“Group Think” — a virus run amuck.

Conservative talk show hosts: Listen up.

I have a grown child who is “on” Facebook yet maybe — maybe! — logs on once a year and is on no other SM platform. Further, she rarely reads, only occasionally watches television news, doesn’t even know what talk radio is, and when I brought up Rush Limbaugh years ago she said, “Who?” When I bring things up to her about what is going on in the world, like warning her about Big Tech’s assaults on freedom and the campaign to destroy the Constitution, she looks at me like “How do you come up with this stuff, Mom?” As if I’m the only one who thinks of these things.

She is unplugged. I would say that I have some blame in that for not pushing her harder, but frankly her father’s side of the family is exactly the same way and gave me the same look when I used to bring stuff up. Genes run deep and strong on that side of the family and they aren’t interested in anything unless it has to do with their daily life.

I can hear you all asking it now:

Don’t they know that God-given and protected freedoms in all their forms give them the life they have now? And don’t they know those need to be understood and defended?

You would be correct in asking those logical questions. Yet, there are no two distinct groups in the US, that is to say, those who are actively engaged either for or against a thing as we have the Big Techs and CNN’s and NYT’s et al, of this world telling us.

According to all of them, everybody is online and have made a definitive choice and have made it known and can be tracked and quantified. First, that simply isn’t so. Second, there are fewer who can be tracked and quantified than they believe. And third, I can prove it. Here we go. You with mad math skills can check my numbers, though my logic is unassailable.

Defining active users.

But before we do, we need to define what we mean by users and what they mean by users. By users we mean those who log on regularly and post, Like, get excited about a new emoji, and so forth, and have an energetic community online, that is to say, they are truly active.

What they mean by users is anybody who has ever signed up for their service whether or not they ever log back on again but that they can send an email to (think Twitter), artificially make it look like they are engaging (think Linkedin.com), and showing ads to (think FB, Instagram, etc.), and thus count them as active.

There are 7.9 billion people in the world. Facebook has 2.8 billion users who they say are active monthly. Google has 4 billion users (including on their Android products, Gmail and other of the company’s services, and 2.0 million Google Ads accounts). Add in all the other social media (SM) platforms and you can see there are more users than there are people in the world unless you understand the platform cross-pollination that goes on.

For instance, I have accounts with FB, MSN, Google, MeWe, Linkedin, and, rarely used, MySpace and Instagram. I am one person, but each counts me individually since I am a user with each. Still, I can double guarantee you that if everybody who they say are signed up even for one of these happened to log on at one time, the entire Internet around the world would crash in an instant and stay down for days if not weeks.

These social media companies and other Internet service providers sell ad space to institutional ad buyers (who are cutting back on those ad placement buys because they ran the numbers, too) and sell our data to whoever wants it (if it doesn’t get hacked first and stolen by bad people).

One stat no tech company ever reports publicly is how many do not log on ever again or hardly ever. Internally they have those numbers but mere mortals will never know them. Unlike ASCAP, who will occasionally purge from their rolls all accounts that are dormant, Big Tech platforms hang on to every account with a good email address so they can justify their ad rates.

The fact is, though, there are crowds of people everywhere just like my daughter.

Quiet. Law-abiding. Making the best of whatever is thrown their way. Staying focused on being productive members of their community. Working to support their family. Staying home and raising the children. Modestly going about their lives, unpretentious. Not needing to post or upload or like or share jokes, lives, or opinions somewhere on the ether. Whose motto is Leave me be and move on down the road.

Which is why after the 2020 election debacle — in which many states in the Union that is our Republic proceeded to have their houses and senates abdicate their power to radicals — it has become very clear that this push to join “conservative group-think” SM platforms will not work in the long run.  

Here’s why.

“Group think” is like a virus hunting down a host in which to live. Any virus, even a so-called good one, can go bad by replicating itself so much it renders the host unhealthy by stealing resources the host body needs, often so much so the unhealthy host dies, at worst, but mostly weakens the host, taking the fight out of it.

If the virus does not stop, the host body soon modifies its routine by, say, vigorously staying away from people, and thus adapting to its new norm. Left unchecked, this adjustment that seems so helpful at first, will soon spiral out of control and have consequences unintentional yet more deadly than the virus itself.

Yet it is only when people come out of their virus-free bubbles can widespread immunity be built and maintained. Stay in the digital bubble, that is, locked down intellectually, and more will quickly become misinformed. Contrary to what #CrunkNewsNetworks believe, and Big Tech and SM preaches, about the efficacy of bubbles, there are a lot of people like my daughter who, whether they know it or not, contribute to group think not getting a stranglehold on the masses.

Freedom has never been won and defended by the masses.

It’s always the few who do the heavy lifting in this matter. If widespread group think were to take hold like a virus, then what some see as an easy way to mobilize for their cause would actually generate less cooperation, cause confusion, and bring about the destruction of the host body.

We see that happening now with the radical elements in government and behind the scenes and marching in the streets and controlling the media and issuing executive orders in order to fundamentally change a nation by fiat. Like a virus that replicates itself without restraint, Democrat Socialists (a Commie by any other name stinks just as badly) are on a march across the body that is the United States and Founding Documents, but they cannot last for long because they are destroying the host that allows them to breed.

So, while I may complain that my daughter isn’t informed like I’d like her to be, the truth of the matter is that she — and many people like her — are the ones out of the bubble of group think. Doesn’t mean they are stupid. Doesn’t mean they don’t care about freedom. Doesn’t mean they won’t fight when the battle is brought to their door.

What it does mean is that they cannot be easily manipulated. “Squirrel!” tactics do not work on them. [Read my article on that here.]

Radicals attempt to manipulate as early as possible in the life cycle of those they seek to dominate. So, I asked myself this question: Is that why getting a college degree became de rigueur? Before the 1960s, college was specifically not for just getting a degree to say you had one; and getting that degree was difficult. These days…sheesh. I’ve met people who are proud of degrees, yet couldn’t tell me what it was for, what they learned, or anything much at all.

Still, left unchecked, as it has been, higher education under radicals control was a fast way to spend a lot of money to join a bubble in which one stops thinking. The idea of pushing for excellence sounds great, but excellence in what? In themselves or a skill?  

This article, though, is mostly to help certain conservative talk show hosts understand they are spinning their wheels when they complain that “the masses” are not moving.

You see, these people see the lack of movement as a bad thing. I’ve heard one in particular verbally demolish callers who do not agree, continue to question, or simply do not understand what he is saying. I’ve heard others bemoan the fact that they’ve worked so hard and so long to get the word out and yet, the masses are still not moving.

Talk show hosts who berate their callers, whine, and bemoan, are wrong to do that. I reiterate to them this irrefutable fact: Freedom has never been won and defended by the masses. It’s always the few who do the heavy lifting in this matter.

Even Rush Limbaugh in his final days forgot that. Never in all my years of listening did I ever hear him bemoan the masses. He always attempted to invigorate them and educate them. But in his last days, when he knew the end was near, I could tell that all along even he thought he would get the masses mobilized in a particular way for the fight. In that, El Rushbo showed his limited thinking. That was sad for me to hear.

To these conservative talk show hosts with limited thinking I say: Stop your whining. Do your job. Fight the fight without complaining. You aren’t a hammer and the masses are not a nail.  

Two that do a good job of this are Larry Elder and Jay Sekulow and his team. Both are invigorating to listen to, ready to scrap when necessary, but always seek to educate.

One that could do a better job of putting his energies where they can do the most good is Sebastian Gorka. I like a man who is willing to get rough and tough when needs be, but if Seb doesn’t check himself, he will soon be like the radicals he opposes, that is, a lover of the virus known as group think. Seb knows that “group think” is fine if the group is small and has to move fast; that’s what makes a team effective. He’s forgotten that the masses are not a small, fast team.

We do not really want our mountains moving. Celebrate the masses. Be happy the masses described earlier aren’t easy to move. Think of them as mountain ranges anchoring continents. There they are, dependable, doing what they do best:

Standing firm.
Weathering the storms.
There when the armies need to march toward the enemy.

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Thank you for participating in spreading good messaging by sharing this with your friends and social network! One can even print out the article and give it to someone who is unplugged. Born and raised in Georgia, Angela K. Durden is an author, publisher, editor, songwriter, performer, and more, living in the Metro Atlanta, Georgia, area. Support your Citizen Journalist and visit her Consolidated Author Page and buy a book.
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