I’m back.
Hard to believe that 15 years have passed since I started this blog, during the height of the Bush era. 2005 was also the year YouTube and Reddit launched. Twitter didn’t launch until the following year; as did the public debut of Facebook (which eventually edged out earlier platforms such as MySpace and LiveJournal).
The iPhone had yet to be introduced; making its consumer market debut in 2007.
In late 2008 I landed a job which occupied most of my waking hours and involved international travel. So the blog pretty much went dormant. During this time, I was privileged to experience — and gain some timely insights into — overseas manufacturing, global trade and market competition.
Approaching Narita Airport
Then the current Covid-19 situation upended that schedule, and here we are again, at this, Post #100.
Surprisingly - no, actually unsurprisingly - many of the entries written in the previous 12-15 years have aged well. The events of the past several years (especially the rise of social media platforms) have made it all quite relevant. …Very, very relevant, in fact.
But while I spent the last decade occupying most of my time with work matters and the world-at-large, it seems like a significant portion of the American public has retreated into various insular virtual worlds enabled by social media platforms.
The effect is not unlike leaving an experiment 10 years ago and then returning to see the results. Or maybe like that Mike Judge movie, although not quite as dramatic.
One thing I was wrong about was the prediction that our country would be able to “inoculate”ourselves against mind-viruses through education. The keyword here is “education”, and that takes time. It also requires a more dispassionate mindset, when emotion is often the easiest way to influence people.
What’s rather disconcerting is the fact that the American psyche seems to have been hacked very easily by the most rudimentary of tactics. “Us vs. them” is one of the oldest narratives in the political playbook, but even more than that, it’s a “dumbed down” version that seems to channel people's inner 8-year olds. In just a few short years, it’s become the norm for politicians and grown adults on major media networks to fling grade school insults at each other. It’s like a Twighlight Zone episode in which a satirical writer for “The Simpsons” or “South Park” wakes up and finds real life imitating their scripts.
I blame certain media empires which have decide to turn politics into a sporting match where one cares more about their “side” winning over all else. (Also the impulsive and graffiti-like Twitter). Everyone and their grandma now thinks they’re being edgy and relevant by name-dropping various political references even though they probably couldn’t pass a pop quiz on the Constitution if their life depended on it.
Anyhow, enough rambling. Here we go…
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