Advocacy

 Subject: Advocacy

With free speech and the dissemination of that speech through the Web has meant that advocacy on thousands of of issues flood our mental perception of the world around us. The ability to sway the mind of people in a way never known before is worrying in that some of the advocacy Is malicious in a deeply dangerous way.

The protection of individuals gives way to a call for protection of the masses  which is often loaded with the financial implications of the groups allegiance.

The USA is particularly at risk (and by implication, we all are) with the fragmentation of policy issues to the issues around  nationalism. Donald Trump has highlighted the schism between the politics of the minority and that of the majority, between abortion and the church, between the rich and the poor between the democratic pursuance of a cause and the assumption of the many that these causes are illegitimate and not to the good of the population as a whole. So we have the Democrats worrying about the rights of the immigrant and workers in the declining industrial cities in the rust belt taking sides, with the dialog based on the rhetoric of fear. Trump whips up the fear whilst Biden try's to placate the situation and of course the jagged profile of fear always outguns a call to show some perspective. Perspective demands some adjustment of ones own view, some attempt to accommodate the 'other' but if the 'other' is demonised there can only be one winner.

The brash portrayal of crime and its link with minorities, the decay of jobs, (which was the willing policy of many administrations across the west in favour of inflated returns through globalisation for the moneyed class).  The slow stripping away, bit by bit of the service industries as part of the social fabric of a country, including the National Health Service was a project undertaken by Thatcher and continued by George Osbourne and bolstered day and night by our right wing press.

The power of the City is coming into its own under Rishi Sunak who's control of the nations balance sheet, first as Chancellor and now Prime Minister and, it could be argued had led to the dire financial state we are in, gives him now virtual carte blanche to pare away all the protection we had gained since Clement Attlee.   

Advocacy on Climate Change is probably the most important issue facing the world. Economic variances and living standards fluctuate but global warming effects us all. Drought and flooding, two strange bedfellows will effect billions of people, even the countries least effected will be inundated by refugees fleeing, not war but extreme poverty. First there was the denial, then the rhetoric about going green to reduce greenhouse gasses and now the blame game and a demand for reparations whilst all the time the polluters continue to pollute. The gates of hell are open wide and we sleepwalk toward them.

Perhaps Musk and Bezos will escape to a platform in outer space and await the climate to modify itself or sufficient people to die off, perhaps the Chinese will reveal a machine to gobble up the carbon dioxide/methane gas concoction we currently release and push it outside the envelope of our atmosphere. One has to wonder at the lack of urgency in the worlds major polluters, either they don't believe, don't care, or don't understand that billions of lives are at risk. I suppose a mindset which can contemplate the casualties of a nuclear war, who can compartmentalise everything into how it effects them personally are capable of anything

Radicalisation is a slow drip drip affair. We are all susceptible and given the sophistication of the method by which we are radicalised the only hope is that people will rationalise the messages and interpret them in a way which assimilates your own humanity with your own common sense and reaches your own conclusion.