Farewell to YouTube

I find myself once again in a somewhat familiar position this week.  Over the years, I have been exposed to things that tasted or felt so good that partaking of them quickly became a habit.  However, as time passed, I began to notice that the things which had become habits had some unavoidable downsides - downsides which eventually became too great to ignore.  Thus it was that I was forced eventually and reluctantly to give them up.  Examples include television, sugary sweets, coffee (except in small doses) and talk radio.

This week, YouTube joins that list.  This has been a long time coming.  I have tuned in to YouTube primarily to hear and watch a number of insanely awesome fingerstyle guitar players.  But during the last year - a very traumatic year! - it seemed to me that YouTube's algorithms were deliberately seeking to amplify trauma by showing links to politically provocative videos in their "Recommended For You" sidebar.  I have no idea why these videos were "recommended for me" especially when I think of how most of them were either racist, right-wing, or linked to conspiracy theories.  Perhaps the people at Google thought that by showing me things that are offensive, threatening, terrorizing and outrageous, they could get more pageviews, and hence, earn more advertising revenue.

They were wrong.

The final straw for me has come in learning that YouTube is dragging its feet in removing Donald Thug Trump's YouTube channel - even after the attempted violent seizure of the U.S. Congress by Trump's band of church-going thugs.  Note to these thugs: there is no "grace for your hearts."  Rather, what you can expect for yourselves is spelled out in Hebrews 10:26-31.  You body-slammed police officers; you bashed police officers in the head; you came with guns, zip-ties, rope, racist slogans and rhetoric; you planted pipe bombs; you came ready to murder.  Don't ever again try to give me Bible lessons.  You don't know what you're talking about.

And as for YouTube, I will find alternatives.  But I won't be coming back.

Cleaning Up A Week of Broken Glass

I'm in the process of gathering more information for the next post in my series on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy, so today's post will not be a continued exposition of Chapter 5.  I do, however, want to make a few more comments on the attempted takeover of the U.S. Congress by pro-Trump thugs this past week.  

First, we now know that the mob that assaulted the Capitol had been preparing its action for weeks.  We also know that the mob had been preparing to abduct members of Congress at gunpoint and bind them with zip ties and rope.  We know that most of the organizing and coordinating between the various thugs who assaulted the Capitol had taken place online, in full view of the FBI and the Capitol police.  We now also know for a fact that white American evangelicals and their pastors comprised a large part of the mob.  We also know that similar mobs stormed a California county house and surrounded a number of state houses last week.  We know that several Republican lawmakers (such as this man) joined in the call to commit violence.  We now know that pro-Trump fascists and other persons associated with the Far Right have infiltrated many police departments across the United States.  (See this, this, and this for instance.)  We know that some of these officers traveled to Washington DC last week to join the riot.

And we know that those who orchestrated last week's trouble are making plans - in plain sight - to do it again.  

So how to respond to all of this?  If you're like me, your first reaction is likely to feel a great and terrible anger - an indignation which has an element of righteousness to it, yet which leads to rash errors if not properly guided and handled.  That anger can lead to moralizing, which is both an innocuous response and a rather useless one.  The people who orchestrated last week's events have no morals, no better angels that anyone can appeal to.  They will be deaf to your sermons.  So that leads to the second of several possible reactions: the urge to go to the streets and organize counter-demonstrations against the fascists!  But there is a problem with this approach, namely, that the fascists, like a pack of rabid dogs, are keen to provoke violence.  If they succeed by their violence in provoking you to counter-violence, you become part of the problem.  (Unfortunately, this has already started to happen.  Remember what I wrote a while back about relying on mass protest rallies?)

So let's consider the third response: to construct a strategy for nonviolently shifting the balance of power away from those who want to dominate the rest of us.  Consider the following perspective from Part 1 of Gene Sharp's The Politics of Nonviolent Action: that the source of armed conflict between various groups of people is the belief that political power is like a solid, durable stone that can be possessed only by the strongest and most violent members of society.  This belief is false, however.  And the power of an oppressor can be disintegrated by a people who build their own social power and withdraw their consent from the oppressor.  

This is good news.  I consider myself a fundamentalist Christian, which means that unlike the vast majority of white American evangelicals, I believe I'm supposed to obey the Sermon on the Mount and not physically threaten my fellow human beings.  (This is why I don't own a gun.)  However, I know that there are tens of millions of white American evangelicals who stand ready "in the name of Jesus" to harm, oppress, and even kill their fellow human beings.  Yet they comprise a continually shrinking minority of the population.  This means that their power is declining.  This is especially true when one considers that the power they claim does not consist of knowing how to do useful things that benefit their fellow human beings.  Rather, it consists almost entirely in the assault rifles that many of them openly carry everywhere like pacifiers or security blankets, without which they would feel like ghosts upon the earth.  Those of the oppressed who do choose to build the power that comes from knowing how to do useful, meaningful work will therefore go far.  Consider the constructive example of the  Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.  Consider Titus 3:14.  And don't let the terror which your oppressor seeks to instill divert you from patiently building your power by the daily practice of beautifully good work.  To put it another way, don't let these evil people get inside your OODA loop.

There is more good news: Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple have surgically removed Donald Trump's metaphorical mouth.  He can't post garbage online, and the Parler site has been denied access to the Google Store.  Lastly, I just want to say God Bless Arnold Schwarzenegger!  Just when I was ready to write off all Republicans as irredeemably evil, former Governor Schwarzenegger has forced me to eat my words.  And get this: he is leading an initiative to restore voting access to as many disenfranchised Americans as possible.  (See this and this also.)