Where should the focus be?

Where do we focus our limited (emotional) energy!? First it depends on whether you just want entertainment and stress release, or you feel like you might be able to make a tiny bit of difference in the 2024 election without getting totally stressed. Let’s assume the latter.

First, people often need to be reminded of this spectrum

This is a Left-Right spectrum, characters are stacked due to space limitation (Up/Down isn’t relevant)

Donald Trump tried overthrowing the election results. Anybody who doesn’t think he tried to, or doesn’t think it’s important, you can stop reading here. You have no credibility. I’m NOT interested in what you have to say about ANYTHING. NOTHING you say has any meaning, it’s ALL gibberish. Go hang out with Flat Earthers.

The rest of the politicians are mostly all the same — typical bureaucrats. At this point, they’re mostly interchangeable. As long as you support Democracy as a form of government, you’re good. We shouldn’t waste time arguing over the little stuff when Trump and Vance are trying to distract us from the fact that Trump tried overthrowing the election results, and cannot be trusted about ANYTHING, including anything he says. Ignore him. It’s all gibberish. And you can’t argue with this followers anyway, so don’t waste your time. You already have enough examples if you need to mention a few.

Occasionally we get lucky and get a great President. We probably need a great one every 50 years or so. But it seems harder to achieve that now because of powerful buffoons like Elon Musk (A vigorous Trump supporter, enough said), and no filters — no trust built into the Internet Media culture, and more direct Primaries.

There are basically 3 types of voters:

Already Decided

• Nothing we say will make any difference. Don’t waste your time trying to be logical with them. Ignore the Trump supporters and let them talk gibberish with the Flat Earthers. Don’t feed the social media platforms who benefit from propaganda fueled gibberish, and furthermore give power to that kind of behavior. Vote NO by not engaging with gibberish and incredibly selfish and/or ignorant people. Try to find another way to get followers and take up your time on social media. Remember in the old days when people talked more about sex, try that if necessary.
• Most of the efforts to point out illogical behavior is pure entertainment, and makes virtually no difference except MAYBE to an undecided voter — if we keep hammering away at it. (But don’t use that as an excuse to ignore the rest of the items below)

Undecided (est 5% — 15% of voters)

• Might even be only 5% in this election.
• How could any reasonable person think it’s OK for Trump to be president, given that he tried overthrowing the election results? A few explanations. 1) They voted for him in 2020 and they simply can’t admit they got conned. 2) They’re incredible stupid and/or ignorant 3) They’re incredibly selfish (e.g. wealthy people) 4) They are in SO much pain (e.g. have no money, other), they would vote for Joseph Stalin if he promised to help them.
• We might be able to address #4, but not sure how. Also consider, both slides are claiming them.
• But undecided is the smallest group. Let’s focus on the biggest group that can be influenced.

Eligible but don’t vote (approx 33% of all Eligible)!

• What will it take to get them to vote? How about an increasingly unhinged Donald Trump. But which way will they vote?
• Who are these people? According to what I quickly searched, the largest groups are: 1) Uneducated 2) Young 3) Ethnic
• The biggest problem is, a lot of people across all demographics don’t recognize propaganda and psychological warfare coming from the likes of Putin and through Trump. Putin said the only way to take down America is with propaganda on Social Media. Which is endorphin powered and wired directly into people’s brains and pleasure centers. You think this is science fiction?? WE ARE IN A CYBER WORLD WAR RIGHT NOW! Maybe you didn’t think it would ACTUALLY HAPPEN in your lifetime. I didn’t.
• If they are motivated so much by the insanity to get up and vote, they’re not going to think about logically. Their mind will already have been made up.
• So which way? IS DONALD TRUMP ON THE RIGHT TRACK?

I don’t know the answer. I figure Young People will probably mostly go Blue and Uneducated mostly Red because they’ll actually believe this shit??? Well regardless, it’s useful to see the tectonics movements that are happening, not get bogged down in the muck & drama, and not feed the propaganda and Putin fueled social media churn machine.

After the election

The good news is that now that Biden has dropped out, if Trump wins, we’ll know that democracy has failed (Age is not an excuse anymore). There would be 2 big questions:

1. Do the Republicans win both houses. Because if they do, might be game over. I don’t know if we’ll have even 2 years. Every branch of the Government will be either in anarchy or under control of an authoritarian. Putin laughs really hard….
2. Can we fix it, or has the democratic experiment (As Washington called it in his inaugural address) failed? Is it inevitable ? Has Internet connected Media and more direct primaries removed too many filters? Is a basic understanding of civics and history too much to ask people who have been gifted democracy? Is is too much to ask for people to occasionally read a book or magazine article instead of another reality TV show or more hours on TikTok? People enjoyed and understood the Game of Thrones, they’re certainly capable………Or is it a bump on the road to a better connected world including an entire immune system and tools to create positive memes to connect people, not negative ones. Will there be anything we can do? A grassroots cultural movement to connect people together with positive, but real memes?? Social media tools that connect in more detail, used by our leaders and entertainers?

I don’t know, I think I’ll just write another song.

Thanks for reading.

And check out my book: https://www.mariakonner.com/new-book