Equal Treatment – Religion and Politics

Kurt's Religion and Politics

All one has to do to see how one person or group has treated another individual or set of folks, is—where it’s possible—to look back in time.

This is, of course, as true for any other entity.

Being able to do that, makes it feasible to compare the way one is treated, to another.

Obviously, there are cases where it’s not quite impossible to obtain information that would help you to understand how the two were dealt with.

In other situations, it’s not all that hard a thing to do.

Being fair, even in those circumstances where it appears that two people or groups thereof have been handled differently, there’s always a possibility there are facts pertinent to the variance, that can’t be easily or readily seen.

That said though, there definitely seem to be times when it’s been the intent of one individual or group, to treat members of another, differently than they would a third with no apparent excuse for so doing.

It’s been seen as how government behaves, and frankly, in how the tech industry in ownership or at least in charge of, various media outlets, are concerned.

Like it or not, there’s a significant body of data indicating the U. S. Internal Revenue Service—generally referred to as the IRS—took aim at conservative groups while our last president was in office.

There were a variety of outcomes, probably one of the more serious being to “deny through inaction,” the claim of various entities being not-for-profit in nature.

As I’ve indicated, one can also make such claims, surrounding the treatment of conservatives, by the news and social media.

Any time a well known person supporting a somewhat right-leaning position says much of anything, both the news folks and social media people, are quick to pile on.

Considering I’m a strong advocate of open discussion of just about everything—particularly in the political realm—you would think I would have no issue with this. The problem? Well actually, there’s more than one.

To begin with, when such a thing occurs, the chances are as good as not, the conservative person in question runs the risk of at least a temporary ban. If they’re seen to be a “repeat offender,” the chances such a thing will become permanent, are the much greater.

This is a real issue, considering the folks upon whose platforms the statements or assertions are made, are supposed to be neutral, and not content providers.

In fact, they’re literally protected by law, based on that idea.

The dodge, is the claim that the person has somehow failed to maintain community standards.

This is true even though folks of a more left-leaning viewpoint are regularly given a pass. Sometimes, the news or social media folks will continue to support their claims, even when they’ve been largely shown to be entirely false.

The other issue that immediately comes to mind, is that there’s often no reasonable mechanism for redress.

To begin with, most of the time, the folks having the hammer dropped on them, have very little even private means to appeal the decision other than taking the entity dispossessing them to court—a lengthy and expensive proposition, to say the least.

On top of that, the folks who run the outlets, will say things that can often be easily disproven, if the person being disparaged, has the ability to speak on that outlet. Of course, as a rule, they don’t.

The obvious outcome, is that the platforms in question, end up being the last word, even though the person taking particular positions, could easily make their viewpoint clearly and readily seen to be valid, by folks looking on.

Since they don’t have that ability, they’ll always come off looking like the bad guy.

I’m aware of situations in which a conservative quotes verbatim, the statement or comment of someone, only to be informed, what they’ve done has been “fact-checked” and found to be in error, with no other explanation.

I want to be the first to say that I have no desire to get government involved in such things past a certain point. I’d like for them to have as little input in such a process, as possible.

This is why I support alternative platforms. This presents its own unique challenges though.

One of these is the idea, that other existing platforms, are able to limit the ability of those with whom they disagree on an ideological basis, to compete.

For example, if you create an application for the two most popular phone operating systems—I doubt anybody would have a hard time naming either—in order to disseminate that application, it needs to be allowed on the app, store for that platform.

Here’s where things get interesting. If the company that owns a given operating system has a slant in one direction or another from a political perspective, they can find ways to disallow that app to be included there.

As a former member of the U. S. Air Force, I learned a valuable lesson early in my military life. If someone wishes to find things that will cause you to be in hot water, they almost invariably can do so without even having to resort to imagination.

As a basic trainee, I was “recycled” out of my first training flight, because I got on the wrong side of a flight leader (another trainee). This in turn, made it so my information got passed up to a training instructor.

When he was unable to argue that my actions towards the flight leader were incorrect, he just scheduled an inspection of my locker, which was nigh unto perfect. Nonetheless, he found one thing wrong. In that environment, that was sufficient for him to push me back.

The point is, there are times when folks do things in ways that make it so they intentionally act with a bias, based on their beliefs. This is now happening on a large scale, where conservatives are concerned. How do we fix that? I don’t have an answer. Nonetheless, something(s) must be done. You can agree or not. That’s my two cents. You’re allowed to disagree with me on just about anything, but knocking my legs out from under me because you do, is more than a little unreasonable.

Thanks for reading, and may your time be good.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Prove you're human *