A question was posted on Quora after the last election explaining that the poster had voted for Trump as a joke, was horrified that he’d won and asked how he could change his vote.
That level of ignorance seems well beyond what Socrates had in mind in his comments on voters.
And the image below is meant as a graphic argument against the belief some people have that their single vote doesn’t count for much.
Ryan Holiday is a marketer and publicist who specializes in manipulating blogs in service of his clients.
(…)
contrary to prevailing wisdom, that most original reporting in online media was done by smaller blogs, (…) by influencing small blogs today, one could alter what was in the Washington Post tomorrow.
Virality is most prevalent in stories with high emotional content, especially anger and awe.
Holiday had no problem with his work when the goal was to sell a product, but when the same tools started to be used to manipulate social and civic attitudes he stopped.
If the effects of this media manipulation were merely to drive customers to products they wouldn’t otherwise buy, Ryan would still probably be out there plying his trade. What caused him to reconsider his profession (and write Trust Me I’m Lying) was the increasing use of these manipulation techniques to spread political ideas, and, in the process, hurt individuals. In the second half of the book, he talks about how sites like Jezebel and Breitbart News use the techniques he pioneered to push product for American Apparel to maximize their own page-views by stoking outrage both among their supporters and their opponents. In his view, much of responsibility for the coarsening and polarization of politics and culture can be laid at the feet of professional manipulators like himself.
Using professional manipulators to change and/or incite public opinion is nothing new.
But the tools at their disposal are more insidious than ever.
Therefore, making caveat emptor your personal slogan makes more sense than ever.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Sometimes old posts just depress me. I wrote this one in 2008 and it’s still applicable today. With very slight alterations, it would be just as applicable in 1908 or 1808 or even earlier and it will probably be just as applicable in 2118 and beyond.
Expecting companies to “do the right thing” when they think the right thing will impinge on their bottom line is just plain stupid. It hasn’t worked historically and I doubt it will work in the future; certainly not on the tech world, whose arrogance makes Wall Street look humble.
The only thing stupider is businesses’ inability to understand that the right thing is often more profitable — of course, they could take a lesson from Blackrock, but more about that tomorrow.
Yesterday I asked, “What else does Wall Street and the financial industry do besides cripple corporate strategic efforts?”
They fight for self-regulation, assuring watchdog agencies and Congress that they are good guys that should be trusted to do the best thing and that the economy will tank if any kind of control or regulation is enacted—and they win.
They win based on the money spent to focus the efforts of well-connected lobbyists on stopping cold, or at least significantly watering down, any legislation or rules that might offer protection to us—the people who keep them all in BMWs and champagne.
Wall Street and the other financial services industries aren’t alone in this, every industry does it, but the money guys seem to be exceptionally successful—until something blows up. Then, when public outcry is loud and tempers are hot, Congress has the leverage to pass anything—whether it fixes the problem or merely makes them look like they care.
Deregulation was one of the prime factors in the S&L mess in the eighties; earnings pressure combined with personal greed fueled many of the recent corporate financial fiascos—think Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and others.
And now, of course, we have the Sub-prime debacle with which to contend.
And after each of these, Congress, the SEC and others all run to add laws and rules to prevent it from happening again.
The repercussions from the latest snafu (Navy term meaning ‘situation normal—all f*ked up’) are reverberating through the credit markets making it more than difficult for corporations, small business and just plain folks to access it.
Who will step into the breach to provide investment and liquidity?
Private equity and big hedge funds—both with even less regulation and even larger egos and greed factors than more traditional Wall Street firms.
But a land grab by big hedge funds and private equity firms might create new problems. The Securities & Exchange Commission and the Finance Industry Regulatory Authority oversee investment banks to some degree, and the Federal Reserve is moving in that direction. But hedge funds are largely unregulated and aren’t bound to make any disclosures to anyone but their investors. Even that information is often incomplete. A move by hedge funds into traditional corporate finance would mean even less transparency than exists on Wall Street now.
It’s a sad fact that the 214-year-old force that was instrumental in building the most powerful industrial nation on the planet could be just as instrumental in presiding at its demise.
Understand, it’s not that I have much faith in government regulation, but have seen little-to-no proof that self-regulation works—it’s too much like having the fox care for the hen house.
So-called government intrusion is the result of the inability of various industries to “self-regulate” for any reasons other than short-term profit, doing as much they can get away with and pushing the boundaries beyond what’s reasonable.
So you tell me, how can we get well-reasoned laws that aren’t defeated or seriously watered down by special interest groups and industry lobbyists before the crisis?
It’s something that you should keep in the forefront of your mind, especially during election season this year and every year.
Think about today’s leaders.
Be it Congress, the White House, governors, or politicians at any level.
How many of them would meet the Hickory leadership test?
How many corporate leaders? How many educational leaders? How many religious leaders?
Sadly, I doubt that even 1% would qualify, no matter how you grouped them.
I sincerely wish I was wrong.
At the very least, we deserve leaders who consider us of equal priority to themselves and not a (very) distant second — or lower.
Andrew Jackson and Leadership in Adversity
In January 1813, Andrew Jackson marched south from Tennessee with a force of 2000 to bolster the defense of New Orleans. When he got to Natchez, some 500 miles from home, he received orders to dismiss his troops.
The order was for him simply to dismiss the troops and turn over his supplies to General James Wilkinson. Apparently, Jackson’s men were expected to make their own way home and find ways to feed themselves. They were in hostile territory and, by then, over a hundred of Jackson’s men were ill. Fifty-six couldn’t even sit upright. Jackson turned over his supplies, as ordered, but he vowed to take all his men home.
The problem was that the expedition had only eleven wagons. When Dr. Samuel Hogg asked Jackson what he should do, Jackson replied simply, “You are not to leave a man on the ground.”
Hogg reminded Jackson that the wagons were already filled with the sick. There was no more room. Jackson’s solution was straightforward.
“Let some of the troops dismount. The officers must give up their horses. Not a man must be left behind.”
I can imagine Hogg screwing up his courage then. Jackson was known for a volatile temper. But he also had a horse. Hogg asked for Jackson’s horse for the sick. Jackson turned over the reins.
Jackson led the troops home, paying out of his own pocket for their provisions, and walking all of the five hundred miles. He laid out his thinking in a letter to Felix Grundy.
“I shall march them to Nashville or bury them with the honors of war. Should I die, I know they would bury me.”
Leadership is about accomplishing your mission and caring for your people. And how you do both speaks volumes about the kind of leader and person you are. Jackson’s actions are a stark contrast to “leaders” who put their welfare first.
This incident was the making of Jackson’s reputation as a general. During the march, his men started calling him “Hickory” because he was so tough. That became “Old Hickory,” the nickname he would carry for life.
Boss’s Bottom Line
What I love about this story is that Jackson did what he thought was the right thing, without much thought about the consequences or how things might look. At the time he chose to get all his men home, walking himself and paying for their food, he could not have known how things would play out later in his life. When you lead, we expect you to do the right thing, all the time, not just when it’s convenient or when it looks good.
Resources
Jon Meacham’s biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, is a great biography, but it concentrates on Jackson the President and skips over most of his early life. If you want an overview of Jackson’s life, I recommend Robert Rimini’s one volume Life of Andrew Jackson.
It’s the result of an 1894 labor strike against the Pullman Company (think aspirational, luxury private railroad cars).
Engineer and industrialist George Pullman’s workers all lived in company-owned buildings. The town was highly stratified. Pullman himself lived in a mansion, managers resided in houses, skilled workers lived in small apartments, and laborers stayed in barracks-style dormitories. The housing conditions were cramped by modern standards, but the town was sanitary and safe, and even included paved streets and stores.
Then the disastrous economic depression of the 1890s struck. Pullman made a decision to cut costs — by lowering wages.
In a sense, workers throughout Chicago, and the country at large, were in the same boat as the Pullman employees. Wages dropped across the board, and prices fell. However, after cutting pay by nearly 30%, Pullman refused to lower the rent on the company-owned buildings and the prices in the company-owned stores accordingly.
Federal troops used extreme force to break the strike resulting in 30 deaths, while rioting and sabotage left 80 million dollars worth of damage in its wake.
Indiana state professor and labor historian Richard Schneirov said President Grover Cleveland’s decision to declare Labor Day as a holiday for workers was likely a move meant to please his constituents after the controversial handling of the strike. The president was a Democrat, and most urban laborers at the time were Catholic Democrats.
Congress approved (knowing their constituents would also be pleased).
Makes you wonder what the current president and congress would do.
I’m assuming you’ve read the anti-diversity manifesto, or articles about it, from the Google engineer decrying his company’s diversity efforts and harking back to the ancient reasoning that women are biologically incapable of being good coders, cops and firemen, among other incapables.
(It’s always sad to see this level of scientific ignorance in a technical person. Of course, it’s not easier in a (supposedly) educated politician.)
There are dozens of responses, but Yonatan Zunger’s is the best I’ve seen (hat tip to KG for sending it).
Zunger is a 14 year Google veteran, who left last week to join a startup. He not only refutes it, but analyzes why the damage goes well beyond the obvious. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth the few minutes it will take to read.
Ayori Selassie’s is shorter and I’ve reproduced it in full below.
The penis doesn’t write code, the brain does.
Women also have a brain therefore they write code too.
There, I fixed your #GoogleManifesto.
The one thing in the manifesto I do agree with is that freedom of speech should mean that anyone can speak their mind without fear of shaming or harassment.
However, the tactics he describes that are commonly used in liberal bastions on those espousing right and alt-right attitudes are exactly the same tactics used on progressives and liberals in conservative strongholds.
Folks, I thought it fitting to have something veteran related as America just celebrated Independence Day. While the holiday itself is about the founding of the country, I think we can all agree that the actions of the men and women who fought helped secure the independence.
My goal here is to not make this a political blog, but sometimes folks who I respect speak out and I like to highlight them.
I had the privilege to read “Tribe” recently and found the book to share a perspective on PTSD and culture that I had not heard before.
I may have shared in the past, but when I was a younger man I served in The United States Marine Corps. In that capacity I lost several Marines while on patrol in Fallujah, Iraq and it’s still something I keep with me.
With that said, I am fortunate not to suffer any serious effects, physical or mental, but I found the book to be a breath of fresh air.
I say all of this to say that Junger is well respected in the community and a voice of reason.
Below my post Junger is quoted as stating the current divisive political environment is causing moral injury on the troops. Moral injury could be very true. In the current conflicts young men and women are thrust into confusing situations that have no clear objective.
For us, we had to contend with the so called enemy, but also the locals; all while trying to explain that we were there to provide peace (while holding them to the gun).
It was confusing and as an introspective guy I had a hard time rationalizing what I was doing. My response was to just not consider the socio-political ramifications and focus on the day at hand.
What Junger says though is true in my opinion. As politics have become more divisive, it is tough for the folks in harm’s way to truly believe in the cause. The homeland is secure and we fight most wars now for no clear reason.
One takeaway from Junger’s book about PTSD I found can be applied by anyone.
He says we should embrace veterans, but not in such a way that you isolate them. Most veterans do not want adulation and praise, they just want mutual respect and the ability to remember, but not dwell.
An award-winning journalist says people who claim Trump isn’t their president hurt US troops
Sebastian Junger has a message for lawmakers: the partisan warring of politicians in Washington DC is hurting the American military more than they realize.
“Unity is all soldiers have when they face the enemy, and you must do everything in your power to make sure that it is not taken away from them,” the noted war journalist and author, who has written and directed extensively on war, told members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee during a hearing on post-traumatic stress disorder on June 7.
Junger used the opportunity to rail against the toxic influence of partisan politics among the armed forces.
“When it became fashionable after the election for some of my fellow Democrats to declare that Donald Trump was not their president, they put all of our soldiers at risk of moral injury,” he told lawmakers. “In order for soldiers to avoid something called ‘moral injury,’ they have to believe they are fighting for a just cause. And that just cause can only reside in a nation that truly believes in itself as an enduring entity.”
The issue isn’t just about the unusual nature of the Trump presidency, or Democrats’ resistance to it. “When Donald Trump charged repeatedly that Barack Obama [ …] was not even an American citizen, he surely demoralized many soldiers who were fighting under orders from that White House,” he said.
Junger, whose career as a war reporter began covering the Kosovo genocide in the 1990s, most recently penned a book called “Tribe” in which he wrote about the fractionalized America that troops face when they return home.
“For the sake of our military personnel, if not for the sake of our democracy, such statements should be quickly and forcefully repudiated by the offending political party,” Junger said.
“If that is not realistic, at least this committee — which is charged with overseeing the welfare of our servicemen and women — should issue a bipartisan statement rejecting such rhetorical attacks on our national unity.”
The military, which serves the president as its commander-in-chief, has become increasingly politicized in recent years.
The Center for New American Security reported a trend of more politicization of the military’s ranks by observing speeches given by retired generals at both Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2016.
What’s more, a study by the National Defense University found that more military personnel are sharing their political views on social media.
After surveying 500 West Point cadets and active duty officers, the report found that 75% of respondent said that they had seen their contemporaries shared political links on their personal social media accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
In “Tribe,” Junger writes, “Soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion and politics within their platoon.”
Today is (or should be) the first day of the rest of your life speaking out and actively working for the world in which you want to live. To do everything you can to quell the rise of hate and change the direction of your world.
If you care it’s time to act — not wait for the other guy to do it.
I’m sure that some of my readers are happy with its direction and will be very unhappy with this post. They may even unsubscribe (it’s happened in the past), but that is their right and I respect that.
But hopefully the rest of you will heed this call to action, take time to read the links and time to think about the world you want — not just for yourself, but for you current/future kids and their kids, etc.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This resonates with me because I am Jewish, granted I’m a sectarian Jew, but bigots don’t make that distinction.
My father’s family had the choice of emigrating from Russia or dying by the had of the Cossacks.
My Romanian grandmother was lucky. Her sister’s husband had only enough money to bring one sister to the US and she drew the short straw. The rest of the family died in the Holocaust.
I doubt it was an accident that the executive order was issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The hate being shown to this wave of refugees echoes the hate shown to past waves, but this time it’s far more hysterical and fraught.
As for the argument that the Muslim ban fights terrorism, what really are the odds that you might die in a terrorist attack in the US, especially compared to all the other ways to die? Take a look at the hard data.
Yes, ISIS is real, but terrorism on our soil is an excellent cover for one of the truly ugly underlying reasons today’s refugees are so violently rejected — they are black.
Anand Sanwal provided an insightful comment in his typically irreverent style.
So I landed in India with my daughter on Saturday and saw the news about immigration changes in the USA. I don’t think American citizens of Indian descent are banned from re-entering the USA yet, but let me know if anything changes as I got another 5 days here and things appear to be changing quickly. For the time being, I believe my type of brown person is still considered ok so that’s a relief. But definitely let me know if that changes. Thanks.
From Trump to Tea Party you are seeing the second coming of WASP thinking.
If this isn’t who you are then you need to speak out.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.
Tomorrow is your last chance to vote. Your last chance in what may be the most important election of your life. Or maybe, like me, you already voted. Either way, here are quotes from and links to political post I wrote in the past. Two are serious and two are just for fun. I hope you enjoy them.
We have no leaders, let alone statesmen, just ideologues, elected by like-minded ideologues, who care only about getting reelected, bringing government money back to their constituency and making lucrative connections in the event they aren’t reelected or are caught by term limits.
Just think what a difference if our national political scene included
more playmakers,
managers who were sharper identifying and keeping talent,
everybody better at cultivating and communicating, instead of scheming, and
better locker-room chemistry.
Notice that the most important is listed last.
What a difference it would make in their ability to find viable solutions, instead of ideological posturing.
Isn’t it funny how the word ‘politics’ is made up of the words ‘poli’ meaning ‘many’ in Latin, and ‘tics’ as in ‘bloodsucking creatures’?
A little girl asked her father, “Daddy? Do all Fairy Tales begin with ‘Once Upon A Time’?”
He replied, “No, there is a whole series of Fairy Tales that begin with ‘If elected I promise’.”
One day a florist goes to a barber for a haircut. After the cut he asked about his bill and the barber replies, ‘I cannot accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.’ The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the barber goes to open his shop the next morning there is a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.
Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, ‘I cannot accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.’ The cop is happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber goes to open up there is a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.
Later that day, a college professor comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, ‘I cannot accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.’ The professor is very happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber opens his shop, there is a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen different books, such as ‘How to Improve Your Business’ and ‘Becoming More Successful.
Then, a Congressman comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies, ‘I cannot accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.’ The Congressman is very happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber goes to open up, there are a dozen Congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.
And there lies the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the members of our Congress.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Sebastian Junger has a message for lawmakers: the partisan warring of politicians in Washington DC is hurting the American military more than they realize.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. 
