The West Wing Dynasty

When you immerse yourself in the news of the world and you are exposed to various news stories from outside the myopic view of the United States media stronghold, you can’t help but notice that no matter how bad it gets in America, the media and the government always seems to find a way to get citizens to commit and celebrate their own self-delusion.

There is this unspecified mad science that somehow creates an atmosphere where Americans begin to think that the opinions expressed by the media and by the criminal element in Washington are facts, based upon years of rational and objective observation.

The biggest enemy to the power-hungry is our ability to question, and the biggest sin of all is to question anyone who puts themselves in front of a camera and is paid six figures to coerce an audience into fitting into a statistical stereotype.

The truth, if we decide to accept it, is that your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information that has confirmed what you have believed all along. The media takes advantage of our tendency to ignore information that challenges any or all preconceived ideas that the consensus may foster. It is amazing how the media and highly paid spin doctors can have you magically forget history in favor of whim and of the moment where apologists say “that was then, this is now.”

We are beginning to see that “what was then doesn’t matter now and what will be is going to be better in some way, or it will be different.”

I have observed that the media and Washington are doing some old mental tricks in order to force some strange bit of reverse causality towards the year 2016. We may see a presidential election in which the candidates that are offered are their positions because of confirmed bias, and of frequency illusion.

Out of the chaos of information that bombards us daily, much of what we believe is based in confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a filter through which reality is based on your expectations. It creates a method by which you selectively hear and think about things that keep your world comfortable. Anytime your confirmation bias is challenged, you become uncomfortable. You either react, or you switch off and do not allow the uncomfortable challenge enter into your mind.

In politics, confirmation bias affects our choice between the two main parties that are offered. It is in the political arena where confirmation bias can distort an active pursuit of facts, especially when political punditry whips up a ton of biased rhetoric.

Pundits encourage confirmation bias. They hope you watch and listen to them not for information but for validation. It does not matter how hateful, cynical, intolerant, or flippant they are, they really don’t have to research anything they say—all they have to do is know what people want to hear to confirm their suspicions and to mold a sense of comfort about their opinions.

It does not matter if the media or pundits in the media tell the truth anymore. The convenient confirmation bias, along with another phenomenon known as frequency illusion, and a bit of predictive programming, will mold and shape the consensus into falling for the same lies over and over, time and time again.

I recently was boldly slapped in the face with some very clever frequency illusion that was backed by political punditry that convinces me that no matter how hard we deny that we support political dynasties, we secretly yearn for them, and it seems the media is toying with reverse causality, basically shaping the future for a political dynasty rather than allowing it to fade away.

Normally, a rational person would focus on the effects of causes, rather than the causes of effects. Outside the realm of science is reverse causality –where the effect is described first and the cause can be reviewed later as the reason a future event happened that we already knew would for some reason.

We argue that the search for causes can be understood within a traditional matrix. We have various models we can check and we can generate an objective hypothesis on what caused an effect.

However, the media is encouraging an outcome for the 2016 election that would lend itself to confirmation bias as a Clinton vs. Bush ticket resonates well with what we already think we know about each possible candidate.

Neither Jeb Bush nor Hillary Clinton has made their presidential candidacy official, but if we listen to the media and pay attention to frequency illusion, the future event is happening now in the minds of the pundits.

It begins with an innocent shot on the jumbo-tron at an NCAA Championship game. During the Kentucky/Connecticut game the camera zooms in on the luxury box at the AT&T Stadium in Texas. Sitting there shoulder to shoulder are former President Bill Clinton and former President George W. Bush.

In the past, there have been many images of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush together, suggesting a bipartisan stance. The frequency illusion tells us that the fiercest rivals are now great friends and that their bipartisanship is an example of what our country can be. Politicians can lay their differences aside and both be great statesmen together in building a better America.

In the meantime, the pundits are arguing over whether or not a Clinton or a Bush can win over our hearts again in the quest for the White House in 2016.

For Hillary Clinton it seems to be a given that she has her eye on the White House again in 2016 and with her comes Bill Clinton. The same guy that was sitting next to his good friend George W. Bush at a NCAA championship game and who is also seen going to Washington events with George W. Bush’s father, George Herbert Walker Bush, who is also the father of Jeb Bush, brother of George W., whose name is being tossed around as a possible candidate for president in 2016.

This would be funny if it was good fiction, but it isn’t; it is a clever form of frequency illusion working its magic on the American people. It also helps to have the Bush/Clinton meme reinforced in the Washington Post.

Ron Radosh of The Washington Post reports:

“Many of the Republican Party’s most powerful insiders and financiers have begun a behind-the-scenes campaign to draft former Florida governor Jeb Bush into the 2016 presidential race, courting him and his intimates and starting talks on fundraising strategy.”

Furthermore, Radosh goes on to say:

“As for the Democratic Party, its equivalents in the big-money community have anointed Hillary as their preferred candidate. Like Jeb Bush, she has not said she is going to run, but is already taking all the steps to have the money ready to flow and the organizations on the ground should she decide to take the step.”

Woe be unto any and all independent mavericks who decide to go rogue against the dream dynasty or the confirmation bias of a divided consensus. The reverse causality is in play. The low-information voters know Bush and know Clinton and their confirmation bias will win out, allowing for the political dynasty – which they deny exists – to attempt control again.

It just might work because it confirms everything we know, whether we be left-leaning or right-leaning.

What a brilliant farce for a willing public that doesn’t have the time to review these candidates and evaluate how they will continue “business as usual.”

We all know, or at least we assume, what both candidates think of gay marriage, drug legalization, and immigration reform. This makes it all the better, right? They fill our need for assumed confirmation bias.

Who cares if they are both looking into expanding the surveillance state or pouring more money into experimental war tools and creating more socialist dialogue for American dependence both psychologically and materially? How hard will it be to say that if either candidate becomes the darling choice in 2016 that their economic policies will continue to be a disaster?

It doesn’t matter who sits in the Oval Office. Government will not be limited; it will expand and it will be praised as long as it adheres to confirmation bias. Whichever party is represented—the wars and the instability will be enabled by the party that has won.

Americans have this secret worry that the government today has too much power. That is something that we are assuming is a bipartisan attitude. This is what is laughable because we can say this now, but it all goes away if Hillary or Jeb or some other upstart tells us things we want to hear, because we will project a messianic image on these fallible souls, and our love affair with monarchy will show, much to the embarrassment of those who decry the dynastic appearance of it all.

Winning the future is such a challenge now because of all of the punditry, frequency illusion and confirmation bias that distorts our logical and objective way of finding solutions to government overreach and empire building.

The elite is fixated on characters rather than people of character. Independent and moderate thinkers are silenced and put in the corner the minute a columnist or television pundit creates a picture of comfort and familiarity with families who could be compared to the Munsters vs. the Addams Family.

Both are creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky, and most importantly they are familiar and easy to choose.

It is a reboot of retro candidates, the addendum to the chapter of where predecessors failed and they will too. It is a story that is becoming far too American for its own good.

Politics are out of new ideas. The public dialogue is becoming tiresome and it confirms that we just can’t get out of the myopic bubble we have decided to remain in.

I have always hoped that the actions of those in power now would give us lessons to learn and mistakes to avoid. Candidates with the same names and family bloodlines are as recyclable as plastic bags and they carry with them the same refuse and garbage that we allow to accumulate in Washington.

We see that the pundits want to settle old scores rather than navigate around new dangers that are rendering us unstable. Why think about how American civil liberties are suffering when we can identify with a Bush or a Clinton and once again believe that they will be in any position to be bold enough to pick us out of the morass of an out of control police state and restore constitutional law?

The party favorites, or the party favors, will not address the things that are uncomfortable.

The reason is confirmation bias.

Who is going to be bold enough to point out that perhaps both Clinton and Bush would not lose sleep over police brutality, checkpoints, kill lists and indefinite detainment?

Do we even know if they care about any of these important issues?

I say it is time to say goodbye to your confirmation bias, refuse to give in to the frequency illusion, the retro causality and evacuate from the collapsed idea of partisan politics.

We need to avoid the right wing and left wing bias that will allow for the West Wing dynasty.