Hillary's Persuasion Problem

A cheeky bit of amusement came across my way today as I was browsing my Twitter feed and I noticed a potential presidential candidate talking about our dearly departed friend, Harambe.

Dr. Jill Stein - The killing of Harambe reminds 3 months ago today reminds us to be a voice for the voiceless. 

Beautiful. A solid bit of common wisdom wrapped up prettily in a gloriously shareable meme. Congratulations to Dr. Stein as she seems to be catching on to what Gary "Feel the Johnson" Johnson and Donald Trump have already taken full advantage of for quite some time. The power of memes has been absurdly strong this political season. Easily shareable images and jokes infect everyone's social media until they're burned into our brains for the foreseeable future. For politicians, it's an easy way to signal that they're "in" with us so-called millennials. Forget facts, figures, or political data. None of those are persuasive, not really. We're humans, pulled and tossed about by emotional inconsistencies and paradoxes. Doubly so when we're young folks, inexperienced in the world and carrying around brains of hot mush. We don't care about any of that policy BS. Well, at least we try to give off an air of apathy about politics.

Memes seem to break that apathetic visage. People can hide facts or ideas in these memetic images for easy distribution among the populace. They're incredibly easy to reproduce endlessly. What politician wouldn't want a piece of that influential pie? Of course, there's a fine line to be traversed here. When one makes a meme, it can't look like one made a meme. It must feel natural and we must be able to immediately connect to it on an emotional level. Take Dr. Jill Stein's Harambe post for instance. It's too tryhard. Cringy even. The only sharing it will get is the ironic memeing, when the meme becomes a meme because of its terrible status. Perhaps it will enter post-ironic status one day, if people swing around to actually liking it. Time will tell.

But now, here's a task for you. Push all the other presidential candidates out of your head for a moment. Even Trump. Now, think of a Hillary meme.


It was negative wasn't it?


Yes, despite Hillary spending upwards over a million dollars of money and hiring scores of debt-ridden college millennials to boost her internet popularity. Somehow it's not working. The only meme I can immediately recall from Hillary is her now infamous "delete your account" tweet directed towards Donald Trump. It's not really about her, but it was still shared ad nauseam across the internet for days, so I'm going to count it as a meme. I can recall other memes that failed, such as her bizarre "Trump Yourself" campaign. I do hope they didn't spend too much money on that one.

So why can't Hillary reach the younger populace? And we're not talking about policies here or even her character. Many other people are arguing about those and they seem to be stuck going around in circles over who is the most evil. No, I believe Hillary's problem is that she cannot effectively craft memes. She doesn't seem to be able to hire meme craftsmiths to do her work for her either, which would be acceptable. So how are we supposed to connect to her if she can't portray herself as one of us? Even Dr. Stein in her delightfully grandmotherly way is getting in on the meme game. Humor is a very effective tool to reach a populace, but it seems to be one Hillary largely shirks. Perhaps she doesn't think she needs the youngsters' votes, which may be true. I'm not a politician or a pundit of any sort, so who knows? The Mainstream Media does tell me she has the election in the bag, so in the end perhaps it's moot.

But still, wouldn't it be great to have humorous Hillary memes to go with our mountain of Trump memes?

Burkini is a Dumb Word

It used to be we had to wait every few weeks or so for the Mainstream Media to manufacture us a new controversy for us to feel concerned about. Lately it seems that time period has been condensing with new controversies threatening to strangle our lives on a daily basis. I suppose it's the pinnacle of MSM controlling the populace.

A recent controversy that has remained in my Facebook feed for some time is the banning of the burkini by French mayors. While the reasoning behind the banning may be well-intentioned -- the mayors believe that the burkini is a pledge of allegiance to terrorist movements -- the banning itself is fairly nonsensical. Whether or not Muslim women wearing burkinis is a signal of support to slay all the Western infidels shouldn't be the issue, even it is one. Because if this so-called pledge is the reality, then they will find a new way to show support and perhaps in less visible ways that will be more difficult to spot. Still, if this reality truly does exist, I find it unlikely that these Muslim women are making a conscious effort to support terrorism. Do they go to the beach in their burkinis, hoping to inspire a red-blooded Muslim nearby to commit terrorism if they show there are still good women in the world who know how to cover themselves from head to toe? It seems doubtful. If this support really did exist, it would be indirect at best; a wearing of a distinctly Muslim icon in an effort to not integrate into the secular countries they have joined and to hold steadfast to the ways of Muslim culture, ways that include and promote acts of terrorism throughout the Western world.

The ban itself only deals with a symptom issue, not an underlying one. While I understand France's natural fear of Muslim terrorism, I can't see banning their swimwear as doing anything but driving them to commit more atrocities across France. No, this ban is probably nothing more than a bit of posturing by politicians to look like they are doing something to prevent terrorism, so they decided to settle on the silliest thing possible. The MSM has pounced on the ban with such ferocity that the ban has almost been made vindictive; a small and infantile way to fight back the supposed Saracen hordes without actually having to do anything to get their hands dirty. Honestly, the ban is such an amazingly stupid idea that I wouldn't be surprised if the liberal outcry was the intended effect itself. What better way to get bigger funding for Soros' refugee programs than to show just how mean and intolerant the right is?

If I had a better understanding of French town politics I could perhaps say more. As an American, all I can do is laugh at the eternally sex-starved Frenchman, because of course he would ban the burkini if it meant more lovely French bikini clad women lounging on their beaches. Well, I can't really blame him for wanting that now can I?

Welcome to Crusading Comrade

The main goal of this blog will be to collect and perhaps streamline some of my personal thoughts and opinions. No social network seems to be able to provide me a place to write longform posts and create an environment of discourse around them. While a few of the mainstream social networking sites like Facebook and Tumblr allow for longer blog style content, the environment is hardly suitable. Facebook is for baby pictures from the family, feel good posturing and attention begging. Tumblr also shares much of the latter, though I would hardly call it feel good. Either one seems to use Tumblr to pose as a wonderful fad following person to hide their horrible insecurities and vitriolic attitude, or Tumblr is used to post dank memes and anime waifus (guess which category I fall into). There is of course Twitter, though it's limited capacity for conversing due to the imposed 140-word count guarantees nothing more than an environment of mayhem and discord. Not to mention recent activities by Twitter itself in banning conservative firebrand speakers and their sponsorship and establishment of known people who ran targeted harassment and bullying campaigns such as Crash Override Network. Hardly a place of open and honest discussion.

It shall remain to be seen whether or not Blogger is a good platform to use, but for now it seems as good a place to start as any. From here on out I'll be populating this site with regular updates on things happening in the world and my thoughts of them. Hopefully some others can find some enjoyment or perhaps even some use out of what will be posted here.