Tag Archives: globalization

Propaganda hyperbole

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I remember visiting Dandong, China and going to a museum about the Korean war. Our tour guide translated the name of the museum for us: “The Museum to Commemorate the War Against American Aggression”. To the Chinese, the loss of that war meant the US having access to North Korea, dangerously close to Chinese land and major ports.

In broken English there were translated signs describing pictures of American prisoners of war holding up peace signs, with a description that even the Americans knew the war was wrong. This was an excellent display of blatant propaganda. But it also made me think about what I knew about that war, and I realized my view would have been filled with American propaganda.

Our perspectives truly vary depending on where we live, and the media and information we are privy to. With that, I have to say that the US propaganda machine is currently spewing hyperbole as if it should be taken seriously.

This is US Vice President JD Vance sharing the American Administration perspective on Greenland, “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.”

And here is a perspective from outside the US: On TikTok, or saved here.

I’ve been avoiding news more than consuming it recently, but I can predict what Fox News versus MSNBC would have said about JD Vance’s Greenland speech. I just wish both broadcasts would spend a bit less time on myopic hyperbole about how they see their political leadership, and maybe, just maybe share some perspectives from other parts of the world.

Our global economy does not benefit from the rest of the (free) world perceiving the US as weak, or threatening, or laughable. No one is buying the current messaging, no one is blindly accepting the propaganda, no country is going to be bullied into thinking the US should have sovereignty over them.

The US either has to drop the propagandized dogma, or align it with their allies. Their current messaging isn’t just off brand, and offensive, it’s laughably embarrassing.

8 billion people

The world has surpassed 8 billion people. 25 years ago it was less than 6 billion and overpopulation was a major concern for our planet. It isn’t so much anymore. Populations in many countries is decreasing with the average age of people being greater than the childbearing age. Older populations don’t have kids. People living in expensive urban cities, where more people live than ever before, have less kids.

The population of the earth is still going to grow from here, but the exponential growth we’ve seen is slowing down. This is a good thing because our earth couldn’t withstand continued growth like we saw in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.

The interesting thing to come with respect to population growth will be the uneven distribution of the population. How will this affect countries? Work forces? Urbanization? Immigration? It’s not the growing numbers that we will be worried about, it’s the geography of the population that will be the population concern of the future.

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Note: Going from 6 billion to 8 billion in 25 years is a 33% jump in population… I didn’t mention that above, but it’s worth noting because if that pattern continued we’d be over 10.6 billion in another 25 years, and then just the numbers alone would have been the greatest concern.

The human family

Humans are divided into different clans and tribes, and belong to countries and towns. But I find myself a stranger to all communities and belong to no settlement. The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe. ~Kahlil Gibran

I shared this quote on Facebook 4 years ago today. It seemed timely with world events. I also shared a graphic I created to try to help two deeply divided groups see less of a divide between them. The image was grossly misunderstood and I ended up taking it off Facebook. The irony isn’t lost on me. I tried to show less divisiveness and I accidentally created something that exposed the differences and widened the gap that I was trying to reduce.

Think for a moment about how borders divide us; how cultures divide us; how religions divide us; how politics divides us. Yet diversity makes us stronger; it teaches us to be tolerant; it enriches our experience.

What if we invested time and energy into the idea that, ‘the human family is my tribe’?