Since 2020 Is An Election Year, Here Are Some Things To Remember...

Remember how horrible it was back in November 2016? There is a strong possibility it could get so much worse.

On November 9, 2016, I unfriended or blocked almost half the people on my social media newsfeeds. From my conversations with others, it sounds like a lot of that was happening that day. There was some rioting and violence in the streets, which was awful. There were a lot of mass protests and rallies, which was good. I expect to see a lot more of each with this next election, regardless of the result.

Prior to the 2016 election, political conversation was considered taboo in most social circles. Engaging in political discussion was as crass as trash-talking your company, boss and coworkers on social media. I already knew this though. By the time the election rolled around, I was used to being known as a “trouble-maker” because of my strong support of the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements. I was also very interested in decolonization for Filipino Americans. I had already learned that in order to play an active role in our democracy, we were going to have to talk about politics.

Politics was once framed as if it was some sort of passing interest that most people only engaged in during an election year or as the passion of C-SPAN nerds. Declaring a lack of interest in politics was the norm, especially among young people. The last election showed us that every part of our daily lives is political.

There is a strong possibility that Donald Trump will be re-elected, that Joe Biden will be our next president, or that we will have our first woman president if Elizabeth Warren is elected. We may also have our most left-leaning president in modern history if Bernie Sanders is elected. Whatever happens, no outcome will go unchallenged.

Get ready.

Our goal as voters should be to reinstate a mixed economy that benefits everyone and a government that is both legitimate and constructive.

I’m going to be honest and this might is probably going to be pretty controversial. Fixing class inequality is more important than identity politics right now. I’m not saying that identity politics aren’t important. It’s just that class inequality has gotten SO BAD that it’s impossible and irresponsible for anything else to take top priority.

Looking back at 2008, President Obama’s historic election was a false start. He was elected as an outsider whose main message was “the audacity of hope.”. He was predicted to be either a transformative leader or just another centrist Democrat doing the bidding for Wall Street. He has since proven to be the latter.

It’s time to stop romanticizing the Obamas, learn from our mistakes and move on.

Donald Trump is just a distraction. The real villain is the political industrial complex and all the systemic corruption that comes with it.

As it stands, the US is effectively an oligarchy: a small number of people control the levers of power that dictate the laws, norms, and values that govern American life. The political industrial complex is “the interconnected set of entities that supports the duopoly” formed by the Democratic and Republican parties. These include special interest groups, lobbyists, consultants, and the media, among other players. (Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America, Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter)

Broadly speaking, Americans have largely bought into the belief of freedom. In reality, we are not that free. It’s all a big facade. We elect officials to office but in a functioning democracy, representatives must be accountable to their constituents, and that is blatantly no longer the case. In a real democracy, the people have actual power. A major root cause of the problem is that our education system since the late 1800s was engineered to create citizens who blindly believed in American pride. Rather than empowering students with the tools for democratic participation, schools enforced empty devotion to the abstract concept of freedom. (Lauren Duca, How to Start a Revolution)

Here is how the political industrial complex works…

Aware that head-to-head combat will lead to mutual destruction, Democrats and Republicans instead create artificial competition, differentiating themselves in the American mind as the only two viable choices in the marketplace. Together, they conspire to box out additional competitors as they compete against each other for the money needed to win elections. Rather than crafting public policy that reflects public will, they focus on campaign financing.

It’s all one big scam where each side tries to be nothing more than the lesser of two evils. This means we get crappy, binary choices — and absolutely no solutions. We tend to think of politics as a public institution but it is an industry, and one of the few in which the major players set their own rules without being held accountable to the majority of “customers.” 

(Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America, Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter)

In order to dismantle this hierarchy, we need to turn our individual actions into collective power with the goal of regaining a collective voice for the American public.

In the upcoming election, millennials will make up the largest demographic in the US, and Gen Z is right behind us. We have a massive amount of influence in terms of numbers alone if we stay engaged and SHOW UP TO THE POLLS.

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the country yet have one of the lowest voter turnout rates. In addition to issues such as language and cultural barriers, politicians continually fail to reach out to their Asian American constituents.

Only 49% of Asian Americans who were eligible to vote in the last election actually voted. And Asian American millennials (my generation) had the lowest turnout. They face a multitude of obstacles to voting, including lower rates of English proficiency and the lack of voter outreach by both major political parties. For years, Asians have had their voices left out due to their reputation as the “model minority” of the US.

Asian Americans have been neglected by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Nearly 70% of Asian Americans have reported that neither party contacts them in regards to the election. This creates a cycle, with politicians feeling less motivated to allocate their campaign resources toward this group in future elections. And this, in turn, increases the sentiment among Asian Americans that politics isn’t their place to get involved.

Since the start of the 21st century, Asian Americans have been the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. They grew 46% between 2000 and 2010. Excluding Hawaii, the Asian American population grew at least 30% in every single state in that ten-year span alone. These younger generations of Asian Americans can lead to increased voter activity since they are more likely to be proficient in English and will not require assistance in translating, unlike their parents. It is now more important than ever that Asian Americans become more politically involved due to their rising population growth rates.

(The Asian American Vote, DataBits: A Blog for AAPI Data)

Though they tend not to identify with either party, the majority indicate strong opinions on relevant issues like immigration policy, education funding and social services. What’s more, when they do vote, their vote is a weighty one; it’s been shown that Asian Americans make up the winning margin in many state districts. (Asian Americans: A Sleeping Political Giant, New York Times)

The overarching factor that limits political engagement, especially for first and second generation immigrants, is the struggle to reconcile two often competing identities: Asian and American. Even after spending decades in the United States, many Asian Americans are still seen as “foreigners in their own country.”

Many first generation immigrants couldn’t afford to think past mere survival; thinking about how to influence the greater community was secondary to tending to their family’s immediate needs, and running for office was neither a possibility nor a priority. The next generation of Asian Americans must recognize that they can still respect the values and traditions of their parents and grandparents, while at the same time confidently occupying a new role in the American public arena.

(Why Asian Americans Don’t Vote, NewsAmerica.org)

“Despite our growing numbers, politicians and the media ignore us, even when we’re running for president!” Hasan Minhaj said. Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who’s Taiwanese American, admitted himself in the episode that growing up, he didn’t recall politicians ever attempting to appeal to the Asian American electorate.

Social media is making politics impossible.

Most of us (especially my audience) are much more savvy when it comes to the information presented to us on social media. We know that social media has been successfully deployed to disrupt societies and we know that the price to do so is remarkably low. (How Russia Weaponized Social Media in Crimea, Michael Holloway)

In the video above, Sacha Baron Cohen called social media the “greatest propaganda machine in history,” and said these platforms have allowed for the dissemination of conspiracies, the interference of elections, the recruitment of extremists, and the rise of genocide in Myanmar. He blames this on the “Silicon Six,” or the six people who lead Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google, and he wants them to be held accountable. “Instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives, of every democracy in the world, have at least some say,” Cohen said during his address.

One of the world’s worst human rights catastrophes is the plight of the Rohingya population of Myanmar. As it turns out, this crisis corresponded to the arrival of Facebook, which was quickly inundated by shitposts aimed at the Rohingya.

At the same time, viral lies about child abductions, mostly on Facebook’s WhatsApp, have destabilized parts of India.

According to a United Nations report, social media is also a massively deadly weapon, literally, in South Sudan — because of shitposts and fake news. Mysterious authors flood social media feeds with bizarre claims of wrongdoing supposedly perpetrated by a target group. Memes to stimulate genocide often report something horrible that is said to have been done to children. As always, the nastiest, most paranoid messaging always gets the most attention, and emotions spiral out of control as a byproduct of engagement spiraling out of control. (Jaron Lanner, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts)

Sacha Baron Cohen was telling the truth when he said if Facebook existed during World War II, the platform would have allowed Hitler to take out ads promoting The Final Solution.

Filipino journalist and Rappler founder Maria Ressa wrote in an op-ed for Los Angeles Times about a dystopian future created by social media — American technology giants created the platforms that enabled manipulation at a mass scale, structurally designed to undermine democracies. The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie said that the Philippines was used as a testing ground for tactics used for behavior modification: among them, to disseminate propaganda and manipulate voter opinion.

The United States had the highest number of compromised Facebook accounts in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The country with the second largest number of compromised accounts? The Philippines.

(Opinion: Americans, look to the Philippines to see a dystopian future created by social media, Los Angeles Times)

And don’t forget that Facebook proudly published research boasting how it can change voter turnout.

There is a growing shift towards socialism among younger voters, who are now the dominant electorate. The outcome of the 2020 election could either motivate the younger generations or disillusion them.

Most people don’t realize that post-WWII, the US prospered because much of its policies were actually VERY socialist, especially when it came to healthcare, education and housing. To bring this back won’t be easy but it’s not impossible.

Among millennials, support for socialism is high. 70% said they would be somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist presidential candidate. It gets higher marks than capitalism from Hispanics, Asian-Americans and African-Americans. 61% of Democrats take a positive view of socialism — and so do 25% of Republicans. Contrast the millennials’ opinions with those of their parents. A survey last year found that only 26% of baby boomers would prefer to live in a socialist country. Socialism was once seen as the path to communism. Younger generations do not view socialism through the same negative lens as older Americans, many of whom lived through the Cold War era. But with the Soviet Union dead and China only pretending to be socialist, those fears have faded.

The Great Depression of the 1930s gave rise to a far more powerful and intrusive federal government — and caused some people to embrace communism. This found an echo in the Great Recession, as a lot of young people reached adulthood in a dismal job market. Their earnings and advancement suffered — and the effects persist.

Today, millennials tend to associate capitalism with crisis and corruption, not progress. 

It doesn’t help the reputation of capitalism that many of those fervently opposed to government interference and redistribution are strongly at odds with millennials on social issues — including gay rights, racial inequality, immigration, gun control and abortion rights. The refusal of most conservatives to recognize the human role in global warming alienates those who will have to live with the environmental damage their elders did. In many minds, free markets have been discredited by their association with intolerance, rejection of science and disregard for the poor.

(Why Millennials Are So Drawn To Socialism, Chicago Tribune)

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I know it may not sound this way from a lot of my blog posts, but I am actually an optimist at heart. I find that paranoid and pessimistic thinking is counterproductive. It disempowers you. I don’t think we are doomed. I don’t think humanity has completely lost its way. I don’t think elections are useless. I don’t think we should just delete all of our social media accounts if we don’t want to. (I do think that Marvel and Disney are ruining the film industry with their monopolizing of content, reintroduction of the studio system and fake woke culture, but that’s a different argument for another day.)

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