Roughly a third of Americans believe that the election was stolen from former president Donald Trump in 2020. On whatever side of this debate you fall, the conversation is a scary one. People are actively afraid of political violence breaking out again and either 2022 elections in 2024 with the next presidential election.
This sort of fear is amplified through social media, spread all across the Internet, talked about by the mainstream media on — both sides, whether you watch Fox News or MSNBC — and a lot of people on both right and left, are preparing for situations in which their “opponents” might create political violence that they’d have to respond to.
I was inspired to create a podcast about this issue as a final project for a university-level philosophical ethics class. Specifically, I’m drawing inspiration from conservative political philosopher Sam Harris’ podcast about the exact same issue. I’ll provide a link to Sam Harris’ podcast, which includes one of my favorite authors, Anne Applebaum, in the transcript for this project. My friend Tenzin and I are not right-of-center academics, historians, or journalists. We’re both 22 years old. We’ve only got the mildest qualifications to talk about this subject in a public forum. Tenzin is earning a dual degree in Philosophy and Computer Science, and I'm completing a Bachelors in International Studies. I also interned for the mainstream media, namely MSNBC, during the Presidential Election in 2020. We both tend to the left on political issues, but we wanted this podcast to be an exploration of ethical communication in a divided country — where anybody could theoretically approach our conversation, and feel like they are being actively engaged with and respected, regardless of whatever perspective they’re coming to this issue with.
“I think it’s really funny that the alternate realities of Fox News and MSNBC are literally skyscrapers across the street from each other in Manhattan.”
- Gabe Samandi
Now you may be wondering, with 30% of people believing one thing, and 70% of people believing another, how can we find common ground when those two truths seem to be diametrically opposed to each other.
And that’s especially true for all the listeners out there how might feel like college or the mainstream media are a scam, that they’re filled with lies or they have a liberal bias; this is my shoutout to y’all — as a low-income Texan who’s spent a lot of time in these spaces here in New York City. I hope you can genuinely connect with the testimony of my experience and be your own judge of how these systems work.
This conversation is completely unscripted, save for this introduction.
