ZingerKing: Reader Responses to Recent Articles, Comments From The Gallery

ZingerKing

Words That Matter

Reader Responses to Recent Articles, Comments From The Gallery

Today's Zinger:

If you don't listen you are not communicating, you're broadcasting.

Comments from the Gallery:

In the past two weeks I have received many comments from readers. Today's article is a compilation of some responses from readers. The article about how the brain is politically biased and the article about observations at the "Tea Party" drew many responses. The one thing that I have noticed is how thoughtful the comments have been. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your thoughts and feelings. I hope you enjoy seeing what other readers are thinking.

I have been asked how often ZingerKing is published and where the name came from. ZingerKing is published three to four times a week depending on research requirements. Some articles require extensive research. I am working on three right now that have been in the works for several weeks. I do not want to publish filler articles, i.e. to meet a deadline. I am more concerned about the quality of the content. The best way to know the publishing schedule is to sign sign up for automated emails of the articles. Look for Subscribe in the sidebar just to the right of the article and add your email address. Your information will be held private.

Coming articles will extend the thinking on Brain Bias and look at the Obama administration as a case study in large scale change. We will look at how the administration is communicating and managing the change and how they are using power and influence in the process.

As always, I look forward to hearing from you. Your comments and suggestions shape the agenda and have helped me improve ZingerKing. You can email me at Roger@ZingerKing.com.

Now, here are some recent reader comments.

This comment on Brain Bias and the Tea Party:

After reading your posting on brain bias and political bias, I am left to wonder about your first point, i.e., the need for a balanced two-party system... Why must it be two? Why is there no room for a third party, perhaps more...?

And perhaps it's more than just the number of parties... both are prisoners of a system we've created that forces them to be supplicants to big money donors.

Repubs are making two big mistakes. You saw both at the tea party. They went too far in trying to woo Southern Dems since the 70s... Repub Party seems to be code for white-power party to many of its current constituents. Beyond the window-dressing as a values-based party, the driving value of the Repubs today is greed, not fiscal conservatism or any of its legacy values.

Their other mistake is they've put too much faith in the power of bullshit/spin... if you say it enough, it will be true. While it works on the campaign trail, it's no way to run a country or wage war. They've invested in cartoons as political leaders (Rush, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, O'Reilly...), building their following through entertainment and constant "us vs. them". Iraq was started and fought with this approach, "Mission Accomplished" being the most glaring testimony... if we say it loud enough and long enough, it will be true. Letting the clowns lead can only mean they've built a circus.

But as I said, I don't see this phenomenon as purely Repub... it's an extreme version of our political system, and Karl Rove led the charge to play the game harder and nastier than b4... Dems could just as easily produced him and an incurious President. Our society has shifted to a belief that if it's profitable, it must be better..and our society has shifted to superficiality over substance... look at the small number of folks who actually serve in the military, even at a time when our values and way of life is supposedly in danger.

I applaud your participation in the Tea Party and the postings. We need to get engaged in the process and serve. We need to live the legacy of those who came before us in order to sustain what they created.

Zinger's Response:
It was my oversight to imply only two parties. Certainly three or more parties would be helpful to give more choice, and competition, in the system. In the past I have written about the need for the traditional parties (Dems and Reps) to be stronger but I believe we could use a new party; we need an American Party. It appears the Democrats are focused on giving every group what they want, which is not necessarily doing the right thing for America and is one of the reasons for the massive debt. The Republicans are focused on the Democrats. We need someone focused on a future for America and the decisions that will lead to a strong country and not a strong political party. An American Party is a centrist party. Rather than thinking of a single political model I believe we should think of two models. A fiscal model and a social model. The majority of Americans lean towards fiscally conservative (right of center) and lean towards socially liberal (left of center).

We all need to focus on the common goals and stop getting hung up on the differences. Our government will never be able to please everyone. It seems they are more concerned about pleasing the extremes than pleasing the vast majority in the middle.

Concerning the "repeat it and they will believe" strategy, both parties have been fixated on this approach to winning the hearts (not the minds) of potential voters. Fox news has placed right wing "opinionators" in roles that are seen as newscasters when in fact they are no different than the opinion page in the newspaper. However, the mainstream media has an equal but more subtle bias in their reporting. It's just not so in your face but it sways opinion even more incestuously.

This General Comment about ZingerKing and the Political Parties:

Many of the political writers today are experts at writing, or "turning a phrase", but few really know what they are writing about. That makes me less inclined than ever to read editorials. However, I am enjoying reading yours.

As to the "core values" or basic platforms of our two political parties, I think the only true "core values" that most of them have are two that both parties share. That is the determination to get elected and to get re-elected.

Most of their rhetoric, sound bites, and lofty speeches about their beliefs in more government, less government, balanced budgets, conservative versus liberal concepts and such are just hot air that is meant to play to their audience in a way that motivates them to elect or re-elect the speaker.

In other words most of what they say does not necessarily translate into what they try to do unless it will help them stay in office.

There really is little accountability for our elected officials and few are willing to be up front about their own mistakes. Most blatantly try to blame others for bad results, even if they themselves were a party to causing those bad results. Most of them live by a different set of standards for decency, honesty, integrity and accountability than we do.

Nothing new in what I just said. Just venting, I guess.

When did you start ZingerKing, what inspired the name and how often do you update it?

Zinger's Response:
I started writing ZingerKing in March 2009. It has been one month. The reason for ZingerKing is I became disgusted with the media and their unfair representation of "facts". The bias of the media and the bias of the political parties was resulting in citizens being unfairly influenced at a time when dramatic social and political change is underway. ZingerKing is an outlet to provide facts and implications to people that really care about what is going on. Zinger will avoid the staunch supports of either political party and bring common sense and facts to the vast majority of citizens that are looking for American solutions. Zinger is starting community discussion groups and hopes to extend the debate to citizens in local communities. If you are interested in starting Zinger groups I will be glad to discuss and provide material for the process. Understand that bringing people together to discuss politically and emotionally charged concepts requires planning and a process. I will help you with this process.

The name ZingerKing came from the term Zinger which in today's culture means a short pithy comment that gets to the heart of an issue and challenges the basic assumptions of peoples beliefs. A Zinger should cause you to stop and think.

ZingerKing publishes three to four times a week. I would like to publish every day but each article takes anywhere from 4-6 hours to write and days of research is typically required. Some articles take weeks of research. I plan to write a book next year. As you can imagine, I am very busy and have enjoyed every minute of it.

I hope you will pass along www.ZingerKing.com.

This comment on the article about Brain Bias:

Great article and test today. We truly cannot be certain of what we see or what we see as fact.

I think that might be why we see things so differently. For someone looking at the circle without following the directions there is one reality. A person focusing exclusively on the center mark will see quite another. I don't know your politics but I suspect you are giving hints in your writing and that's why you're getting negative reactions. You focus on a Krugman blindness but never mention Hannity. You focus on individuals who don't pay taxes but don't mention corporations that don't. So even though you are trying to get a balanced duologue going, people see through(read an unintentional code) to an argument they've had before.

I agree that most people don't know what socialism is. Part of that results from news makers and politicians labeling every attempt to get health coverage as socialist. It goes beyond that now so that everything government might do to help is labeled socialist. I believe that health care is a necessity for a capitalist society. Without healthy workers you can't build wealth in any corner. We have chosen a model that bankrupts companies and individuals while still costing more than we get in value. We're spending the money now covering a portion of the population with more care than they need and leaving out a huge part of the nation. We pay for that omission one way or another.

I agree with you about education. People do not know their own world. But education as practiced now was always meant to produce adults who would fit into the workplace or the military. We don't teach children how to think--we teach them how to behave and that is costing us. I notice how many truly successful people were unable to follow the standard path. So I think we do need a new model for education.

I like what you're doing. I think we need more of this kind of dialog. It's difficult when we are focusing on the things that cause us to disagree. What do you hear from both sides that we agree on. Let's build on that while examining differences.

This comment on the article about Brain Bias:

I enjoy ZingerKing and especially this last entry. I offer the following as potentially a contribution to the dialog, to your thinking and research.

I discovered several years ago that I consider myself a Democrat through and through – my parents were democrats and except for a brief foray into some conservative thinking (Goldwater), I’ve always been a Democrat – and I cannot but think from a democratic and mostly liberal point of view. I immediately see everything political from that perspective and cannot fathom how a conservative can have the views he or she has. Of course, in recognizing my own entrapment (which is what I call it), I can see that it includes believing I am open to change, even though I am not, and also that the Republican point of view is just wrong. And even though I can see this, which implies standing outside of it, there is not much I can do about it. My mind is programmed.

This is how the mind works, and I can assert this with some certainty not because I have done scientific research, but because I have explored my own mind and it’s tendencies. How the mind works is something like this: it is primarily a recording machine and once it has recorded something it stays there until it is erased (a not-so-easy task that not many people know how to do or can pull off). Expressed in a more acceptable way, we reach conclusions, store them in our recording device called the mind, and then we look from the perspective of proving that it is right. So everything we see we interpret as proving that what we “already know” is the way it is.

Of course this whole perspective begs the question: if we are entering the information that the mind records, and thus this “we” (or “I”) is not the mind, and if some aspect of our being is not the mind, then what is it? Ramana Marhashi, an Indian sage, offers a question to all seekers to ask themselves until they know: “Who am I?”. Daring to tweak a sage’s wisdom, I like two questions better: “What am I?” and “Where am I?”.

To get back to the political dilemma, once I discovered that I was as much of an automaton as anybody else when it came to politics, I pretty much stepped out of the arena. That is, I don’t much talk about politics with anybody, unless I’m pretty sure we are going to agree, which is useless conversation since all parties to the discussion already know what they think and nothing’s going to come of the conversation. In other words, it’s an entertainment that I allow myself from time to time. Otherwise, when people bring up anything political, I just smile or nod and remain unengaged. This is helpful when one is a left-leaning Democrat and a consultant who works with senior executives in mostly relatively large companies (i.e., mostly conservatives). It also keeps me more peaceful than I would be if I got myself more involved – it never ever feels good to be in a discussion with someone that isn’t going to go anywhere, and especially one that feels like wrestling (“my opinion is better than yours”). Ever heard the expression “if you lay down you tennis racket your opponent will stop playing too”?

In America, we have the two-party system, and I don’t know if it started out this way but it has devolved into a very antagonistic one, with one party being “right” and the other “wrong”, depending on what side you are on. This opposition and antagonism seems to have gotten more extreme over the last few years, with some folks saying there are two countries. It’s a systemic problem that the mind loves, because the mind gets to do its thing, which is to be right and make others wrong. There may be people who can participate fully in this and remain free – untrapped – by the mind’s inclinations, but my guess is these are people who are able to stay above the fray even while engaging in it (being “in the world but not of the world”).

I had an email exchange with an old friend who I had’t seen or communicated with in probably 20 years. It started maybe a month before the November 2008 election. I guess I said something about Obama, and I guess I assumed he was a liberal Democrat just like me. Mistake. He jumped all over me with email after email of quotes from political pundits and articles from newspapers and accusations and jabs. I wrote him and told him I apologize, that I should not have said what I said in praise of Obama, and that I do not participate in political back-and-forths like this. I wrote that I love him and honor his friendship and I would not engage in an argument that neither of us was going to win and that would only have us end up not communicating for another 20 years. It took a couple of exchanges, and I’m sure he isn’t thrilled about it, but we still exchange emails occasionally and we don’t discuss politics. Every once in a while he’ll throw in something that I believe is an attempt to get me to react negatively, but I take it in stride and ignore it. The result is that we have at least a harmonious relationship, one that I enjoy and probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But for me, why would I have a relationship with someone that is argumentative and stimulates my mind’s desire to establish it’s rightness?

I had fun writing this and I hope you are getting it in the spirit it was given.

This comment on the Socialism Article:

I am sick and tired of the brain dead, knee-jerk, almost infantile reaction to the word "socialism." For lack of education you can start with the politicians, pundits, capitalists, and others who have never graduated from running around like chickens with their heads cut off at their irrational fear of the Red Menace and the ghost of Carl Marx.

Aren't we mature enough to have a serious conversation about healthcare instead of avoiding it by evoking the word "socialism" (quick everyone, duck and cover)? Aren't we mature enough to explore whether unbridled capitalism can actually be damaging to itself instead of avoiding that important conversation because the only alternative is "socialism" (quick everyone, our civilization is at stake, take to the barricades)?

This comment on the Political Bias Article:

Excellent article. Thanks for taking the time to share it. I’m passing on the link to numerous of my friends and family because it so well articulates why it’s difficult to have authentic dialogue about things we care deeply about. As you know, we in the former DiBianca-Berkman Group did a lot of work with our clients on the listening we bring to any situation. Your article nicely illustrates that our listening is never really open. Rather, we have to work to uncover our own biases to be able to hear what other people are really saying, especially if we get “triggered” by something that reminds us of a prior (real or imagined) bad outcome.