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Think about any movement out there at present -- MeToo, conservative agenda, liberal agenda, organic produce, gentrification, almost any major movement. If you really get into the issue, you find that the symbol of the thing is actually a very, very small almost non-representative case of the situation as a whole.

Also, sometimes the symbol becomes the focus, instead of the actual underlying value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ

As always the rare, incredible threat dominates our minds so much more than the mundane everyday threat.

It can also more easily go viral. Here's how ordinary, regular people can help. When people start being extreme and a bit divorced from reality and engaging in violence, unsavory almost-violence, and untruthful agenda pushing, people need to call it out, and also call it out from their own sides. It's a failure of calling out one's own side which reads as tacit approval and most strongly gives the false impression to others that the extreme represents the median. Understanding this is one key to understanding why the views of reality diverge so strongly between groups in society in 2019. The tricky part of this, is that to be able to do this, you have to poke your head out of your "side's" information bubble. (If you think your side is 100% in the right, you're not poking hard enough!)

There are forces in society who claim to be championing human rights, but then throw out fundamentals like due process, paint entire groups with a broad brush based on surface characteristics, and engage in the same sort of tactics that the Westboro Baptist Church and the people in the past who tried to exclude Jewish people, blacks, and homosexuals from the mainstream and most valuable parts of society. It's just harder to see, if it's being done on behalf of your own "side."

The real conflict in 2019 is the mainstream vs. the extremes. The extremes actually don't have the same values as the mainstream. The extremes have the advantage of stealth, by re-framing everything in terms of "us vs. them." What they really want is to create more outrage to roll the dice and increase their own power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Stop believing so much in symbols.

Start "following the money." Start examining what's happening in terms of how media uses a basic emotion like outrage to go viral. Who benefits?

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