No Matter What Happened in the Election, Character Still Matters to Me

You can't cast a vote and change lies into truth

Hello Friends,

Yesterday I changed my approach to this new era of madness in which we've all unfortunately been forced to inhabit. The first thing I did was delete my Twitter account.

Poof!

Gone!

I only ever used it to post my articles and the articles of other writers I admire, but I don't know if I ever got much traction from it. That was one of several platforms that I felt tended to bury my work. There was really no upside, and the downside was that it took my time.

Some people claim that social media sites track you. I don't know if that's true or not. I suspect I'm hardly interesting enough to track. But if the specter of such a thing looms in your subconscious mind, then I think it's advantageous to delete the application.

In fact, I did some housekeeping on a variety of platforms. I'm changing my approach to how we improve the world.

A friend of mine happened to see me walking the dog yesterday, so he stopped his car to join me as I made my way around the block. I told him that I think our best strategy in the months and years ahead is to place our focus on education. The problem, as I see it, is ignorance. The general public doesn't know what it's getting into.

They get all their information from social media platforms, and they disregard the advice of accomplished experts.

Even in writing that I hear the echo of people who start in with their nonsensical arguments like, “Well, experts need to stay in their own lane, but when they start offering opinions on things like...”

No.

That whole statement is just another dishonest tactic designed to erode confidence in people who actually know what they're talking about. But ask yourself this: in favor of what? If you don't listen to experts then who are you going to listen to?

My friend's wife is a nurse. He said she's already frustrated with people who come in and complain about their problems, but then they don't want to listen to the accepted thinking within the medical community. “Then what did you come in here for?” she's tempted to ask them.

Why are people who are ill going into the hospital to rebuke doctors for offering effective treatment? It doesn't make sense.

I made an effort to limit my consumption of social media platforms because I think that's the source of the poison. For now there are excellent platforms like Medium and Substack where accomplished people share a mature perspective. Yes, just like any platform, there are some efforts to corrupt Medium and Substack. But as of this moment, these platforms are healthy, robust, and a good source of true information.

When they stop being good sources of information, then we'll have to find something else. But for the time being, let's be grateful for what we have.

Still, it's difficult to completely remove any news about the incoming administration from your feed. That's part of what's so frustrating about this. I like the fact that Biden got into office, went to work, and did an excellent job for the American people. You could almost forget he was president unless you spent all day listening to rage media because you're under the delusional belief that doing so makes you “informed.”

It occurred to me that I can't recall Biden ever getting angry about how he's portrayed on Saturday Night Live. The other guy becomes infuriated about such things.

And as petulant as that kind of behavior is, it's also dangerous. It's inappropriate for political power to pressure a comedy show not to engage in satire. If you become afraid of saying what you want to say, you've already given up your First Amendment rights without a fight.

I think for two long the American public has presumed those rights were written in stone. I fear we're about to learn they're written on paper. The paper has gotten very old.

There's been talk of reforming public education to include a greater emphasis on American patriotism and the American ideal. This language, too, scares me.

The way I look at it, a little bit of patriotism is okay, but it should be roughly the equivalent of dessert. You can't survive on a diet of patriotism alone.

What about teaching American humility as part of a healthy and balanced perspective? As far as I'm concerned, humility is something that we lack, and we're growing shorter on all the time. But also, humility is the foundation of character. You never get too high on your successes because you look back and you recognize all the times you didn't do enough or you outright failed.

The pathway to prosperity is through responsibility and accountability. Sometimes we have to acknowledge that our society isn't working for everyone. We have to recognize that people are in pain. We have to do our best to help the other members of our community. Once we've consumed a healthy dosage of humility, we can end on a pep talk. “We've made our mistakes, but we'll move forward because we have character and character is admirable.”

The current movement wants the pep talk without the accountability.

The media appears to be helping them promote this message. The simple fact is that Biden has built a historically great economy. Yet, throughout this election cycle, the media has claimed that the economy is horrible. I predict that the economy will go through a decline in the next couple years. It won't happen right away, but when your leaders are made up of people who go to the doctor's office to berate the nurses for not knowing anything, decay is inevitable. Meanwhile, as the economy descends into chaos, the media will likely spend all their time pushing the false narrative that it’s great.

Oddly, the one thing that gives me a little bit of hope is the existence of greed. When the economy starts to tank and people start to lose money, it should insert some cracks in the alliance. I think there's some infighting going on even as we speak.

As for me, I've found a new resolve in sharing the importance of humility, compassion, and accountability. These people running around repeating loathsome statements like “your body, my choice” are exposing their delusional mentality. They've over emphasized the importance of an election.

The truth does not become fiction because of who gets elected as president.

You can't elect somebody president and make racism acceptable again. Racism was never acceptable.

You can't elect somebody president and pound the final nail into the coffin of character.

Character still matters, the truth still matters, kindness still matters. There is only one way forward towards a happy and prosperous future. Unfortunately, our society has stubbornly decided to face in the wrong direction. But take heart in the fact that there are 70+ million people who voted on the side of reason. It's up to us to educate 10 million or so who are on the fringes, and who are about to wake up to the fact that they made a gigantic mistake.

We have to be willing to welcome those back. I'm not talking about the ones who have given themselves up entirely to hatred, I'm talking about the ones that might still be redeemed. It's about education. We all need good mentors who can lead us from misery to happiness.

Go out and be one of those mentors. Talk about character. We must exert our collective influence and get this ship turned around.

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