Dear Readers,

   The opposite of communications? Well, obviously NOT communicating, but let’s get more specific. REAL specific to our times: politics, society, faith, lack of having a faith. (Most accurately labelled as “agnostic,” not “atheist.”) Communication stops at the door of fanaticism.
   I am not going to start pointing fingers. That’s not the purpose of this column. As I have pointed out before, the media and social model we have right now discourages communication. The first time I heard, “You know what ____ really want(s)?” I knew what would follow was an attempt to gum up communications between people who differ. Which, by the way, would be all of us. No two people think exactly the same.
   The object is not even to communicate with their precious base. The object is to line everyone up against each other. To muck up any path that may lead us to each other, like dropping boulders in a Road Runner cartoon. And, yes, we are doing it to ourselves.
   My own Facebook-based, way of communicating seems to stun people into silence. For example, if one questions the vote tally of any one candidate it is just as legitimate to question the vote tally of who ran against them. It’s a form of rhetorical jujitsu. They’re heading in a certain direction and you help them get there, maybe just not as far as they want to go.
   If mail in votes are illegitimate then all are, not just those you disagree with.
   If voting machines are black boxes that can serve to elect your opposition, then they are black boxes that can serve to elect your guy or gal.
   If stopping the count is legit if your candidate is ahead, then stopping it when the other side is winning ahead.
   Solution? If you’re extreme you’re not going to like my answer. The answer is we need to get together, regardless of what side, and make standards then stick with those standards. Make it so we must stick by mutual agreed to standards. We have done it before, the problem being the standard was word of mouth: like a president only gets two terms, and then came Roosevelt.
   I neither defend nor castigate Roosevelt and his party, considering the times I get there were reasons for and against.
   Going back to my point…
   Candidates who knew they probably had the election stolen from them conceded, lived another day. And in our nation there’s ALWAYS another day. For wars solve little to nothing. Yes, there’s no more Hitler but his legacy lives on in Neo-Nazis. The anti Antifa side constantly points at “communists” among us, and mixes the term socialist with communism as if they ae exactly the same ingredient. The other side uses “Nazi” in similar fashion. Not all business and government walking together is fascism, or undesirable.

“Jew will not replace us.”

   The only question being either way, “How far down the rabbit hole will we go?”
   Part of the reason this happens is we argue using extremes: our brains work well in opposites. But the comparison is rarely apt. Yet we still argue as if it is because much power and money is to be gained that way. It also makes us feel smug and self righteous.
   Not so much making society or a nation better. It’s as if those claiming they have the answer, the right path to build or rebuilt the nation, society, faith look at the car called society, politics and religion and asked, “How can we make it worse?”
   A healthy sign is where otherwise we completely disagree, but we recognize a danger beyond those differences. When you get left, right, atheist, agnostic, theist, social safety net fans and tough advocates working together trying to reach a goal goals can be achieved.
   Unfortunately war is a good example. Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, probably had many differences between them. But they worked together, eventually, during the war to win. Division only serves to make sure we never achieve any mutual desirable goal.
   We can fight later, with civility.
   And there are mutual goals to be had. Don’t let dividers convince you otherwise. Helping them to break down communications is like inviting the hungry fox into the henhouse, then closing and locking the door… thinking they’ll get along. And if they don’t it’s the chicken’s fault.
   Let’s not be chickens, nor the stupid farmer who would do such a thing.

                            Sincerely,

                                   The Communications Curmudgeon

                                    -30-

   Ken Carman is “The Communications Curmudgeon:” a 76 graduate of SUNY @ Plattsburgh School of Communications. He did have good grades, but not grand. Ken specializes in taking what he has learned from music, being a music business student in Nashville, an English major at two colleges, a Communications/Mass Media Major and seeing what PhD’s might not see. Think of it like horses at a track with blinders on. They see the track, where they need to go. Like most generalists, Ken sees beyond the track and how it all can fit together in unique ways. In the future expect more off kilter editions. Ken hopes his perspective may widen the perspective of others, and the perspectives of his readers do the same for him. Ken lives in Eagle Bay and Beaver River, NY. He is formerly from Nashville, TN, before that Old Forge, NY, in college he lived in Plattsburgh and Utica, NY, the last where he met Millie the marvelous. Ken was born in Nyack, NY.
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