Navigating Forward

Happy Friday,

This isn't political. It's about the need for a clear view so you can navigate what’s ahead smartly.

A Quick Reality Check Example: The media screams, “President Trump is deporting thousands! It’s unprecedented! Resist!!!!”

But the facts don't match the frenzy. President Obama’s administration carried out about 3.1 million formal deportations over eight years, to the sound of crickets. (Trump so far around 675k.) In 2015, Obama awarded his top ICE enforcer the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive, the nation’s highest honor for a senior federal leader. That man was Tom Homan, the very same Tom Homan driving the current efforts. (Data from DHS reports and Migration Policy Institute.)

Did millions of people just spontaneously develop moral outrage over deportations at exactly the same time?

The Media Sells Two Products
With stiff competition for eyeballs, communicating context, nuance, and truth isn't profitable. Persuasion and engagement are.

Persuasion: Individuals, organizations, and foreign governments pay media (and influencers) to shape public opinion, your opinion, and the process is proven and formulaic. They know most people prefer to judge rather than think. So for each narrative, the media chooses, edits, and frames what people see, tells them what they should feel, and ignores or discredits anything or anybody that challenges that paid-for narrative. Think COVID.

Engagement: Engagement sells commercials. Maximizing engagement is equally formulaic:

 ·  binary good-guy / bad-guy archetypes

·  permanent existential threat narratives

·  make people feel both victimized and morally superior at the same time

·  create new reasons to hate the same people over and over. Easy and efficient.

·  engineer content to produce physiological "how dare they" spikes every 45–90 seconds

Incentives drive outcomes. The media's incentive is to persuade and engage. They are not incentivized to give you a contextually accurate view of the world or the information you need to navigate your future. They would lose money. So they don't.

To Navigate Smartly, Go Where the Money Isn't: Your time is limited, and a lot is happening. Go straight to uncut, long-form content from primary sources who have real skin in the game, i.e., CEOs, founders, VCs, and the people leading the work. Listen fully, think critically, then make up your own mind. All secondary sources must first earn trust, but should still carry much less weight. Commentators, media, influencers, politicians, and hand-picked experts are conflicted, so should be ignored.

The need to understand and navigate smartly is critical now. Unfortunately, the sophistication employed to keep people in their information echo-chamber far exceeds most people's inclination to escape it. “I’m comfortable here. I feel validated. My views are constantly reinforced. My friends are here. I feel both victimized and morally superior. This is my tribe.” That, of course, is 100% by design...

Punchline: Every individual can choose to be under-informed and risk hobbling life and career if they wish. But if you have responsibility for the well-being of others, your team, your organization, or your stakeholders, then you owe them clear-eyed counsel and a body of decisions based on the most timely and relevant information, fundamental principles, and a contextually accurate view of reality.

As Forrest Gump would say, "That's all I have to say about that."

Have a great weekend,

Dave

Feedback and blowback are always welcome: dave@goodnewsfriday.com

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