The Politicization of Social Media

You've been there before. You are seated in a taxi and suddenly the
person next to you receives a message. You can tell it is from social media because a familiar sound pierces the silence and your neighbor begins mercilessly clicking away. Its fine until you enter paranoia mode and begin to think that you are being stalked.

We've written about a topic similar to the one above in a previous blog. We were concerned and rightly so because we observed the appearance of the Usual Suspects at a normally technology heavy event. Well dressed young men with a lot of 'bling' but suspiciously watching the crowd as if to monitor the activity of the participants for political or opposition connections. You were saddened that an innovation space so full of potential had been infiltrated by 'eyes' and 'ears' and any sign of true innovation was going to be stifled.   

You were angered because you are very aware that one of the hallmarks of democracy is the existence of political free zones where business, trade and a healthy interchange of idea can take place.
We fight for these free zones because in the absence of these spaces there can only be conflict.

And so the image we chose today is designed to illustrate the idea behind an invasion of a media tool by a political movement and the difficulty faced by citizens in expressing themselves in a politically charged atmosphere.
You and I have to think twice before we adorn ourselves with a T-Shirt of a particular color especially in those tense feverish politically charged moments such as the season in which we have entered.

Ok. We can see that the two bulls in the Kraal have began to appear together and their respective owners are itching for a fight between the two. Naturally as many would have expected, these two distinct groups have drawn in their respective tribes in a battle that we shall refer to as the 'Western Front Assault'.

There are some who have called for a rotation of leadership ala Nigeria where the Mainly Muslim North gets a chance to drive the train for a certain distance as does the Mainly Christian South. This has proved to be successful. Ideas have also emerged that have pushed for the creation if similar moves in ethno-centric areas. This is naturally controversial but in countries that thrive on culture it is a question that we must bring to the surface.     

So the need to monitor media in the shadow of your past fears is necessary but more important than this is to deal with the challenges as presented by your citizenry and to trust them enough not to repeat their mistakes.

The rise of a new religion-human rights it's priests are called activists.

This week I heard an interesting program on the BBC in which an interview was done with a former British intelligence officer whose level of expertise seems is in ISIL. 

He made some important references to U.S work in Iraq and the errors that were made in dismantling the former presidents state machinery. His view was that those who had formerly served the Iraqi president had now coagulated and gathered around the new core (ISIS). This made sense because I was beginning to see a revival of Baathist tendencies especially with the attack on Yazidis. In my view therefore the former president was not dead...not in the complete sense. 

One could see the same happening in Libya even if the forces that displaced the Colonel in that country seem to have been more home grown. What one should therefore follow is the after effects on Libya and if marginalized groups will begin to suffer abuses from the past as in the case with Iraq. If the same happens, then one might as well rewind all the way back to 2011. 

The conflict here rises out of what we can loosely refer to as established authority and the broad subject of Change. What I have also found and what I ascribe to is a belief that nations are just like people. When they are hurt or wounded, they often cease to grow or at least begin to limit resources to those areas that are wounded until those parts are healed. 

If they have unanswered questions or dilemmas, these often cause deep questions which after a passage of time will result in a loss of confidence in their systems or a birth of doubts and fears and negative attitudes. 

So the natural flow of questions in this regard then is this? Are Americans ready for change and what does this mean for the next administration? 

Will it take the rapid form as it did in the early 1900s so that suffrage predates the struggle of the sixties with the civil right movement? 

Was Hillary meant to be first and is America ready for the return of the Clintons to the white house (after the primaries we can see how the Clinton family played the role of king maker in B.H.O's election). 

As power begins to centre more along family lines, will we see the return of the larger Bush Family to the white house too? Is Florida going to play a significant role in the elections? What role if any will the new dynamics in the U.S-Cuban relations play in the coming elections. Do these changes benefit the republicans or do they favor eye democrats?

Have recent development in the petroleum brought about a sea change in the machine that is government? Are we going to see something similar to what happened in the Seventies when the Saudis tightened the note on foreign relations?

The Christian faith calls these strongholds, or you can call them mindsets.

You could say, that the sixties were a prime example of this challenge on the American Psyche. The Vietnam war, the Kennedies and Martin Luther on one hand and the drive to the left which was characterized by the Jesus Movement, the hippies and the rise of experimental drugs. 

While we are still dealing with the subject of our relations, another group has arisen whose prime focus seems to be on the elimination of western education. 

In my most recent post (trends and prediction) I wondered aloud why we seem unprepared for an event which we for such a long time had predicted. 

Could this be the case now too? 

Do we now have a solution to the problem of endemic corruption?

A forceful return to faith (sharia) and a complete revamp of the education system? 

Have you ever silently cheered for someone who challenged authority even if you did not approve of their actions. Did you ever wish that they succeeded and fought for a position once they did even if you were unwilling to engage as deeply as they did?

There are some aspects of this in the faith struggle that seems to accompany all major faiths especially those that have proselytization as part of their doctrine or that insist on some sort of hell fire message. 

In addition to this there are some references to what Zacharias calls man's responsibility versus God's sovereignty which in summary questions, tries to differentiate between those activities for which men must act and those for which God bears full responsibility. 

The result of this is the creation of two distinct groups of believers those who act and those who wait for God to act. Maybe some groups draw inspiration from the book of Genesis in which God places men at the heart of his garden and commands them to subdue and dominate the earth.