I start my summer classes tomorrow, and I'm kind of excited about the material. I'll be taking three classes - the second computer programming class, a class on incident response, and a class on malware. Should be fun.
That's not why I'm writing today, though. I came across an article this morning that I really wanted to blog out my thoughts on. Mostly because, if I don't blog, they seem to jumble together and not really amount to much other than "it's complicated".
The article is discussing the mechanics of what it says is a "full-on psychological war".
I almost shared this to Facebook and Twitter, but a couple of things stopped me. First, most of the examples in the article were discussing Trump. That means that anyone who is a Trump supporter will focus more on that, instead of considering the tactics listed and what it means. (Articles like this all too often seem geared towards the people who already agree with them, unfortunately. I'd love to see the same article, except with examples related to holocaust denial. There are still enough Americans who remember grandfathers or fathers from WWII that they know holocaust denial is a bunch of crap.)
The second reason is that I don't think this 'war' is as one-sided as the author makes it sound. That's mostly from some impressions I picked up during the 2016 election, though.
Despite those issues, I think this touches on a very real problem. It...feels like a good explanation for what I'm seeing and hearing today. I remember when I was in Iraq, noting one of the big issues there. There was an incident (or maybe not), where Sunni insurgents killed some Shi'a and strung their bodies up on a lamppost. One source said his friends saw it, while many other residents said the claim was nonsense, and aimed at inciting more violence.
So here's the thing. Our media has it's biases, and if you are careful you can sometimes read past that. But for the most part if an event happened, both sides reported that it happened...and the bias appears in their interpretations and explanations. And, in some cases, with disputes over unclear facts. That's part of why reporting that the police shot a black man is such a difficult topic. Nobody disputes that the police shot the guy, they dispute whether it was justified or not. That report from Iraq, however, had a very clear dispute regarding the facts. Either bodies were hung from lamp posts, or they weren't. One side is lying. There is no middle ground, there is no way to reconcile this in order to account for different perspectives. Either it happened, and the local Sunni are so supportive of the insurgents that they lied about it, or it didn't happen and the Shi'a in the article was willing to lie instead. (Or his friends lied to him.)
In some ways, I feel like things have degenerated to a similar state.
That's mostly where I've gotten so far. I'm going to eat brunch and probably write more afterwards.
That's not why I'm writing today, though. I came across an article this morning that I really wanted to blog out my thoughts on. Mostly because, if I don't blog, they seem to jumble together and not really amount to much other than "it's complicated".
The article is discussing the mechanics of what it says is a "full-on psychological war".
I almost shared this to Facebook and Twitter, but a couple of things stopped me. First, most of the examples in the article were discussing Trump. That means that anyone who is a Trump supporter will focus more on that, instead of considering the tactics listed and what it means. (Articles like this all too often seem geared towards the people who already agree with them, unfortunately. I'd love to see the same article, except with examples related to holocaust denial. There are still enough Americans who remember grandfathers or fathers from WWII that they know holocaust denial is a bunch of crap.)
The second reason is that I don't think this 'war' is as one-sided as the author makes it sound. That's mostly from some impressions I picked up during the 2016 election, though.
Despite those issues, I think this touches on a very real problem. It...feels like a good explanation for what I'm seeing and hearing today. I remember when I was in Iraq, noting one of the big issues there. There was an incident (or maybe not), where Sunni insurgents killed some Shi'a and strung their bodies up on a lamppost. One source said his friends saw it, while many other residents said the claim was nonsense, and aimed at inciting more violence.
So here's the thing. Our media has it's biases, and if you are careful you can sometimes read past that. But for the most part if an event happened, both sides reported that it happened...and the bias appears in their interpretations and explanations. And, in some cases, with disputes over unclear facts. That's part of why reporting that the police shot a black man is such a difficult topic. Nobody disputes that the police shot the guy, they dispute whether it was justified or not. That report from Iraq, however, had a very clear dispute regarding the facts. Either bodies were hung from lamp posts, or they weren't. One side is lying. There is no middle ground, there is no way to reconcile this in order to account for different perspectives. Either it happened, and the local Sunni are so supportive of the insurgents that they lied about it, or it didn't happen and the Shi'a in the article was willing to lie instead. (Or his friends lied to him.)
In some ways, I feel like things have degenerated to a similar state.
That's mostly where I've gotten so far. I'm going to eat brunch and probably write more afterwards.
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