How do we reach people?
David Sirota posted this piece on LeverNews (a Ghost site), which I subscribe to. I've followed David for years. I don't believe he's biased, I think he does great reporting.
David Sirota
David leads with what Fox News host Jesse Watters said last week:
“We are waging a 21st-century information warfare campaign against the left,” said Fox’s prime time host Jesse Watters in a televised moment of candor. “It’s like grassroots guerilla warfare. Someone says something on social media, Musk retweets it, Rogan podcasts it, Fox broadcasts it and by the time it reaches everybody, millions of people have seen it.”
Fair and balanced? Not so much.
David's prescription for combating the information war is this:
"The fix is something much more difficult and nonpartisan: doing the hard work of creating information conduits that provide better, more accurate reporting about what’s really happening in America; that identify who in either party is responsible for the decisions enriching the rich and harming the rest of us; that orient coverage toward a working-class audience rather than an affluent audience; and that convey news to normies rather than only to already-converted, already-dialed-in political junkies".
Someone I've known for years is a Trumper. Trying to get him to read anything but Trump approved media is impossible. I've tried - what seems like a hundred times. My Trumper friend is incapable at this moment of taking in anything that challenges his beliefs. In his world if it doesn't come from Trump, it's not true.
He gets his news from Facebook. He doesn't read books. There's now millions of Americans that fit my friend's media consumption profile to a T. Which brings me to why I started townhallcitizen.
I agree with David about combatting the information war. But I don't believe in a top down approach - digital, i.e., social media. Because as I say on the home page, those networks are poisoned. Trying to get anything into someone's feed is like trying to get them to drink from a fire hose. It also encourages people to keep on with their hashtag activism, which we know is nowhere.
Instead townhallcitizen is a bottom up approach. Get people together IRL at town hall meetings every day, everywhere in the country. From there people tell others, and the conduits David mentioned start growing.
We're way past trying to solve our problems online or passing along links as a means of reason. So what's left? Getting together in person. It's hard work, it's not sexy. But it has to be done.
tty next time,
