This July 4th weekend President Trump made it clear that he is leading the charge to fight against a “merciless campaign” to wipe out American history. This cultural war, on top of the coronavirus and crumbling economy, affects our ability to deliver fire and emergency medical services. Here are four factors that can help you navigate this challenge.

A culture war is a cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices. It commonly refers to hot-button topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values is seen. Our current situation is summed up this way:

You’re either a liberal snowflake controlled by big government or a greedy conservative willing to sacrifice Grandma for the economy. It took less than two months for Americans to get here.

Lerer, L. (2020 May 7) The New Culture War (On Politics With Lisa Lerer) The New York Times.

1 – Keep Your Job By Guarding Opinions And Observations

A stunning number of emergency service executives, managers, and supervisors are losing their jobs because of what they post on social media. David Brooks talks about the actions by Social Justice activists:

The Social Justice activists focus on the cultural levers of power. Their most talked about action is canceling people. Some person, usually mildly progressive, will say something politically “problematic” and his or her job will be terminated. In this way new boundaries are established for what has to be said and what cannot be said.

Brooks, D. (2020 June 25) America Is Facing 5 Epic Crises at Once. (Opinion) The New York Times

Emergency responders getting fired over inappropriate or troubling posts on social media is not new. Former volunteer firefighter/medic and radio/TV Reporter Dave Statter coined the term “Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome (SMACSS)” in 2012.

Here are two take-aways from Statter’s recent coverage:

There are no “private” social media sites. Eventually someone will provide access or send screenshots or print-outs to an outsider. An example of a SMACSS MCI occurred last year in Philadelphia where 13 police officers were fired and 56 received formal discipline for making racist or offensive Facebook posts.

You cannot separate your emergency service affiliation with your social media activity. In the past some folks have gotten in trouble for posting while on duty or using images that can identify them as an emergency responder. Recent activities imply that you are always linked to your emergency service affiliation. A Harris County, Texas, firefighter lost 3 firefighter/EMS jobs over a Facebook post on his personal account about hunting immigrants.

Attorney and retired Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Curt Varone provide an analysis of what the First Amendment rights mean for firefighters in Fire Law Blog: NC Facebook Post Results in Two Cybercasualties.

The impact of the current cultural conflict has resulted in more than 30 chiefs and company-level officers losing their jobs because of social media posts.

2 – Follow The Coronavirus Science

This one is difficult to accomplish because of two situations.

Politicization of Science

The politicization of science is the manipulation of science for political gain. It occurs when government, business, or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted.

An example of this is the research linking lung disease to cigarette smoking. The debate between opening up businesses before the COVID-19 infections are under control is another.

Yale Senior Research Scientist Anthony Leiserowitz discusses the “Liberate America” protests:

… we’re seeing some of the same actors that have been denying that climate change is a serious problem. … much of this resistance is driven by the political ideology of radical individualism. These people are deeply suspicious of climate change because it’s the ultimate collective action problem. We can’t solve climate change by our own virtuous individual behavior alone … And that’s the same worldview that’s driving these protesters, who are basically saying, “You’re infringing on my individual freedom by telling me to shelter at home.”

Dennehy, K. (2020 April 21) Will Politicization of COVID-19 Crisis Erode National Consensus On Response? Yale School of the Environment.

A Tsunami Of 23,000 Unvetted Scientific Articles

Scientific publishers made life-or-death research available as quickly as possible by dropping paywalls and encouraging researchers to post their submissions on pre-print servers, where anyone can access them before they undergo a peer-review process.

This means that an article submitted to Science was available in days instead of months. Posting initial research findings on pre-print servers allows researchers to quickly share preliminary work and may help the scientific community to collaborate more effectively and efficiently.

The Atlantic science writer Ed Yong describes how peer-review and scientific knowledge works:

It’s less the parade of decisive blockbuster discoveries that the press often portrays, and more a slow, erratic stumble toward ever less uncertainty. “Our understanding oscillates at first, but converges on an answer,” says Natalie Dean, a statistician at the University of Florida. “That’s the normal scientific process, but it looks jarring to people who aren’t used to it.”

With over 23,000 non-peer reviewed scientific papers about the disease flooding the scientific community (Brainard), factoids and tidbits are grasped as “the solution” by news media. This creates contradictory comments and erodes the public’s confidence in scientific information.

3 – Be A Trustworthy Information Source

For weeks “Left Behind USA” was on social media promoting a flag-burning event at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.

Dozens showed up, some heavily armed, to prevent the flag burning. There was no flag-burning event.

Officials at Facebook and Twitter shut down the Left Behind USA pages last week after The Post inquired about the accounts, saying the person behind them had manipulated the platform by creating multiple accounts with overlapping content in an effort to amplify their messaging. The officials declined to identify the other accounts.

Boburg, S. and Bennett, D. (2020 July 4) Militias flocked to Gettysburg to foil a supposed antifa flag burning, an apparent hoax created on social media. The Washington Post.

There is a constant drip-drip-drip of conspiracies, catastrophes and calamities that are right around the corner. Some of this is driven by the dozens of talking heads, “experts,” and writers filling-up a 24 hour, seven-day-a-week information beast. They are competing for “time spent watching” their items. More time on their items, more market share and ad revenue.

Others are purposefully creating chaos to meet a political or tactical need. Finally, some just want to have the equivalent excitement of pulling a fire alarm box in the South Bronx to watch the rigs respond.

SIFT Your Information

Mike Caulfield is a digital information literacy expert at Washington State University. His “four moves” SIFT methodology to information sources provide a valuable tool.

• Stop
• Investigate the Source
• Find Better Coverage
• Trace Claims, Quotes and Media to the Original Context

The infodemic.blog webpage will walk you through the procedures.

Why do we like conspiracies?

While some conspiracies are true – President Reagan selling weapons to Iran during an arms embargo and sending that cash to support rebels overthrowing the existing Nicaragua government – Graham Lawton looks at why we gravitate to conspiracy theories:

The human brain did not evolve to process complex information about global politics, economics or science. It evolved to survive on the African savannah where threats and hostile intentions were a daily reality.

Our brains have other cognitive biases that make us susceptible to conspiracy theories. One is proportionality bias, a belief that major events have major causes. Intentionality bias makes us assume that events are planned by somebody or something. Confirmation bias means we seek out evidence that supports our beliefs. And the illusion-of-understanding bias makes us overestimate our knowledge of how things work.

Lawton, G. (2020) Conspiracy theories: Belief in conspiracy theories is the product of normal human psychology, but can be extremely dangerous. New Scientist

Company commanders are trained to impose order on chaos over a wide variety of life-threatening, potentially catastrophic events with inadequate information during a dynamically changing environment. We have the experience, discipline and tools to be trustworthy sources of information to our crews and community. I recommend we start approaching these issues as we would a 55 gallon drum leaking a purple fluid and issuing a light haze.

4 – Be An Active Voter

The vote you cast in a local or national election has more power than a million words on social media or a $10,000 donation to a Political Action Committee. Generally, less than 2/3rds of eligible voters in a community are registered to vote. In the 2016 Presidential election, 58.4% of the registered voters cast a ballot. That mean each person that voted had the power of 2.5 voter-eligible citizens in that community.

The polarization of political discourse – with a widening gap between liberals and conservatives – has become personal and emotionally negative. A review of academic research by journalist Thomas Edsall highlighted the degree to which the political polarization has increasingly taken on an
emotionally negative tone:

“Hostility to the opposition party and its candidates has now reached a level where loathing motivates voters more than loyalty,” and “The building strength of partisan antipathy — ‘negative partisanship’ — has radically altered politics. Anger has become the primary tool for motivating voters.”

Anger and outrage motivates voters on the extremes and have left moderate voters politically homeless, with 40% of voters surveyed in a May 28-June 4 Gallop survey identifying as Independent, 31% as Democrat and 25% Republican.

That same anger fueled the social media posts that lead to the loss of jobs for dozens of our colleagues. Be the knowledgeable and trustworthy commander and participate in our purposefully messy and raucous election process to allow us to continue to serve our communities and country.

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Ayesh, R. (2020 July 4) Trump casts himself as chief defender of American history in divisive speech at Rushmore. Axios. https://www.axios.com/trump-casts-himself-as-chief-defender-of-american-history-rushmore-65d3d482-9eba-4b0c-9798-f99feeddef20.html

Liasson, M. (2020 June 20) As The Culture Wars Shift, President Trump Struggles To Adapt. National Public Radio https://www.npr.org/2020/06/20/881096897/as-the-culture-wars-shift-president-trump-struggles-to-adapt

Lerer, L. (2020 May 7) The New Culture War (On Politics With Lisa Lerer) The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/politics/liberal-conservative-coronavirus.html

Dennehy, K. (2020 April 21) Will Politicization of COVID-19 Crisis Erode National Consensus On Response? Yale School of the Environment. https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/will-politicization-of-covid19-crisis-erode-national-consensus-on-protecting-public-health/

Tingley, K. (2020 April 21) Coronavirus Is Forcing Medical Research to Speed Up. The New Your Times Magazine. Accessed April 24, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/magazine/coronavirus-scientific-journals-research.html 

Yong, Ed (2020 April 29) Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing: A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend. The Atlantic. Accessed April 29, 2020: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/  

Brainard, J. (2020 May 13) Scientists are drowning in COVID-19 papers. Can new tools keep them afloat? Science. doi:10.1126/science.abc7839 Accessed June 21, 2020 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/scientists-are-drowning-covid-19-papers-can-new-tools-keep-them-afloat

Boburg, S. and Bennett, D. (2020 July 4) Militias flocked to Gettysburg to foil a supposed antifa flag burning, an apparent hoax created on social media. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/hundreds-of-armed-men-went-to-gettysburg-to-defend-it-from-a-phantom-antifa-flag-burner-created-on-social-media/2020/07/04/206ee4da-bb05-11ea-86d5-3b9b3863273b_story.html

Brooks, D (2020 June 25) America Is Facing 5 Epic Crises at Once. (Opinion) The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/us-coronavirus-protests.html

Wise, Jenna (2020 July 5) Dozens, some armed, come to Gettysburg to guard against rumors of Antifa violence. Pennsylvania Real-Time News. https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/07/dozens-some-armed-come-to-gettysburg-to-guard-against-rumors-of-antifa-violence.html

Caulfield, M. (2020) Sifting Through The Pandemic: Information Hygiene for the Covid-19 infodemic. infodemic.blog https://infodemic.blog/

Lawton, G. (2020) Conspiracy theories: Belief in conspiracy theories is the product of normal human psychology, but can be extremely dangerous. New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/term/conspiracy-theories/#ixzz6RMShYuWK

Statter, D (2020) Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome. STATter911. https://www.statter911.com/tag/social-media-assisted-career-suicide-syndrome/

Palmer, (2019 July 18) Philadelphia Police Department to fire 13 officers over offensive Facebook posts. The Philadelphia Inquirer. https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-police-officer-firings-facebook-posts-database-20190718.html

Varone, C (2019 July 4) NC Facebook Post Results in Two Cybercasualties. Fire Law Blog. http://www.firelawblog.com/2019/07/04/nc-facebook-post-results-in-two-cybercasualties/

Woodwell, WH (2019 November) Voting Rights Under Fire. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York. https://production-carnegie.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/bc/46/bc469634-87fd-4233-bc93-d9a89bfc9c00/voting-rights-fin.pdf

Smith, H (2016 Nov 16) Turnout in the 2016 Presidential Election. FairVote. https://www.fairvote.org/turnout_in_the_2016_presidential_election

Newport, F (2019 December 5) The Impact of Increased Political Polarization. Gallup https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/268982/impact-increased-political-polarization.aspx

(2020) Party Affiliation (trend since 2004) Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

Featured image: Jedd Meddaugh, Dallas Morning News (2018 December 4) “Meet the new culture war (not the same as the old culture war): The anti-culture armies realized it was smarter to buy in to pop culture than to howl against its encroachment on everyday life.” https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/books/2016/12/05/meet-the-new-culture-war-not-the-same-as-the-old-culture-war/