What will it take to Awaken the Sleeping Giant?

United, we can stand. But divided, we will fall.

Everything Fails

Before I decided to be a theoretical conspiracist, I had started this blog to talk about software and strategy. It has been a weird few weeks. I previously wrote about how we move forward in a world where Trump takes office. I continue to find that perspective valuable and would suggest checking it out. For those who want a TL:DR, here is a snippet:

First of all, we are going to have to get over something. This is everybody’s fault. This is nobody’s fault. There is not one thing that led us here, only a culmination of a multitude of conditions and actions. We are all at fault. We all did (or didn’t do) things that led us here. We all played a part in it. Some people played more of a role and some less, sure, but we all contributed. But here is the part you are probably not going to like. It. Does. Not. Matter. To steal the line, ‘The facts do NOT care about your feelings’.

The Eye of the Storm

I’ve thrown my dice and now the only thing to do is wait to see what face it lands on. I hate this part every time.

But, whether I am right or not tomorrow, nothing will change immediately. It is not an end. It is, in fact, quite the opposite — a new beginning.

Right now we are in the eye of the storm. In the calm of the eye, my mind is not fixated on when the storm wall is coming. I am a disaster manger. I always assume the storm wall is coming. I am focused on the next part: “What happens after?”

Let’s assume for sake of brevity that we do get concrete evidence of election fraud. What happens next?

I’ll give you a minute…

…

…

…

If you said, “we win”, then I have some really bad news for you. No, if I am right, then what happens next is we get to start working on the actually hard parts.

The problem is that there is no outcome where one side ‘wins’ and the other ‘loses’. At some point, we are going to have to learn how to amicably live together again.

This weighed heavily on me when I decided to start posting. Am I muddying the waters? Am I helping my adversaries by bringing light to what I see? What will happen if people actually listen to me?

The deciding factor was an inescapable feeling that we need to prepare. Before we could prepare, we needed to start building trust that there was a tomorrow worth preparing for.

Cold War 2, Electric Boogaloo

My most stark realization post Nov 5th is that the US Election is a battle in a much larger war. America fell asleep at the wheel and we completely missed the fact that World War III (I tend to like “The Great Climate Wars”) has already started. The Information Age ended several years ago. We just haven’t yet come to terms with that fact. We haven’t internalized that wars are no longer primarily fought with bullets and artillery, they are fought with economies and culture.

I’ll say that again — economies and culture. Cambridge Analytica, Twitter → X, Tiktok, Taiwan, national debts, tariffs, and sanctions. I’m embarrassed by how much I deluded myself into believing that our biggest problems are domestic.

If we are at war, its important to figure out who the enemy is and what their goals are. Most immediately, our enemy is Vladimir Putin. His goal is to divide The West. Only when The West disengages from global politics can Putin’s brand of fear and hatred have any path to victory.

That is our hard truth. If we let this divide us, we will lose. Only together can we build a better future.

Social Media is our Generation’s Cigarettes

We are going to have to get over our righteousness and start to apply some of our own principals more broadly. We also need to regain the narrative.

Affirmative Action, LGTBQ+, the ADA, these things are not about giving handouts to underrepresented groups. No, they are about us accepting and appreciating that societal factors have a tremendous impact on outcomes.

To that end, it is time for me to stand up and admit something — I helped sell cigarettes to kids. I have my grimy handprints all over the crime scene. I have long feared, “Some day, we will look back at Social media the same way we look back at Cigarettes.” To be fair, I thought it would be about the psychological impact itself. I didn’t really put together how adversaries would weaponize that psychological impact.

I fear the damage is much more extensive than I had predicted. Tech acquired enough data that we were able to model human behavior and ‘hack’ our attention spans. In doing so, we built something deeply addictive and deeply vulnerable to manipulation.

I propose that we start to appreciate the societal factors that have led us all here. Look, you might think content doesn’t affect you, but the data is very, very clear here. You are definitely affected. In a big enough sample, people do click on ads. That stupid news story does change votes. The data is very clear.

Like all vices, some people are more affected than others. A lot of that very likely has to do with socio-economic factors. Is it really different?

Everyone, everywhere has some battle they are fighting. It is time that we start to appreciate that more fully. Also, we don’t really have another option.

It is time to do a “blameless postmortem” – to stop arguing about who did it, examine why it happened, and figure out what we do to make things better again.

Actually, I’m gonna edit that one a bit.

figure out what we do to Make America Great.

Make America Great

If you take a step back, you might actually find that we have much more in common than you think. For people, I tend to believe in being a lumper not a splitter. I think if we really examine it, we will find that we broadly agree on the problems facing society.

Where trouble comes is that we do not agree on the solutions. I feel we have forgotten how to discuss nuance and how to compromise. I also think we dramatically lack empathy for the conditions that lead someone to be hateful. It is human to fear outsiders. The same people who would decry hate crimes will cheer when a drone drops a grenade on a Russian soldier. They are both examples of violence to outsiders. All that is different is the size of the bubble.

I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right.

I tend to think there are very few ‘truly bad’ people. Everyone is shaped by their lived experiences. I believe in a purely economical view of the world, “Everyone is just trying to maximize their value”. In the past, people have told me they find this very nihilistic, as it is solely logical and lacks emotion. I am a realist and a utilitarian. People call me a pessimist and a doomsayer.

But the other side of that coin is this week, when everyone keeps asking me how I can be so optimistic. Turns out, it is easy! If I believe MAGA are not inherently evil, then it also follows that we can talk this out. Humanity will always achieve the best outcomes when we cooperate.

A few days ago, I was talking about this with my father.

Dad: [How do we maintain hope?]

Me: I like to have a long view of it. Statistically, we’ve managed to make it better every time this has happened before.

Dad: How can we deal with the fact that I fear my neighbors might not be held accountable for causing harm?

Me: I, for one, would much rather trust that my neighbor is not going to murder me than live in fear he will not be punished should he do so.

Dad: But what if someone convinced you your neighbor wanted to murder you?

Me: In some ways, my neighbors do want to murder me. And they kind of always will and they kind of always have. But like, it’s an acceptable risk it’s pretty remote. More likely to die in a car.

Me: Did you know you get more radiation on an intl flight or eating bananas than spending a day in Chernobyl? But nobody every talks about how scary bananas are.

The Next Step

So, let’s get back to the question: “what happens after?”

I chose to believe that we can come together. I chose to believe that we can awaken the sleeping giant. I have always believed that united, we can do great things and divided, we will fail.

So it is time to start preparing for the hard part. We are going to have to find a way to resolve our differences and find a peace. Those of us that tried to prevent catastrophe will have an outsized duty to help fix it.

But hey — THAT IS THE JOB!

I don’t know all (or even most) of the steps we will have to take to get back to peace. It is probably going to take a while. It will not be without hardship. Luckily, we do not need to figure it all out today. We just need to find the strength to keep moving forward.

I think it starts with preparing. Being ready to help explain to people what has happened. To spread truth as far as we can so that people are informed. To do the hard work required to resolve our differences and move forward together.

This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth.

The most important step a man can take. It is not the first one. It is the next one.

Brandon Sanderson

A Closing Note

I fear many people will read this as “we just have to tolerate their intolerance.” and I would like to strongly emphasize that is not what I’m saying. I propose instead “at some point, you are going to have to start talking to your MAGA parents again.”

Liberals do need to work on appreciating that MAGA problems are real. Globalization did not help everyone equally. Capitalism has left rural America to rot and die. Our government is broken in many ways. We failed to extend understanding to them and there is good reason for people to be angry about that. On the problems, we need to find ways to compromise.

What we do not need to compromise on is hate. There is no compromise to be had between “I think we should hate crime all trans people” and “I think we should hate crime no trans people.” Neither side is ok with just a little hate crime.

A role model of mine is Daryl Davis. Daryl is a badass. I believe hate is most often about an formless threat, it struggles to survive contact with real, lived experiences. It is hard to put yourself in harms way to help the people willing to do the harm. For this reason, it is the thing I respect the most. It is going to be hard to pop our bubbles. But, it must be done.

A note on subscribing. I would love to keep posting, so if you want to keep reading please subscribe! It is free. Please do not send me donations. If you want to donate, send it to a charity of your choice. That is what I’m gonna do and it will save me a lot of tax hassles.