Welcome to 2018: Be An Active Witness

By Rowan Wolf

The level of lying and propaganda, of if eschewing fact (and even the evidence of our own eyes and lives), of disinformation, and scapegoating, forces us to consider the very real risk of dysreality becoming accepted as “fact.” Combine the power of the repetition of lies and deception, with the full-on attack of norms and customary practice, and the abdication of the legislative branch to enforce controls and limits, and the risks of outright catastrophes are all too real. These are certainly risks for the United States from the destruction (or sale) of our commons, to the evisceration of both social and governmental infrastructure and the safety net. However, this is a chaotic force that risks sweeping the planet and whole societies along with it from deliberate provocations in the Middle East, to nuclear war, to failure to respond to one humanitarian crisis after another. Hate and fear raises blades and bombs where we need to join hands and put shoulders jointly to the wheel.Watching the interviews and recordings during the Alabama senate race with Roy Moore sent chills down my spine and brought a sense of helplessness. One could ask “What’s wrong with Alabama?”, except it is a phenomena much broader than Alabama. Forget the well substantiated allegations of child molestation, Moore is a man with no respect for the rule of law. Instead, he runs closer to a christian Taliban desiring to invoke fundamentalist biblical “law” in place of secular law. This is a man who supports Putin because of Putin’s reactionary and brutal attacks on gays and lesbians. This is a man who spoke fondly of the “family values” of the slavery period. Yet person after person, railed about “fake news” and “false attacks” and how much “integrity” Roy Moore has. I am also relatively confident that these Moore supporters see themselves as patriots and pro-America. The disjuncture was (and is) stunning, but is the same Stepford agreement for Trump’s free association nonsense.

It is all so wearying and Trump is front and center because he MUST be in the spotlight to affirm his power and existence. It becomes easier and easier to let things slide, or not respond because of the sheer pace of the collisions of reality and dysreality. Here is lies the real threat for we face (if we have not already arrived) at what might be termed “semantic satiation”, or “semantic saturation.” This “saturation” is a psychological phenomenon where repeated words or phrases become effectively meaningless, one might even say “gibberish.” However, there is another threat here and that is that people assign their own meaning to such semantics and then assume the others (and the even the propagator of said speech) agrees with them. I have seen numerous example of this when folks at Trump rallies (or elsewhere) were asked about the outright lies and contradictions spouted by Trump, and they gave responses to the effect that “Trump is the most honest man there is, and they agree with him 100%. He just has to say those things to appeal to other folks.”

All of which brings me to my request for you to take on an important New Year's resolution with me. I think that one of the most important things that we can to to keep ourselves and billions of others getting sucked down the rabbit hole is to be an Active Witness. Being an Active Witness means staying alert and informed, and most importantly, not letting things slide. It means not tuning out, and not looking the other way. During the early AIDS epidemic the saying was born “silence=death.” We are in an analogous situation now. Failure to call out what is real and debunk the lies, disinformation, and propaganda, risks not just normalizing it, but weaponizing it for that is Trump’s modus operandi (and one that is often used by abusive personalities.

I am not asking that each of you (and everyone else you can recruit) call out everything that is being twisted or denied, but the phenomenon is so broad, in so many areas of our social, political, and biological lives that you can “specialize”. You can be an expert witness. With enough of us involved and supporting each other we may be able to shift the wheel in a direction away from destruction.

Please join me. Send me your observations and experiences, or the work of other whom you feel expresses truth or insight or critical information. I will do my best to present them here at UncommonThought. At the very least we will hopefully feel less alone and less assaulted. We will be taking action to stand up for ourselves, others, and solutions that move us forward.