The Deep Six: Want To Make America Great Again? Here’s How!
Right off the bat, the fact I used four certain words in the title of this post will immediately polarize a large number of those reading this. Rest assured that regardless of your political stripe, your assumptions about what you are about to read are likely not correct. Whether those four certain words trigger or inspire you, the fact you’ve already had a visceral reaction before you’ve even read this is EXACTLY the problem.
To understand why, you need to understand the genesis of this rant. Obviously, I’m a blogger, which means I read the works of several other bloggers. One of my favorites is called Two On A Rant, and they wrote something the other day that almost made my brain explode.
I will NOT talk about politics for one simple reason: No one has a sense of humor. One side screams “you hurt my feelings” and the other side says, “suck it up, snowflake.” We used to be able to laugh about our political faults. It was called free speech. I miss free speech.
Truer words were never written. Free speech isn’t under attack in America from the government; we as Americans killed it. Free speech in America got in the boat like Fredo Corleone and collectively we double-tapped it in the back of the head.
The first bullet we fired into it was ignorance. There are far too many people in this country screaming about things about which they don’t have the first clue. There’s a host of reasons for that; they are not nearly as important as the solutions, which I will get to in a bit. I give people only so many chance to prove to me they have absolutely no idea about which they are speaking; free speech is pointless if nobody is listening.
The second bullet is the lack of civility as Two On A Rant succinctly stated. What was once civil debate has devolved to little more than sloganeering, name-calling, and outright violence. Like ignorance, this lack of civility also has a fatal effect on free speech. We’ve already addressed the effects of ignorance; who really wants to listen to a bunch of name-calling assholes?
In other words, free speech is one of the things which made America great, and it must be restored. However, that’s easier said than done. To that end, we here at Dubsism offer six simple suggestions which will help restore free speech in this country, largely because they turn the aforementioned two bullets into blanks.
1) Listen More Than You Talk
This one is the most important; hence why it’s first. Everybody is running around in this country shouting everything they can from the rooftops. They think they are spreading their message; in fact they are just creating a lot of noise. You can gain a tremendous advantage over the masses because most of them will unknowingly give you all kinds of useful information, especially the “ignorant” ones who didn’t do the required reading.
2) Get Outside Yourself
Here’s how you avoid being one of the “ignorant” ones. Like I just said, if you want your thoughts to be taken seriously, you have to be informed. Not only does that mean doing the required reading, but it also means challenging yourself and not simply consuming that which already re-enforces your already-held belief. Be brave enough to entertain the idea that what you believe may not be true. The most uninformed view is the internal one; there’s an entire universe that is not inside your world.
3) Don’t Be a Pain In The Ass
I can’t think of anything more pointless than what an American protest has become. Even the ones that can get more than 100 or so unemployed people to show up in the middle of a weekday are little more than assholes who think blocking traffic accomplishes something, or worse yet, there will be people holding signs supporting 30 different causes so nobody has any idea what the protest is actually about.
If you feel the need to protest something, spend some time organizing it so you don’t like a bunch of idiots who can’t accomplish anything meaningful. Don’t forget, successful protests are about getting your message across and converting people to your point of view.
4) Don’t Be a Dick
This is different from the previous point in the in one crucial respect. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, have some manners. If you think it’s OK to get into somebody’s face and scream at them, not only are you an asshole, but the louder you scream, the less anybody hears your message. That’s because using such an approach demonstrates you are a) intellectually limited, b) emotionally immature, c) psychologically unstable or d) all of the above.
Think about it. Has there ever been a time when you watched somebody screaming a waiter or a 17-your old cashier in a supermarket and thought to yourself “Yeah…I bet that person’s opinion will change my perception of socio-political issues.”
Of course there hasn’t such a moment because that has NEVER happened.
5) Do Something Constructive
This is really an extension of #3 and #4. Regardless of what you believe, regardless of what you think needs changing, they only way change occurs is when people make it happen. That means at some point, you have to get off your ass and do something. There’s a simple way to describe why this is true. The root word in “activism” is “act.”
If all you are doing is posting stuff on-line, you’re wasting everybody’s time. Shooting your opinion wad all over the web has only two effects. It makes the posters feel like they’ve accomplished something when the exact opposite is true. After all, the term “generating awareness” is classic “feel-goodism” which actually means “didn’t do a goddamn thing.”
Ironically, it also lessens the reach of the poster. Face it, most people use the internet and social media for recreational purposes. That means the people who follow you on social media who aren’t people you know in real life do so because you offer something they want. That also means unless you’ve amassed a large following for offering opinions socio-political issues, nobody gives a fuck what you think. Read that line again; write it down if you must.
Sure, you can say what ever you what, but nobody has to listen. That’s why jamming opinions down people’s throats via social media just gets you muted or blocked.
My blog offers insights on sports and movies; don’t bother breaking out your best “Alanis Morrisette”-style ironic analogy to tell me I’m going counter to my own advice. It is because I love sports and movies I know this part is stone-cold fact. The National Football League had it’s television ratings tank when players started protesting social issues. The Academy Awards have had the same problem over the last few years.
It boils down to this. There’s a time and a place for everything, and actions speak louder than words. You can harangue all you want about the plight of the homeless, but your words will have far more credibility if you post them along with a picture of you pounding nails at a “Habitat For Humanity” construction site. That’s why for the regular readers of this blog, the title of this piece is giving them a clear indication I’m wandering out of my lane to extol the virtues of staying in one’s own.
Now, that’s irony, Alanis.
6) Fix What’s Wrong With You
Nobody’s perfect. What separates us is our levels of self-awareness and how we use that to manage our personalities. There really isn’t a better measure of maturity than how well you know yourself. That matters throughout life, and it is vital in this discussion. People who haven’t achieved a mature level of self-awareness tend to manifest undesirable feelings or emotions onto others rather than dealing with themselves.
In psychology, it’s called “projection,” and this Twitter video shows a classic example of it. I must stress this isn’t about which side of this issue you may believe in; if you go down that path, you will completely miss the point. Rather, this is a demonstration of lack of self-awareness and how it leads to projection.
OUTRAGEOUS! Jillian Ward, a 19-year-old student at UNC-Chapel Hill in NC, was arrested for assaulting a representative of the pro-life group, Violently attacking him! This Democratic behavior is UNACCEPTABLE! Agree? 🙋🏼♀️pic.twitter.com/x3xxSvbh43
— JamieR {🎗} Army Girl ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@Jamierodr14) May 11, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
When I watch this video, I am immediately taken aback by the exceptional amount of anti-intellectualism on display here, and how it’s being projected on people for no other reason than having differing opinions. When you stop to consider this is happening on a college campus, a place which was always intended to be the sanctuary for the free exchange of ideas, one can’t help but be horrified at the level of anti-intellectual fascism being projected here.
Again, this isn’t about the sides of an issue and/or where anybody’s particular stance is. To be honest, I could surf Twitter and find similar behavior on display for any socio-political issues and the supporters/detractors thereof. This just happened to be the first one I found that served a suitable example of my point. This is about how we’ve killed free speech in this country, and the woman screaming insults and throwing punches is the poster-child for that killing.
She gets this distinction because she clearly doesn’t believe in free speech. Her projection of that is plainly visible; she’s either a) intellectually limited, b) emotionally immature, c) psychologically unstable or d) all of the above. That’s exactly how we got the two bullets with which we killed free speech, and this is what we will face to resurrect it.
Got a question, comment, or just want to yell at us? Hit us up at dubsism@yahoo.com, @Dubsism on Twitter, or on our Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook pages, and be sure to bookmark Dubsism.com so you don’t miss anything from the most interesting independent sports blog on the web.
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So much truth here. You are correct, “…free speech is pointless if nobody is listening.”
The polarization, not just in the USA but in the world, is astounding…. so I write (blogs and books) and hope/pray/wish that common sense and sanity will come back in style again.
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People on college campuses need to form free speech groups to combat these special snowflake babies. Their horse **** participation trophy culture needs to be challenged and eliminated.
That lady reminds me of a podcast that you did a few years ago where some college girls tried to get you banned from the internet or something. You put an audio soundbyte of some college girl yelling and screaming to try to get her way. I was so mad when I listened to her that I wanted to smack her.
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