The organization is working against the polarization that our politicians are deliberately fomenting, so it’s not a debate and it’s not for changing people’s minds, it’s for hearing the other side and learning to listen again, something we’ve forgotten how to do.
It’s a little frustrating because the moderators keep you focused on expressing your own beliefs, not expressing them as something opposed to what you think the other’s think. Anyway, I’ll check back on this thread now and then.
oneguy trying to pit progressive boomers against progressives of younger generations… could be a puppet of russian influence trolls or alt-right influence trolls…
Trolls are threatening our democracy is high on the list of dumb shit old people believe.
Fortunately there are 17 intelligence agencies with people of all ages looking into this as well. Not to mention just about anyone who looks at social media and thinks there might be something not entirely healthy going on there.
No, yung’un, get it right. It’s not trolls, rather it is russians and alt-rightists that are threatening our democracy. Trolls just threaten every thread of decency that mankind has accumulated.
Lausten: Intel agencies might have been doing that 2 years ago, but now that the Russia nonsense has collapsed they’re back to spying on US citizens and propping up paramilitaries around the world.
Russian ARE and HAVE BEEN interfering in our political system. The ones who call it nonsense have been doing that since well before the 2016 election. Jim Dore and his cults have been downplaying Russian interference all along. So has, of course, anyone associated with our current POTUS’s unending campaign. Also, any group that has the same goal as the Russians have joined in on the lie that the Russians have not and are not doing anything to impact our politics (the goal being to disrupt and foster chaos in our political system). So that would likely include anarchists and alt rightists, and white power groups and lone wolves.
Social media has and likely continues to be inundated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) doing that. According to an article in Vox, our focus was on Facebook and Twitter as their vehicle, but:
“Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Medium, YouTube, Vine, and Google+, among others, carried IRA propaganda content. But Instagram was by far the most used platform that has largely remained out of the public eye.”
Finally managed to get to one of the red/blue workshops. It was better than I expected. Not sure if I can add a whole lot that hasn’t been mentioned yet, but just wanted to give my endorsement.
One of their strengths is to constantly innovate and try new things. Last year, in a series of workshops they created the Trustworthy Elections report. Not a policy statement, but a list things that polarized people could agree on.
This direction of action that comes after the listening seems to be their future