A Site For Sore Eyes - and Minds

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

Both the Internet and the United States need a "GOP Mother Site" to balance news feeds, search engines, and social media too closely bound to the interests of the Other Side. 　

It's been a long time aborning, but various GOP media activists, who've been working in isolation from one another and getting nowhere fast, are finally making coordinated moves to establish a central Republican "Mother Site," which would provide a full spectrum of social media applications and also serve as a central linking point for All-Things-GOP.
　
We've been talking to a number of such media activists, several of whom have run little-visited sites or Groups within large social media universes, like Facebook or LinkedIn, for years.
　
While not everyone agrees on how to proceed or what to include, one thing we all can agree on, because it continues to be (in frustrating fashion) true: Republicans are still treated as second-class citizens on much of the Internet and at all the major social sites, despite our being the respected advocates for at least 1/2 of the American population and despite our overwhelming success in the election just past.

This is no longer acceptable, and worse - it is no longer necessary. There is no reason whatsoever we should not put aside our differences - philosophical, operational, or "turf"-oriented - and create a social media "Mother Site" for all Republicans or those interested in our Party, its agendas, its members, its prominent figures, and its candidates.

We have long believed that the designation Party of Yes is the best possible name for such a site. Others will be less enthusiastic, of course, so let us tell you why:

Party of Yes doesn't imply that all Republicans are supposed to agree on everything - or anything! In fact, we believe that in many ways, the opposite is true: that a healthy political Party - like a healthy culture, a healthy economy, and a healthy nation - depends on allowing and, indeed, relishing the widest possible Freedom of Action, Freedom of Speech, and Freedom of Thought.

Perhaps never in our nation's history has such a worldview - such a Human view - been more important, as adherents on the Other Side attempt to push their Thuggish and Elite theories of "political correctness" to such extremes, they threaten the eradication of virtually all our major institutions - academia, media, the Internet, and, perhaps, American Culture itself.

As a meme and a theme and words to live by, Party of Yes implies that Republicans are now the Guardians of Freedom itself. We welcome discussion. We welcome civil and courteous debate. We welcome all viewpoints and all voices, especially those which feel they have been stifled by Censors-for-the-Elite on some other sites. And we welcome to our Party those (now many) who feel it is finally time to take a stand against "political correctness" in all its deleterious and ultimately dangerous forms.

We had hoped the idea of a GOP social media "Mother Site" would catch on during the election year of 2016 and that it might attract widespread support and modest but necessary assistance and funding from the RNC, various State and local GOP entities, groups backing candidates, PACs, think tanks, media companies, and conservative and faith-oriented NGOs.

Alas, it was not to be! But we believe the extraordinary events since the election, and especially since the beginning of the new Administration, now make the establishment of such a site nearly imperative.

It is crystal clear that there is simply too much anti-GOP - and many would say, anti-American - bias in the news feed components of most major social media and even supposedly "hard" news sites.

While Republicans - and many Independents - want to continue to belong to and utilize many of these sites, some of which have excellent and perfectly neutral applications as part of their makeup, a large number of us would also like to have a site we can link to on our dashboards and favorites lists and go to first when we access the Internet.

We want a comprehensive site where news feeds are unbiased and unprejudiced; where we can choose to read stories from sources we trust and shun those we do not; and where we can catch up on current events on a real-time basis, without getting so angry at the slant, we throw rocks at our computer screens or hurl our tablets and smartphones at the nearest wall.

Content-wise, we would love to see regular political news from GOP adherents and activists in all 50 States and local venues, especially from those based in "flyover" country - which these days, just happens to be Republican country. And we want to give a much louder and stronger voice to those Americans - currently, again, overwhelmingly Republicans or GOP-leaning Independents - who have been denied a consistent voice, because the Thug-Elite considers them (or should we say, US!) 'Deplorables" or "Necessary Road Kill" on the path to a more and more Dystopian economy and culture.

Although it will take time to do so, with help, the "Mother Site" should also begin to develop its own Republican Search Engine, which can supplement existing search engines, whose proprietary algorithms - or something - seem to be preventing them from correctly classifying and ranking news and features and authors and topics important to GOP'ers with the same care and weight they give to those coming from the Other Side.

We'll try to anticipate the question you're burning to ask : Why do we need an independent GOP "Mother Site," instead of one sponsored by the Administration itself, the RNC, a leading PAC, a leading think tank, or a leading existing news site?

Let's return to our Party of Yes meme, theme, and worldview: That in light of the current state of this nation, Republicans are now the Guardians of Freedom itself. Almost by default, we have become the champions of completely open discussion, debate, courtesy, and healthy give-and-take, because the Other Side has barricaded itself behind of wall of "political correctness" and "litmus tests" so pernicious and downright scary, people of reason, compassion, faith, and human empathy are becoming more appalled at its Big Brother aspects day-by-day.

For this reason, we believe we need a social media site which maintains arms-length distances from both the current - and future - Republican Administration(s), as well as from the RNC, which, for different reasons, are wont to take hard - i.e. closed-from-debate - positions on agenda items, proposed legislation, GOP candidates, and State or local matters.

Leading GOP or GOP-leaning PACs very often have set agendas which are by nature exclusive in some way, rather than open and inclusive. Think tanks, while apt to welcome a wider range of thought and expression based on ongoing research, also generally have somewhat specific missions and agendas.

And the top GOP-leaning news sites, some of which are excellent, have as their main goal attracting attention from both readers or viewers - or from other news sites and search engines - which means that they naturally give far more emphasis to certain themes and stories than to other themes and stories, which they believe will attract only narrow or specialized audiences.

In addition, most of the major news sites allow advertising of one sort or another, often as their major means of financial support. By nature, advertising limits the extent to which a site or channel can be totally independent. This is, in fact, a very hot topic of discussion right now among "Official MSM" outlets large and small. Heavy censorship is rearing its ugly head at several sites, including sites with a strong social media presence.

The Republican "Mother Site" we propose will, of course, welcome all sorts of links to all of the above - and financial assistance and support from some of them, including the Administration, the RNC, and PACs, as well as from State and local branches of the Party.

But once again, our major goal is to become a one-stop social media site, similar to LinkedIn or Facebook, but specifically attractive to Internet readers, viewers, and general users who are Republicans or GOP-leaning.

Here are some applications the GOP "Mother Site" should include:

***** E-Mail: Users of the site should be able to exchange E-mails with one another and - significantly - with both officeholders and candidates nationwide; State and local Party officials; RNC officials; and principals of the various linked entities - from news sites to think tanks to PACs to individual blogs - which choose to link to the site.

***** A Publishing Application: The usage at LinkedIn, for one, has picked up considerably since their site began to allow users to publish articles and circulate them to both connections and the general public. We think a publishing application geared specifically to all Republicans, across the spectrums of research, thought, and opinion, should become popular quickly.

***** A Video Application: Similarly, we want to include a video editing and disseminating feature, along the lines of Google's YouTube.

***** A Real-Time News and Features Feed: Because our feed will be monitored and edited by fellow Republicans, it will naturally favor a GOP slant on the news and features which appeal to GOP viewers and readers. We will aim to be inclusive, however - but not prejudiced and biased, as are most of the "Official MSM" feeds, whose editors seem to favor the Other Side's viewpoints and agendas by a wide margin.

***** A Groups Facility: Because we want an "open" E-mail application to be part of the site - promoting inclusiveness - users of the GOP "Mother Site" will not have to connect or become "friends" with each other in order to participate fully. But we would like to have the option of individual users setting up and joining smaller groups for purposes of specific kinds of contacts and conversations.

***** A GOP "Commerce" Component: We will not allow the usual kind of advertising on the site, although PACs and other groups lobbying for specific "opinion" purposes should be able to do so on a fee-based basis - garnering wider support for a State or local ballot measure, for instance. But we'd like to have an on-site Store where everyone and anyone - including groups allied with the Administration or the RNC - will be able to sell creative, interesting, and fun merchandise with a GOP theme. Mugs, mousepads, hats, sweaters, cards and stationery - if it's fun, adorable, and Republican, it can be sold here.

***** A Republican Search Engine: As we mentioned above, everything that appears anywhere on the site should begin to be indexed and sorted from day one, leading to the establishment of a handy and useful GOP search engine over time.

Of course, among the main advantages - and attractions - of a GOP "Mother Site" is its ability to provide current and updated links to All-Things-Republican.

We hope every major GOP-oriented news outlet, large and small, will want to link to the site. So, we expect, will GOP bloggers and authors of books; sites narrowly focused on GOP issues; think tanks; PACs; university and college-based entities allied with the Party; faith-based groups allied with the Party; and purveyors of GOP-themed paraphernalia.

We also want both the Administration and its numerous units and the Party and its numerous units to link to the "Mother Site." We hope to provide links to key officials within Federal departments and agencies and State, county, and local branches of the GOP - as many as wish to participate.

We also want both elected officials at every level and candidates at every level to be able to utilize the site regularly, linking their speeches, articles, white papers, and news of legislation and initiatives they're sponsoring.

Assembling and maintaining all this wonderful material will require at least a small staff, which can grow as the site grows. All staff members should be Republicans and support the Party fully and enthusiastically - no disgruntled "holdovers" here!

Naturally, I would be delighted to administer the site and also serve as its Editorial Director, providing original material on a real-time basis. We are also in frequent discussions with other well-known GOP activists who are very interested in developing such a site and eager to participate as staff members or regular contributors.

Although all should maintain an arm's-length distance from the site to preserve its complete independence and integrity, initial funding needs to come from somewhere, and we hope that "somewhere" will include the Administration, the RNC, State Parties, PACs, think tanks, academic institutions, and the major news outlets who will link to the site.

We believe the initial budget can be exceptionally reasonable, since everyone who has expressed an interest in participating - including me - wants such a site to succeed, because we think it is desperately needed and can become an immense success over time. We need to be paid something for all the time we expect to put into the venture - but that something can be relatively little. We are patient and willing to grow with the site.

What might be very helpful is the RNC, State Parties, or PACs "lending us" some of their crack IT people to assist with the initial site set-up, although much can now be accomplished with off-the-shelf components. The most difficult parts of the site to set up efficiently may be the publishing and broadcast applications and the search engine component. We are certain we can use some help with those!

So how should we now proceed with the development of our proposed Republican "Mother Site?" As we mentioned, a group of leading and well-qualified GOP activists, most of whom already have Internet sites of their own, have been discussing the establishment of such a site for several months.

It may now be the time to hold a conference, possibly in Washington, where those already in the mix can directly discuss and start implementing the "Mother Site's" establishment with representatives from the Party, the Administration, leading PACs, think tanks, and news sites, and other interested possible participants.

We can introduce a budget, decide on initial staffing, and begin to elicit both funding and other sorts of assistance from everyone who can give it.

We are publishing versions of this initial description of the "Mother Site" both in the Party of Yes blog series at Google's Blogger and at LinkedIn, where we maintain a Party of Yes Group and where I have perhaps the strongest and most prestigious connections network of Republicans on the site.

Many of my connections are involved in broadcasting - radio, television, or podcasts. So I am hoping several of them will ask me to appear on their shows in the very near future, in order to discuss the "Mother Site" and the Party of Yes concept, as well as the Road Kill Nation theme, which I am developing as a possible book and documentary. (Read about it in the next story at the Party of Yes blog.)

With several appearances and the subsequent "buzz" we hope they will cause, the proposed "Mother Site" can be launched very quickly and efficiently, we fervently believe, particularly if some television networks and major news sites give us some air time and print - or cyber - inches.

We welcome feedback from those who read this piece and further suggestions about what you, as fellow Republicans, want and need from a comprehensive GOP "Mother Site."

Long live our Party of Yes!

　

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Moot/Not Moot: Political Stories at LinkedIn and Other Social Media Sites

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


New readers of the Party of Yes blog may be wondering why we haven't acted upon our promise to publish a follow-up story to How to Solve the "Politics Problem" At LinkedIn and Other Social Sites.


That story related how whenever an overtly political story ran at LinkedIn's Pulse - and many other social media sites - dozens of comments miraculously appeared in the comments-stream, arguing that "social media is not for politics, so ban political stories completely."


Of course, such comments were 20 times  - or perhaps 100 times - more likely to be attached to a story written by or favorable to Republicans than to a story written by or favorable to Democrats. But in terms of our thesis, that is neither here nor there.


As we said in our initial Politics at LinkedIn piece:


". . . . such debates are mostly faux, not only because so many comments-stream participants are Chatbots, rather than Humans, but also because there is now a very fine line between which kinds of articles are political and which (kinds of articles) are not."


That is the thesis we were going to develop in our follow-up piece - and which we will develop shortly.


As to why we haven't published the promised follow-up story yet: About a week after our initial Politics at LinkedIn story appeared, the site began to transform its basic format, creating a dashboard that, among other improvements, allows one to bypass Pulse completely.


You can still subscribe to Pulse and receive its "recommended" feed, which mostly consists of stories from those designated by Pulse editors as INfluencers, overexposed Celebrity contributors of one sort or another, whom many of us don't want to read about again in this lifetime - not one canned word of pabulum more!


But the momentous change in LinkedIn's format has made the debate - faux or not - about whether political stories are desirable or not desirable in LinkedIn's news feed pretty much moot. There no longer is a news feed, at least not a "recommended" feed that appears on users' Home Pages against our wills.


Anything but moot, however, is our original thesis: that there is an extremely fine line between what kinds of stories are political and which are not political.


You can insert extreme bias into any kind of news feed, according to which stories you allow into it and which you do not, who writes those stories, and which of the site's "audiences" you try to persuade - or bully - into reading them.


LinkedIn - as is their complete prerogative - has tried to transform itself into the Internet's premium site for well-qualifed job hunters and those who recruit them.


That's fine! But the old Pulse INfluencers-dominated feed, we believe, was working at cross-purposes to this goal, freezing out and often outright "dissing" a large proportion of the site's most avid participants.


The extreme political bias of those managing the former feed made stories and groups of stories seemingly non-political in their purpose ultra-political in their content and intent.


On the surface, the majority of "recommended" stories in the feed were seemingly about employment, recruitment, and career topics. But under the surface, in the view of most Republicans - who, as in the general U.S. population, make up about 1/2 of all American users of LinkedIn - these so-called job and career stories were often charged with political bias.  


Here are a few examples of what we mean:


***** Stories About Diversity: Many GOP'ers believe this was the number one biased group of stories in the "recommended" feed. The problem is one of (very bad) semantics, because close to 100 percent of such stories were not about real diversity at all. They blatantly advocated affirmative action, which is a concept almost every Republican detests.


Nearly all Americans, no matter what our political affiliation, support real diversity, which means that all groups of American citizens get the same opportunities and assistance and respect as all other groups of American citizens.


So-called affirmative action is the exact opposite. It seeks to give special privileges, special help, special preferences in hiring, college admission, and other competitive situations to groups of some American citizens versus groups of other American citizens.


Republicans believe this is an anti-Democracy agenda, against the core values on which this nation was established, especially our core concept of Meritocracy, which says Americans - and all people - should be rewarded and honored on the basis of their experience and hard work and education and applied intelligence and talent.


Affirmative action, when you take away the glossy "politically correct" wrappings that surround it, is anti-Meritocratic, seeking to give preferences and privileges to Americans based on highly divisive factors: their ethnicity, their gender, their age, or even whom they choose or do not choose to have sex with. This is anathema to most within the GOP.


***** Millennials at the Top of the Social Ladder: The "recommended" feed was obsessed with promoting Millennials, one particular generation, at the expense of every other generation.


An enormously large percentage of articles in the "recommended" feed touted Millennial entrepreneurs, educational and career paths for Millennials, "Millennial values" (whatever that means), and Millennial earnings capacity, which was "supposed to be" greater than the earnings capacity of previous generations.


This emphasis was, of course, not only disturbing, but downright obnoxious to site users of other generations. It was also - well, pretty silly! Over 43 percent of American citizens are now age 50 and over, as were a full 1/2 of all voters in the 2016 election (a statistic expected to grow, not decline, in the elections of 2020, 2024, and 2028).


***** A Dearth of Stories on "Gray" Americans Over Age 50: As Mature Americans age 50 and over become both a larger proportion of the total (legal) U.S. population and a growing majority of American voters, stories about this Other Half of the American populace have nearly disappeared - or been disappeared - on most Official MSM sites dominated by bias towards Democrats. Alas, that included Pulse's former "recommended" feed.


Again, this bias is rather silly and anything but productive for any MSM site or news feed involved in this type of camouflage. Essentially "dissing" over 2 in 5 current American citizens - a proportion which is about to grow, not shrink, over the next decade - seems quixotic as best or spiteful at worst. It accomplishes nothing except polarization, political and otherwise.


The situation got worse, not better, a few months before the old format was phased out, with the appointment of first, a Millennials Editor, charged with looking for stories about and for Millennials, followed by the extraordinary appointment of a High School Editor, seeking contributions from and about Americans in their teens. But No! there was no need seen for a special Editor representing anyone older than Millennials, at least 1/2 of all people who use social media, including LinkedIn.


***** The Rich Are Different From You and Me - Their Voices Get Heard (Whether or Not We Want to Hear Them): The old Pulse feed also went gung ho glorifying gazillionaires and gazillionaire wannabes, in the same way the Globalist Thug-Elite has tried to persuade us to do for decades.


Celebrity career advice stories used to abound - most of them, by  site managers' own admission, written by ghost editors, not by the Celebs themselves.


Yes, an occasional story of this sort is fun. But a steady diet of them is morally, ethically, and emotionally unhealthy, promoting the beliefs that first, the prime accomplishments that make someone important are wealth and fame and second, that following those exalted few deemed INfluencers is better for one's life and career than interacting with one's fellow site users - one's peers who are mere Humans.


***** Whose Gender Gap? Pulse's obsession with the Very Young, at the expense of everybody else, also led to a highly biased view of women in the workplace, who we are, and what we most need.


Again, it is a matter of Demographics. An even greater proportion of American women are now age 50 and over than the proportion of Mature Americans  when both genders are combined, a consequence of women still outliving men by several years. "Gray" American women - those who are over 50 - are fast approaching the 1-out-of-2 mark, in fact.


And Mature women, like all Mature Americans, have been pushed to the bottom of the economic barrel, despite the fact that we tend to be well-educated, highly skilled, and highly motivated, with decades of solid work experience behind us.


You'd never know this from the "recommended" Pulse stream, crowded with career articles relevant to very young women, such as stories on pregnancy and childbirth leave or recruitment stories geared to recent graduates.


Stories on the real "glass ceiling" - the one hitting everyone with gray hair smack on the head - have been completely absent. To add insult to injury, the very few stories about older workers, women and men alike, have - like the Globalist agenda itself - often focused on forcing us "Grays" out of the workforce as quickly as possible and into retirements we not only don't want, but can no longer afford.


***** Dishonesty Not the Best (Immigration) Policy: Even some within the GOP are still getting the immigration issue wrong, but those who lean Democrat are off on tangents so far afield, they may never find their way back to sanity.


At other periods in our history - and the history of the rest of the Developed World (plus China, whose Demographics are very similar to ours) - opening the floodgates to massive immigration from the less-Developed world was a good thing. And at some point in the future, it may be again.


But not now. Because at this moment in American (and World) history, immigration is an economic - and specifically an employment - issue.


The Globalist Thug-Elite, which is now closely aligned with the Democratic Party, have been gleefully - and many Republicans would say, maliciously - creating an Inverted Pyramid economy and culture, with the Very Young - including those masses of Very Young immigrants - replacing the Mature; the Less-Educated replacing the Highly-Educated; the Unskilled replacing the Skilled; the Inexperienced replacing the Experienced.


There are places in the World where such Inverted Pyramid economies have existed for long periods of time: Failed and other marginal States - Somalia, say, or the DRC. Such an economy and such a social structure is the opposite of what we need and want in the United States.


The "recommended" feeds at social media sites could be honest and talk about immigration in this way. But they have not been honest.


***** Higher Education is Being Shaken to Its Roots By a Dystopian "Politically Correct" Environment:" But you'd never know it from the biased news feeds and ChatBot-laden comment-streams at social media sites.


This is a key issue for the majority of Republicans and many Independents - and even for some sane Democrats.


We can barely believe how our Alma Maters, bastions of American ideals and scholarship, have been transformed seemingly overnight into places where Freedom of Thought and Freedom of Speech are no longer welcome; where professors and administrators talk - if not yet, thankfully, act - like anti-American traitors seeking to undermine our elected government; and where mobs of students exhibit what can only be called Fascistic behavior, seeking to ban and banish from campuses anything and anyone they decide they don't like.


The trashing of Higher Education is an "employment topic," if anything is! It brings into question how well-educated many current matriculants and recent graduates are and whether they are being deliberately robbed of their innate ability to think for themselves and evolve into reliable citizens, let alone employees.


The turmoil also puts added emphasis on how potentially disastrous are attempts to impose an Inverted Pyramid economy and social structure on the United States, with the broadly-educated and free-thinking Mature portion of our population kicked out of the workforce to "make room" for youngsters who no longer have academic tradition nor scholarly skills to anchor them.


Again, a general topic of extreme societal, as well as political value, is being swept under the rug and prohibited from appearing in "recommended" news feeds.


***** The World According to (Income) Gap: The vast majority of the Republican voter base - and many Independents who have recently voted Republican - view the more and more serious income gap in the United States, the rest of the Developed World, and our Demographic peer China, as a direct consequence of the Globalist agenda, as put into practice by the One Percenters.


The now catastrophic state of our so-called "good" economy has been camouflaged by an utterly flawed system of statistical releases of job and unemployment data, which ignores the glaring fact that we are living with the lowest labor participation rate since the Great Depression of the 1930s and a veritable army of long-term Unemployed and Underemployed, who now total at least 1 in 3 American citizens.


We've discussed this topic elsewhere, of course, and will continue to do so in many articles to come.


Within the scope of this story, the relevant point is that the Great Gap between a handful of obscenely wealthy individuals and all the rest of us Deplorables (in Hillary Clinton's words) or Roadkill (in Warren Buffett's) is, along with the related theme of the Demise of the Middle Class, the true Big Story of our current historical era.


But it, too, has had no place in Pulse and other "recommended" news feeds.


Could LinkedIn - in its former format - have been perfect in its coverage of topics and stories that would truly engage its American base of users? No, of course not. But it could have been much better - and fairer - and more balanced.


We who are avid LinkedIn users acknowledge its value and importance to us as a network builder; as a way of sharing information within our networks; as a preferred E-mail server for contacting those networks; as a job reference and recruitment site; and as an efficient system for forming and maintaining groups of like-minded individuals.


As a news source, though, many of us were both dissatisfied and disappointed by the former "forced" version of Pulse, its INfluencer system, and its "recommended" news feed.


This news feed could easily have become a positive source of respectful dialogue and debate among users of different cultural, philosophical, and political viewpoints.


With so many other Internet sites seemingly hell-bent on polarizing this nation and this World, spouting nonstop propaganda, rather than encouraging balanced coverage of important issues and public concerns . . . . . Well, with LinkedIn's truly broad U.S. user base, Pulse could have been made into a hero among American news sources.


Perhaps in some future version, it will be.



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