I read and watch the news and I’m not sure if that’s a healthy thing to do these days. I try to put aside all of the talking points, clickbait and other assorted bullshit, but it’s a challenging sized pile to sort through. Because of the saturation and size of said bullshit, I think I’ve been subtly influenced to believe more fully in some of the acquired biases already in my possession. My own personal echo chamber so to speak.
Everyone has these preferential biases. We call them opinions or beliefs but I think they are in fact a bias. Best case scenario your bias is simply a preference that you’re willing to vote for, or perhaps donate to, or protest for. Worst case scenario, your bias is prejudice and bigotry. Which is I guess understandable if you’re quiet about it and don’t break windows, assault the cops and light shit on fire.
Or lynch anyone. Lynching is also bad.
I say that bigotry is understandable, I didn’t say it was acceptable. But I stand by my earlier assertion that we all have biases, and the line between preference and prejudice is microscopically thin. It’s easy to slide one foot over the line and I’m pretty sure that most of the people do it some of the time.
Some biases are straight forward and learned. Biases like hating another religion or a skin tone are taught, and I don’t have a solution for resolving those issues other than to suggest immersion. Sometimes that works where a person who hates black people somehow acquires a black friend, and is struck with an epiphany that holy fuck, maybe I’ve got this all wrong.
But immersion is risky. The odds are just as good that if immersion is forced that all we’re going to end up with is a race or religious war that we scheduled. So, if immersion is considered as a solution for bias reform then it’s probably a good idea to keep the numbers small.
Because when groups are involved then things tend to get messy because we align ourselves with like minded biased people, and suddenly we’ve got warring factions. Typically there’s not much personal insight among warring factions. Except maybe a realization that everyone’s blood is the same color.
It’s kind of a sad testament to humanity that the most effective solution for dispensing with bias is to have a common enemy. History is replete with examples where this is the case., It’s kind of a situation where we reluctantly ally ourselves with an adversary because we found someone else that we both hate more than we hate each other.
Case in point would be Sunni and Shia halting car bombing each other to team up against the Jews. The problem is and always has been that once any alliance of previous adversaries is successful, then we invariably revert to our old biases and start fighting each other again.
The best solution for uniting all the human biases would be an off world enemy. We need aliens and flying saucers to quit hiding and show themselves. Also it would be preferable if the E.T’s were lizards, or at a minimum in possession of tentacles and a weird religion without Jesus or Mohammed.
That would work.
Anyway.
My intended thought process wasn’t supposed to be a philosophical dissertation on overt bias. What I really wanted to talk about was a subtle American bias. I think it’s probably a human bias and not exclusively American, but the Americans will do as an example.
Remember I suggested that bias is a preference? When we have a preference we tend to ignore the questionable behavior of that person or group. I’m not talking exclusively about Republicans here, although the ignorance of evil deeds I mentioned above is certainly applicable.
What struck me was something more subtle in terms of an American bias.
It’s shitty out today and I was watching television. I was flipping through the channels and as usual there was crime show after crime show. I tried to avoid those and instead starting watching an episode of notorious gun slingers from the old time American west. I stopped part way through because I started to wonder about why Americans turn criminals into celebrities. I started to wonder about why Canadians don’t do the same thing.
Why do Americans have a soft spot for certain criminals? It’s pretty much mythopoeic behavior and I don’t understand what it is about American cultural bias that admires and is fascinated by nasty ass criminals. I think that America was born of rebellion and Americans in general have maintained that admiration for rebellion ever since. Somehow certain criminality is seen as a fuck you to the system and so the criminal with their middle finger raised is seen with admiration.
Then once admired, a bias kicks in for that person or group, and all the nasty shitty things done by that person or group are celebrated, and over time some of those behaviors are exculpated in their entirety
So…..back to gunslingers.
All of them were murderous assholes and thieves. But they get the American Robin Hood treatment because they were also celebrities. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Black Jack Ketchum and Butch Cassidy were all assholes. But they were outlaws and America has a bias for outlaws. Part of the fascination might be the need for a public enemy number one, but still the admiration lingers.
Canada doesn’t make movies about our serial killers. The Americans turned Homolka and Bernardo into the Ken and Barbie killers, and neither of those fuckers deserve a documentary. With the exception that Karla does need attention in terms of making sure her neighbors understand where she is at all times.
In keeping with American ideals, the criminal’s I’m talking about have to be successful criminals. They adopted the American concept that if you work hard in the United States you can become famous, or if you’re a spectacularly good criminal then you can become famous and rich. Lazy fucks mugging people on streetcorners don’t get movies. But if you’re a really good criminal then you get a movie.
Or in some cases a T.V. series.
I actually hit up Wikipedia for examples of American crime movies. The list was 804 pages long, so I think I might be on to something here.
Without listing all of the Godfather movies, the point I’m trying to make is that in America it appears that success is more important than ethics. No one appears to give much of a fuck how you ended up with a real estate or pharmaceutical empire. What’s important is that you ended up with that empire, and you’re a success story that breeds equal amounts of aspiration and admiration.
So, why does this happen? I hear all the noise about the rule of law in America. Lately the liberal side of the discussion has been going on at length about Mr. Trump and his minions assault on those rules. However it seems to me that the very fact that Don is where he is today means that the rules are a myth. Or at best they’re only applicable to some of the citizens and not to others.
And that means that the supposed rule of law is biased, and Lady Justice is sneaking a peak under her blindfold to see what your bank account looks like before she rules. And this is seemingly the American way. Success trumps ethics, and the dollar is mightier than either the pen or sword. Consider that Carnegie and J.P Morgan and Vanderbilt and Rockefeller were all thieving monopolistic assholes .Robber barons, and now they have plaza’s and foundations and Universities named after them.
Each time MSNBC gets their panties in a knot about American oligarchs I can’t help but wonder why they can’t see that the only difference between Elon Musk and Henry Ford is that media coverage has made America aware of what shadiness Elon is up to. The real difference is that America currently has a commander in chief who aspires to be a baron himself. Hell, he even named one of his spawn after them. Also Don is psychologically unable to distinguish right from wrong, and so he see’s no need to even try to hide his motivation.
He doesn’t see why he has to restrain himself from using his power and position to enrich himself. In fact, I think he’s genuinely puzzled that anyone would take issue with the concept.
Afterall, it’s the American way.