Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts

Monday, November 2, 2020

Rappers and Political Endorsements



When it comes to celebrities and politics, there is often less than meets the eye. I am quoted in this article about the unlikely phenomenon of rappers appearing to endorse Donald Trump's reelection. After rappers like Lil Wayne, Ice Cube, and Kanye West praised various Trump policies recently, many wondered if their support for Trump was genuine and if it would influence more  Black voters to cross parties to the Republicans.

While it is more and more unwise to look at the Black community as one monolithic group - are there really any racial and ethnic groups whose members always completely agree on every issue? - the article discusses how these particular rappers' recent political activities are really more for show and shock value than any real ideological commitment. 

Friday, October 9, 2020

Why We Need Our Conference...



As I had written yesterday - in the post just beneath this one - I will be taking part in a panel for a special conference at Saint Peter's University on October 13, discussing the unhinged madness conspiracy beliefs have managed to seduce so many Americans into and the depths of complete derangement this is throwing our culture into.

To see just how important it is to hold this discussion, take a look at this article in the New York Times about the Trump COVID hoax conspiracies that sprang up over the past week. And this time the conspiracy theories are not coming from the QAnon, right-wing crowd. This time the left is spinning its own creative fantasies about Donald Trump faking his illness for a variety of nefarious ends.

As the piece so correctly points out, the loss of a sense of consensus reality is not confined to any position on the political spectrum. It is a malady infecting the very culture. Plus, as the piece so ominously, and I believe correctly, points out, this malady is sure to stay with us for a long time. Even long past the November elections.

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Unfortunate, but not surprising...


I ran across this fascinating article from National Geographic about Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Not to be too self-serving, but my immediate reaction was that it's a real-world example of the theme I was trying to deal with in my new novel, CONFIRMATION. People will believe what they want to believe, what is the most convenient to maintain their preexisting belief systems so as never to have to admit they might have been wrong or that they need to change their world views. And they will keep believing no matter what they see right in front of their faces. This phenomenon, of course, has been demonstrated over and over again in decades' wroth of research in psychology as well as in media studies and analyses of people's reactions to persuasive messages.

These unfortunate folks on Tangier Island are watching their home slowly being claimed by the ocean. Some day, perhaps within the next 50 years, the island will no longer exist due to the rising ocean levels and the global climate change that's behind it. Nonetheless, they still cling to the belief that climate change is a hoax and believe in Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about climate science being fraudulent and the handiwork of the Chinese. These people will, no doubt, stick to their belief that climate change is not real until the moment the last of them will be evacuating the island. Then they will probably claim that the rising tides were a punishment from God because of the gays.

So when we scratch out heads at how people can so adamantly believe that the Earth is flat, that we never went to the Moon, that Bush family members blew up the Twin Towers, that crisis actors pretended to get shot in Las Vegas and Parkland, or any number of utterly implausible conspiracy theories, let's take a look at the people of Tangier Island.

Belief, no matter how it might fly in the face of tangible, empirical evidence, is a mighty powerful thing. And it can be incredibly destructive when manipulated by the opportunistic and unscrupulous.