti-sex.

By that, I don’t mean they aspire to live in a world of nuns and eunuchs. By anti-sex, I mean they are vehemently opposed to any form of sexual expression that wouldn’t occur off-scene during a “Father Knows Best” rerun.

In their world, the only kind of sex that is permissible involves a married couple, a dark room, and a maximum of three minutes in the missionary position with the sole intent of producing a child who will grow up into a tax-payer. Orgasms are entirely optional in this case. Anything that deviates from this narrative even slightly is the moral equivalent of being sodomized by demons.

In that context, it’s easy to see why some use the pro-life movement as a cover. History has shown that even in the most repressive periods in history, human sexuality is difficult to contain. Being anti-sex is a losing battle on par with being against blue skies on sunny days. With the pro-life crowd, they can claim, “We’re not against sex! We’re against dead babies!”

This doesn’t just make their position inherently dishonest and insincere. It also has implications that go far beyond those I’ve discussed before on this issue. It’s easy to craft a message that passes the Simpson Filter, but sometimes the implications of that message go far beyond the content of that message, so much so that it’s in the same zip code as basic fraud.

For the anti-sex crowd, it means that abortion is less about dead babies and more about controlling sexuality in general. Make no mistake. This does happen. Some even go so far as to admit it outright. Major presidential candidates have even gone on record as saying they oppose contraception because it permits evil sexual practices, namely those that people might enjoy.

This is the part of the pro-life movement that has zero moral authority. They are about as honest and sincere as hungry lion running a hospital for wounded zebras. They may use politics or religion to justify their sentiment. That doesn’t make it less invalid.

In some cases, it makes parts of the pro-life crowd into outright hypocrites. As I’ve said before, we tolerate a lot of bullshit in our society, but hypocrisy is one of the few lines where the stench cannot be ignored.

In the case of the anti-sex crowd pretending to be pro-life, they cement their hypocrisy by also being against contraception. While most pro-life people don’t oppose contraception, those that do are akin to being football fans who hate contact sports. It’s just not possible for the position to make any sense, logically or morally.

This is where a lot of religion gets into the mix. The Catholic Church is, by far, the most famous entity for opposing both abortion and contraception. Again, it’s the implications that make this position wholly dishonest. To understand those implications, just do the same thing reporters do with lobbyists and follow the money.

For a church, or any religious organization, to thrive it needs money and adherents. Since most religions don’t sell anything tangible, they need to rely on adherents giving them money. Naturally, this creates an incentive to want them to procreate. The more babies they have, the more future adherents the religion will get. More future adherents means more money. In the end, wanting to control sexuality is all about money.

Imagine for a moment that someone claimed that killing puppies was wrong because it cost too much money to bury them. If someone bases their puppy-killing morality on that foundation, we wouldn’t think very highly of them. Hell, we’d probably train our dogs to use that person’s yard as a toilet.

It’s for this reason, and many more that I’m woefully unqualified to explore, that it’s so vital to distinguish those who are genuinely pro-life and those who just don’t want people having sex in ways they don’t like. One has a moral basis for their position. The other has a web of excuses, deceit, and hypocrisy.

If good, decent people truly wins out in the end, then it should be clear which side has the moral authority. There are those who deserve to march in support of their believes and there are those who should be marched over, spit on, and left to whither under the weight of their hypocrisy. In the end, no matter what excuses some people make, hypocrisy will never be appealing or sexy.

13 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 31, 2017 · 6:27 am

My Advice To The Women’s March

As a general rule, I try to avoid giving advice on things I know I’m not qualified to explain. You want advice on writing erotica/romance? Sure, I’ll help, even though I’ve yet to achieve much success in that endeavor. You want advice on comics and superheroes? Hell, I’m your guy. I should be the first person you call.

In terms of complex sociopolitical issues, though, I’m as qualified to explain those topics as I am to perform brain surgery while blindfolded. I am not an expert. I’m not even in the same hemisphere as an expert. Then again, it’s not like experts have a perfect track record of explaining these issues either so it’s not like their voices are somehow more pure. At the end of the day, their farts stink as much as mine.

I establish this context because I’m going to make an exception to that general rule I mentioned earlier. I’m going to offer some advice to a group that I think needs all the help they can get. Specifically, I’m talking about the fine citizens of the United States who organized the Women’s March.

I’ve already given my reaction to this mark. I hope I made clear that I mostly agree with their policy positions at every level. They stand for principles that I don’t believe the current regime in Washington is going to protect. I support them in their efforts, even if I think their approach is lacking in substance. That’s exactly why I’d like to lend whatever help an aspiring erotica/romance writer can offer, however limited that might be.

What follows is a list of simple tips that I hope will help the people behind the Women’s March. What they seek is admirable and respectable. However, I worry that they will undermine their message by using a flawed, misguided approach in pursuing their goals. I hope with these tips, they’ll be better able to achieve those goals.

Tip #1: Acknowledge The Breadth Of The Audience You Seek To Influence

You see that map above? That’s a picture of how every county in the United States voted in the 2016 election. Notice anything unique about it, other than how it looks like a jigsaw puzzle designed by a brain-damaged orangutan? There’s a lot of red and only a few spots of blue. Why is that?

Well, the blue parts are the ones containing America’s largest cities. The red are largely rural, low-density areas full of small towns, tight-nit communities, and exceedingly few vegan restaurants. These areas make up a good chunk of the land, but less than half the population. That’s because the cities, which contain the urban crowds, draw in more people with more diverse economic opportunities.

Why does this matter? That’s because it’s these rural, under-developed areas are the ones who gravitate towards the conservative side of the political spectrum. They do this because their way of life is dying. It’s dying and the conservative crowd knows how to appeal to them, selling them false hope while the other side basically ignores them.

The Women’s March deals with issues that affect everybody, but they basically overlook this part of the country entirely. These are people whose lives are devoid of hope and issues like LGBT rights, speech codes on college campuses, and soda taxes aren’t going to affect their lives.

These are people who the Women’s March largely ignores, but they still vote. They still have hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Without acknowledging them or reaching out to them, they’re basically ignoring a huge part of the Country that desperately needs hlep and hope.

Tip #2: Abandon Political Correctness, Kill It, And Bury It In The Deepest Hole

I cannot stress this enough. It needs to be belabored, reinforced, and beaten down with a two-ton anvil. In order for the Women’s March to make their message resonate on the widest scale possible, those involved must abandon, kill, and disavow political correctness in all its forms.

I cannot be polite or funny about this. Jerry Seinfeld has tried, but even he can’t find the humor in it. That should tell you everything you need to know. If someone like Jerry Seinfeld can’t find humor in it, then nobody can.

By political correctness, I mean everything from speech codes to gender identity politics to people protesting the name of a football team. A big reason why the current regime is in power is because the vast majority of the population has heard the rhetoric of the politically correct and they hate it with a vitriol that rivals every Mortal Kombat character ever made.

If you really want to appeal to more people, you need to ditch the excessive PC bullshit that has alienated an entire generations from an entire end of the political spectrum. Either abandon it or watch as the new regime coaxes its way through election after election.

Tip #3: Focus on Justice For Everybody And Not Just For A Select Few

This seems obvious and most in the Women’s March probably agree with this sentiment. However, the problem with their style is that they focus too much on justice for one particular group. They focus on LGBT, women, minorities, and refugees. That’s all well and good. These people need justice too. However, don’t focus so much on them that you forget about everybody else.

Believe it or not, injustice knows no political party. It knows no political ideology. An LGBT person is vulnerable to injustice. A straight white man living in rural Alabama is vulnerable to it as well. If you want both of those individuals on your side, keeping mind that both vote, don’t focus on a few specific trees while ignoring the forest.

By focusing too much on one group or another, you get cases like the Duke Lacrosse case and the UVA false rape case. It also means that groups like radical feminists skew the message, throwing around toxic terms like “patriarchy” and “rape culture.” These terms poison the well and alienate others, all in addition to being mostly bunk.

It may be tempting to focus exclusively on minorities who are vulnerable, and they are, but alienating others in the process helps no one in the long run.

Tip #4: Be Serious (And Ditch The Goofy Hats And Costumes)

This directly address those who wear the goofy vagina costumes to these rallies. Look, I love vaginas as much as the next straight guy. I admire the beauty of vaginas all the time as an erotica/romance writer. However, when you make these costumes and use them in protests, you’re not sending a message of justice and inclusion. You just look like you came back from a Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion.

There’s a time and a place for comedy in politics. Those times should be few and targeted. It also helps to leave them up to the professionals, such as John Oliver and Trevor Noah. These are people who know how to inject humor into an issue for the right reasons. They are also funnier than 99 percent of the population.

Let them handle the humor. For everyone else, leave the goofy costumes at home. When you wear that stuff, people who don’t agree with you aren’t going to be swayed. They’re just going to roll their eyes and think it’s a joke. If you want to reach these people, this is not how you want to get their attention.

The same goes for those goofy pink hats. Those hats aren’t cute or convincing in any way. They just look goofy. If you really want to appeal to everyone, you need to come off as real, honest people. Believe it or not, people respond to others who they can relate to. What a concept, right?

Tip #5: Appeal To Feelings While Avoiding Insults

This may sound dishonest to some because shady car salesmen use the same tactics. They’ll come up to you and make you feel like the most important person in the world while trying to sell you shit on four wheels. It may be dishonest, but it works. There’s a reason why used car salesmen still exist.

If you learn nothing else from last year’s election, then at least learn this. Facts do matter, but they’ll always be secondary to feelings. When it comes to perception versus reality, perception wins 99 times out of 100. I’ve already written about this. I don’t want to belabor it, but I think it needs to be belabored.

This goes back to caveman logic. The human brain is not wired for truth and understanding. It’s wired for survival and reproduction. It doesn’t come to decisions based on facts. First, it has us react to the proverbial lion in the bushes. Then, our brains come up with a reason to justify our reaction. From a scientific perspective, it’s ass backwards. It’s also the only way you can relate to people.

If you can make someone feel like they matter to you, then they’re more likely to help you. That needs to be the first step. For the Women’s March to reach others who don’t already agree with them, they need to tap into those feelings that led them to vote for the other side in the last election. Those feelings are key. If you want to convince them of anything, you must first confront those feelings first.

Tip #6: Focus On Hope Over Outrage

This should be fairly obvious, but it’s one of those issues I think the Women’s March glossed over at times. Hope is a powerful message. Hope is what got Barack Obama elected twice. Hope is the ultimate motivator and rallying cry. That’s what got people off their asses and to the polls during the last election. Naturally, they chose the candidate that gave them the most hope.

Right now, the Women’s March is focused less on hope and more on outrage. That’s completely understandable. There’s plenty to be outraged about and I’m not just talking about grabbing women by the pussy. However, outrage is only slightly more meaningful than whining. It’s too easy for one to turn into the other.

The time for lamenting over losses is over. The election is over. The new regime is in. They’re already at an advantage because they’re going to find out that delivering hope is much harder than actually promising hope. This is where the Women’s March has the advantage. Instead of focusing on the failures of the past, they need to focus on the hope for the future.

What does that future mean? What can they offer that the current regime cannot or will not offer? Give people something to look forward to. Give them something to aspire to. It works for Superman. It works just as well for what the Women’s March seeks to accomplish.

Tip #7: Pick The Right Battles And Choose The Right Allies

This isn’t as important as hope or abandoning political correctness, but make no mistake. A movement will be judged on the allies it chooses. In the last election, the losing party chose poorly. How do I know this? Off the top of your head, who was the most reputable ally they chose?

Can’t think of anyone? I rest my case. You see, in addition to being big on feelings, the human brain is also big on association. If you associate yourself with something good, then that’s going to affect how others perceive you. If you don’t, then you leave yourself vulnerable to wild accusations that some people in the FBI can exploit.

If you want allies, make sure you pick the ones who will also fight your battles. You want someone who will fight for minority rights, religious rights, and the rights of women? Well, those organizations do exist. They’re easy to ally with and they accept donations. They include the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Habitat For Humanity.

Once you have allies like this, then you’re better able to pick the right battles. It’s a losing endeavor trying to shame, scorn, and scold others into accepting your views. By showing support through legitimate legal avenues, it shows you’re serious and people do react when they sense someone is putting in the effort.

Tip #8: Inspire Rather Than Demean

This is more a general rule than advice. Inspiration is every bit as powerful as hope. In the last election, one side inspired an entire population who had grown resentful of uptight, politically correct intellectuals who demeaned and denigrated them for the crime of not being a marginalized group. When you demean entire groups like that, you lose allies and send them running to your enemies.

Those people, however, can be swayed back. Doing so means changing the approach. It means changing the perception, style, and substance behind that approach. The people behind the Women’s March must show the college-educated urban elite and the poor white rural people that they matter. They think they’re good, decent human beings and they want to build a future with them.

All too often, a movement devolves into a classic “us against them” mantra. That may win elections in the short term, but it drives people apart in the long run. The people behind the Women’s March need to think about the long term. They need to think beyond the next election.

There are entire generations who believe that the people behind the Women’s March are only fighting for a few select minorities. They need to show that they will fight for everyone. It’s only when you can appeal to everyone that you can overcome everything. Remember that and you need not fear the outcome of any election.

1 Comment

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,