Bubbling Over

Can't We All Just Get Along?The political landscape in the West is undergoing a political schism that is dividing people groups and ideologies in ways that humanity has never seen before. The socio-political landscape is beginning to make what Christ said in Matthew 10:21 seem closer than many would like to admit: “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child”. Current data suggest that political currents really are dividing family members. If political divisions are affecting familial relationships, one can only imagine the strain put on friendships, even the current hookup culture in the nation’s capital is feeling the division. With this much division, it isn’t a surprise that political violence is on the rise. What, or who is to blame for this divisiveness? The combination of search bubbles and partisan reporting in the west is creating a society where open displays of hatred and violence against political opponents are normal.Many are sick of what they deem to be endless political bickering. Perhaps you are one of the many who blames the current political climate on Trump, or perhaps you blame it on political extremists, the Alt-Right or Alt-Left. Whether you consider yourself conservative or liberal, to lay blame at the feet of any specific party or ideology as the perpetrators of political spectacle is entirely wrongheaded. Politics as a public spectacle is not a new concept and has been a part of society for as long as we’ve had politicians. In the Roman world, it was normal for people to speculate on the moral quality of their leaders.When we stack the likes of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton alongside the leaders of Rome such as Nero and Caligula, we see that modern politicians are in good company. All we have experienced then is an increase in the amount of reporting on such topics. This increase in reporting has not, as some may wish to believe, thrown more light onto the polity. Indeed, it is the increase of reporting and opinion pieces that have muddied the waters further. We see the proof in such political events as the recent SCOTUS appointment of Justice Kavanaugh, the speculation of Russian meddling in elections and the questions surrounding the contents of former Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton’s emails.It is clear to see that the problem lies not in our politicians. It is normal for a society to hold its rulers in contempt and history is filled with the exact same problems we have in the modern world. There is no new depravity under the sun and political strife is as old as time. However, what is new is the manner in which political fissures can grow in a society. Historically, divisions grow in society due to economic stratification and political differences. Revisiting the Roman world, we find marked similarities to the Western world today. Evan Andrews lists economic inequality as one of the eight reasons Rome fell:“Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor. In the hope of avoiding the taxman, many members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside and set up independent fiefdoms” (Evans).Remind you of something? Perhaps a global problem of the world’s richest one percent hiding money in offshore accounts and shadow holdings?The divisions we see in the American West are not primarily from economic inequality, instead, this is one of the many issues in which we find the western world erupting in political violence over. This raises the question: if there truly is nothing new about political and economic divisions, why do we see such unrest in the country today, and how did these divisions grow so fast? This year a survey done by Rasmussen Reports, a public opinion polling organization, reported that “Thirty-one percent (31%) of Likely U.S. Voters say it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, with 11% who say it’s Very Likely” (Rasmussen Reports). The fear of political unrest is real. If almost a third of likely voters (for our purposes, let us refer to these people as the politically informed) are fearful of a repeat of the American Civil War, there must be a culprit.Technology Sells You What You Want to HearThe blame for the division in the United States of America (and the rise of nationalism in the face of globalism in Europe) is squarely on the technological wonders of search engines and social media. A Pew Research poll shows that “younger groups of adults are much more likely than older adults to turn to online platforms for news – 50% of 18- to 29-year-olds and 49% of those ages 30-49 often do so” (Mitchell et al). About half of adults age 18 to 49 will go to the internet for their news. The pull of small-time, independent journalists who are crowd-funded and stuck in the middle of protests, riots, and political revolutions is alluring. In an age when the President of the United States of America uses Twitter to endorse one cable news outlet while trashing the others as “fake news” it is understandable that many who want to know the truth about a certain matter will take to the internet instead of party-endorsed news media.The only issue with this phenomenon is that the internet knows what you want to hear and will tell you it in return for clicks and your attention. If you are a known conservative and you go onto Twitter, odds are you’re going to be presented with suggested articles and advertisements meant to target conservative viewpoints. If you are a liberal and go to check Facebook, you will be plagued by liberal articles which have been algorithmically fast-tracked to the top of your news feed. See for yourself how different your newsfeed on Facebook could look here: http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/.This phenomenon is called a Filter Bubble and is defined by Technopedia as “the intellectual isolation that can occur when websites make use of algorithms to selectively assume the information a user would want to see, and then give information to the user according to this assumption” ("What Is A Filter Bubble? - Definition From Techopedia"). Whether the Filter Bubble was created to serve up more convenient content for consumers to take in or to maliciously control a political narrative does not matter. What matters is that the Filter Bubble has broken the West in ways that are leading to relational schisms, violence, and political unrest.Let’s revisit the blue-feed-red-feed graphic for a moment. No matter what topic you choose, the language and narratives of each piece are certainly partisan. The us-vs-them mentality being played out in the public spaces is being forwarded by this cherry picking of news sources. Democrats get advertisements for Mother Jones, Republicans get advertisements for Breitbart. Each one of these websites has an agenda and a political spin.Charlottesville and ClarityTake the Unite the Right rally for example. A political march which had Neo-Nazis and Antifa protestors clash, resulting in one fatality when the dust cleared. Here is an article from The Atlantic with the headline: “Trump Defends White-Nationalist Protesters: 'Some Very Fine People on Both Sides'. Although further down in the article this quote is put into context and readers are shown that the President disavowed the Neo-Nazis in attendance and merely was saying that those who were not from the Neo-Nazi or Antifa camps were fine people, the headline is obviously meant to convey a narrative: Trump thinks that White Nationalists are very fine people.Now let’s look at coverage of the same story from Breitbart. The headline says “Alt-Right Activists Condemn Violence, Dispute Mainstream Account”. This whole news article is rife with Alt-Right apologetics and scare quotes around the names of groups such as Black Lives Matter and Anti-Fascist Action. This message, similar in tone to the piece published by The Atlantic, is also clear: The Alt-Right is not violent and news outlets telling you about their violence are lying to you.Both news sources are biased. Both news sources post to Facebook. Both tell you parts of the story that fit their narrative and leave out or obscure parts that don’t. Now put the rubber to the road. If all you saw were articles from The Atlantic and sources like it or articles from Breitbart and sources like it, you would come to believe certain things are true. You would believe that Donald Trump came out in favor of the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, or you would believe that the Alt-Right protestors in Charlottesville were peaceful. Multiply this effect every time someone goes to check social media every day of every week of every month of every year ever since people began getting their news from internet sources.Connect the DotsThe effect: people believe evil things about political and ideologues opponents. Conversations are becoming muddled because no one wants to listen. All of this is happening because nobody can or even wants to step outside the filter. Because people are staying in this filter bubble and getting information from algorithmically perfect echo chambers, we are seeing division in politics that the modern world has never seen before. A perfect example of this is the midterm election just held at the beginning of the month. Democratic areas became further democratic and Republican areas became further Republican. In an opinion piece by The Guardian, Henry Olsen says just this: “the US’s large cities and suburbs, [were] Democratic before last week and became much more Democratic on Tuesday…  US’s smaller cities and towns and countryside, [were] Republican before last week and remained Republican on Tuesday” (Olsen).This division is not mere disagreement on policy. As highlighted in the contrasting articles published by The Atlantic and Breitbart, the division is reaching the boiling point. Charlottesville has already been brought up in this paper, but are you aware of what has been dubbed “The Battle of Portland”? Portland Antifa and members of a group known as the Proud Boys clashed on the streets of Portland. In this video (Warning, violence) a member of Antifa is knocked unconscious by a member of the Proud Boys. A man who was on the scene later Tweeted about the situation and saying that the person who was knocked out suffered a traumatic brain injury and had his skull cracked.Conservative speaker Ben Shapiro, subject of many internet memes and YouTube compilations featuring him debating liberal students in an open mic format, was kept from speaking at DePaul in 2016 with the university citing “security concerns” (Chasmar). A controversial figurehead of the Alt-Right, Milo Yiannopoulos, sparked a full-blown riot when he was scheduled to speak at Berkley in 2017. Neither of these speakers are reporters, neither of them are looking to simply report on the facts but are commentators, entertainers.These new forms of political entertainers are utilizing the Filter Bubble to reach audiences that only want to hear their version of the “truth.” Take for example, Gavin McInnes. One of the founders of Vice and current far-right political pundit. In this video (Warning: language and content) McInnes describes his group called the Proud Boys. In the interest of honesty, McInnes has recently (in the past week) stepped down as the “leader” of the Proud of Boys. However, the description of the group is visceral. Although he makes the claim that the Proud Boys are not explicitly violent, he says in no uncertain terms that to make it to the highest tier of membership you must be involved in a violent conflict.This is a prime example of the rise in political entertainment being sold as real news. One need look no further than the rise of shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Tucker Carlson Tonight for news “personalities” that do little in the way of actually informing viewers. Instead, interpretations of events and political parties are given. It shouldn’t be shocking, then, that the political discourse in the country is becoming less and less civil and is tending towards more and more violent forms of engagement in the public space.What we are seeing is the mainstream revolution threatening the people’s ability to engage in real political discourse. People are being targeted by highly effective news-spectacles that tell them exactly what they want to hear: you are the good, “they” are the bad. Politics stops being political when opponents become enemies. If your family member voted for Hilary, they’re a pro-abortion murderer which makes them a bad person. If your best friend voted for Trump, then they are a racist, sexist, rape apologist. What do we expect to happen when we fuel ourselves on rhetoric and not truth? The violence that is in the streets today is being spilled because we are being given entertainment perfectly tailored to what we want to hear. We want to know that the Democratic senator who claims to be an ally to the LGBTQ movement bullied a gay student in high school. We rejoice when that sexist Republican gets outed as woman-hater. We don’t want to know about what our opponents do right and we rejoice when they do wrong. This culture of politics as entertainment only works when there’s a villain to be defeated and not compromises to be made. Defeating enemies is sexy. Compromising for real change and social unity is hard work, a chore and boring.Christian's Must Pop the Bubble and Learn the TruthIn Ecclesiastes 1:9 the Teacher states that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Oftentimes, we as Christians can become cynical in our readings of historical patterns. Stories that play out in the Old Testament we can see shadows of in the modern world. It can feel natural to fix our eyes upon God and let the rise and fall of empires pass us by with all of their violence and vulgarities. The Teacher is correct in his position that what has been will be again, but the advance of technology has permanently changed how we will interact with the world around us.Christians cannot engage in this entertainment fueled blindness. Christ’s call on our lives means that we are not to view our enemies as someone to be defeated. Matthew 5:44 says: “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” What does this mean in the world of the search bubble? Christians cannot afford to be entertained by party lines anymore. Participating in this program of personal censorship leads to increased anger and hatred of the enemies as they are branded by our devices and apps. In fact, we as Christians are called to a radical life outside the narratives constructed for us? How would it look for Christians to reject the media that panders to our worldview by demonizing those who hate us? What would it look like if the body of Christ stepped so radically outside of its comfort zone that it was willing to embrace Christ in His entirety as the way, and the truth and the life?If Christ is the truth, then to indulge in narratives outside of the truth is to be content with less than Christ. In John 8:31-46 Jesus is describing the difference between His disciples and the Pharisees. Christ identifies with the truth and says that the children of the Devil are like him: liars, having no truth in them at all. If Christ is indeed the Truth as He says, what then can a Christian have to do with false political narratives? Western Christians must understand that the Bible is very clear on this matter. We must step outside of our comfort zones and boldly seek the truth in every matter. If we are to follow after Christ we are to be known for our passion for truth and not for our narratives given to us by Filter Bubbles and spin doctors.The Great EscapeIf you want to escape the filter bubble but don’t know how to start, I’ve compiled a list of few quick ways to keep companies from telling what you want to hear and, hopefully, make it a bit easier to access unbiased information.

1. Replace Google with Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/en/

It’s no secret that Google tracks your searches and recent news is showing that they have engaged in censorship and rearranging search results to favor certain political views. Startpage solves this problem by saving no search data and not saving users profiles. 

2. On specific browsers, certain plugins can be utilized to keep advertisers and websites from tracking your browsing. A few are listed below:

Privacy Badger. Chrome FirefoxDisconnect: ChromeuBlock Origin: Firefox

3. Utilizing varied news sources is important. A fantastic resource for just this purpose is the Christian Daily Reporter, in addition to Christianity Today. By checking these resources first, you can generally get a sense for the theological affect or outlook on a given topic. From there, you can engage with contrasting news reports from various news sources to get a broader sense of what the articles are trying to report. If you utilize Startpage and these extensions listed above while doing all of this, you’ll have begun your escape from the search bubble!

What price are we as Christians prepared to pay to follow after Christ? Many times this question is asked, we think about our families, friends or even our own lives. Would we give those up for Christ? Yet, all too often, we are complacent with a thousand little conveniences or habits that allow darkness to gain a foothold in our lives. Does your entertainment, your news or your idle time spent scrolling through social media bring you into closer alignment to truths of Jesus Christ? Or does it lead you to hatred of your political rival, your geographic enemy, or your neighbor? Matthew 12:36 tells us that when Christ returns, we will answer for every idle word we've spoken. Let us lead lives that are not marked by the idle words we read, speak or think, but by words that foster peace, unity and the love of God.