* <<GBE.1328>> Some post-election thoughts.
There is a major disconnect between rural and urban America. 
How do we bring them together? Could we *physically* bring them 
together? A comprehensive, super-fast national rail network, getting 
people in and out of the cities/towns, expanding by 50 or 100 miles 
the range of reasonable commute times? The Internet has shown us that 
facilitating the exchange of ideas isn't enough, because the lived 
reality of urban and rural populations is simply different, and so 
much of our thinking manifests itself as a response to our 
environment.

Social Media.
People post when they are emotionally engaged.
They post things that they would never say in the physical presence 
of other people.
Because there is no phyisical component, there is no danger, no real 
consequence to moral transgression.
To some extent, this is good -- it's good for working-out your ideas 
with others in a "safe" thought-space. But if there's no development 
of the mind, no real contemplation and intellectual engagement, this 
ends-up being socially and intellectually counterproductive. This 
gives us the "echo chamber" effect that people write so much about.
If we want people to behave online more like they do in real-life, we 
need to engage them physically. Call them. Video-chat with them. Put 
a face and a voice to your objections, make it *real*. 

Polls.
If the current trend continues, if people become increasingly less 
likely to provide honest data to polls, then it will become 
impossible for politicians to campaign for strategic victory. They 
must, instead, campaign for total victory, landslide victory. And 
this means courting *all* voters, not just partisans and "base" 
demographics. Maybe that's one good outcome that will motivate some 
new strategy in 2018 and beyond.

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Excerpted from:

PUBLIC NOTES (G) 
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©2016 Adam C. Moore (LÆMEUR) <adam@laemeur.com>