The first few posts on this site are a brief introduction of myself, giving perspective as to what I’m hoping to contribute, what I’m giving myself to, and why I believe that this is the core and the beginning of something much more broad and important to me than a self titled blog.
This is a mission. A mission to play a role in helping reshape the way the average consumer of media interprets, compartmentalizes and values the messaging they consume. I want to see the market of ideas shift from a such a high demand for eccentric, divisive and hyper certain punditry, to a broader base of consumers who demand information for the sake of knowledge. For the sake of contentment and a settled mind from facts, as opposed to an unhealthily addictive response of feeling outraged by the next exaggerated, manufactured scandal of the day.
So, where do I come from?
Geographically and culturally, I come from a small, rural community outside of Portland, Oregon that was once thriving due to it’s timber industry, but is now a relatively stagnant town where people seem to simply live their day to day lives. Those “fuckin’ tree-huggers” and the spotted owl were the enemy that ruined everything according to the version of history that I grew up with. The type of town that makes up most of the land mass of America. You know, the red parts. Fundamentalist Christian sects, high rates of teenage pregnancies and drug addiction, blue collared work valued over a college education, nonchalant racism, and Trump flags currently waving along nearly every road in the surrounding area. Oh, and now it’s the fucking liberals and their elite media who are apparently ruining everything.
Just to be clear, I recognize that this description doesn’t paint the entire picture. There are a lot of great things about my childhood and the area surrounding where I grew up. I’m not describing things the way I am as a judgment per se. Rather, I’m focusing on some points that are relevant to why I’m writing and posting this at all.
At sixteen years old I moved out, quickly moved to the city and was fueled by a rebellious and intentional separation of the world I came from that rejected most of what made up the ideological bases that were the foundation by which I was raised.
I won’t use this post to give an entire resume of my life, but I’ll just say that my adult life has been the epitome of the stereotypical left winger. I’m a proud liberal who has worked in a variety of industries from restaurants to sales. I’ve travelled to dozens of countries and have volunteered for a number of non-profit groups, including political campaigns. I’ve marched and rallied with the best of intentions, only to be able to return to my straight, white, male privileged life. Over the years I’ve, at times, struggled to buy food and keep a secure home, but now I have a family, have built a fairly comfortable life for them and myself and have a formal education in business, media, politics and communication, and have received my Masters degree in Multimedia Journalism.
I’m no stranger to the left or the right side of the isles of American political ideologies. I want to be clear that there are things that I’ve heard and read first hand that are not obscurities. They are comments made to me directly in a conversation (and arguments on social media) by close relatives, colleagues, friends and acquaintances. These aren’t merely things I heard about on cable news or an internet pundit, or from my strange distant uncle living in cabin in the woods with just enough of an internet connection to send email blasts with conspiracy theories to me and everyone else on his contact list.
People that I care about, who I grew up with, who I’ve worked with, who I know, truly believe or have believed that…
- The Democrats and elites, namely in the liberal media, are a cabal of pedophile child rapists who drink a hormone secreted from dying bodies of the children being raped by people like Hilary Clinton, Tom Hanks and Opera, and Donald Trump is running a secret, five-dimensional-chess like operation with Q (as in Qanon) to stop them.
- The 2020 election was rigged and stolen from Trump.
- The coronavirus was intentionally released in order to take Donald Trump out of office.
- Trump and the feds were going to be stopping Joe Biden from being inaugurated and Trump was going to be sworn in for a second term.
- The earth is flat.
- Clear signs of the biblical end of days prophecies are currently being fulfilled pointing to the end of times being near.
- Gay people and non-Christians are going to suffer in a spiritual afterlife for eternity.
- Global warming / climate change is a hoax.
- Evolution is “just a theory” so therefore it’s not true.
- We should defund and abolish the police system in America.
- The wildfires over the summer of 2020 were started by Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
- Our governor wants to kill us by making us wear masks.
This list goes on and on. I intentionally excluded disagreements that are just a matter of partisan, ideological or personal world views. This list includes what I think of as extreme positions ranging from completely unsubstantiated claims, that have the potential to do real harm, to less harmful, but equally bizarre and cultish beliefs, all made with the utmost certainty by people who are drastically unqualified to be discussing these topics with any sort of authority. And I didn’t even mention multilevel marketing on this list, but I will cover it plenty in future posts.
And here lies the dilemma that will be a consistent point of contention with my own mission. I believe that these topics need to be discussed with a sharp critique of their relationship with verifiable facts, while also recognizing that people, real life people, with real life feelings, lives and personal values believe these things. It’s a conundrum that I certainly don’t think can ever truly be solved, especially by any single person’s ideas alone; however, I do believe that we can make things better for a lot of people through the grit and determination of enough people working to encourage the expansion of a culture that demands peace through some basic sets of agreements, where truth, knowledge, facts and the interpretation of their meanings must be more clearly understood and valued.
This likely requires that a lot of us be willing to give up part of our current identity for one that serves a greater purpose for all the inhabitants of this planet. I know I am. Are you?