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Former Google Design Ethicist Analyzes Russia’s Campaign to Infiltrate Your Mind

November 01, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter have been testifying on Capitol Hill this week about their role in Russia’s campaign to infiltrate social media, spread division and try to influence the 2016 election.

Former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris joined Glenn on today’s show to talk about Russia’s scary, smart campaign to shape Americans’ ideas and turn us against each other.

“The question really that Americans need to be asking them is what is their role in enabling … Russian propaganda,” he said of the tech executives. “It ultimately affected 126 million Americans.”

He explained how Russians figured out how to make “a bunch of deliberately polarizing content” by using a diverse range of issues to create social media posts and Facebook groups that were pro-veteran, pro-immigrant, pro-police and pro-Black Lives Matter.

“They did it because they want it so we can’t talk to each other, and they were able to do that with Facebook,” Harris said.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Tristan Harris, the founder of Time Well Spent. He is a magician when he was a kid, and a Google design ethicist. He has a great blog on -- on Medium: How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind.

He says, I'm an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. It's why I spent the last three years as a design ethicist at Google, caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people's minds from getting hijacked.

We use technology. And we focus optimistically in all the things it does. But I want to show you that it can also do the exact opposite. It can hijack and exploit your mind's weakness.

He's here to talk to us a little bit about the way the Russians did that and what's happening on Capitol Hill today. Tristan, welcome to the program. How are you?

TRISTAN: I'm great. Thank you, Glenn, for having me back.

GLENN: You bet.

Great conversation last time. Let's continue it. Let's start Facebook, Google, Twitter testifying on Capitol Hill today. And this makes me really nervous, for some reason. And I'm not sure exactly why.

(chuckling)

TRISTAN: Well, yeah. You know, they're testifying on Capitol Hill. And the question really Americans need to be asking them is, what is their role in enabling -- essentially, what's been discovered to be just totalizing Russian propaganda? It went from them first saying that it was about $100,000 in ads, which is a very small amount of ads. Not a big deal, right? But, really, that hid the bigger picture, which is that there were 470 Facebook groups that they created, and pages, that basically shared content that was shared organically, meaning just by all of us, by Americans, without even knowing it. And it ultimately affected 126 million Americans, which is 90 percent of the -- of the US voter base that voted in the last election.

So, you know, I think the real question we have to ask is: Given that the business model of these platforms is spreading engaging information, and the Russians figured out basically how to manufacture deliberately polarizing content -- I mean, they created groups around veterans rights, around immigration. They created pro-police groups, pro-Black Lives Matters groups. They created groups on both sides. And they did it because they wanted -- so we can't talk to each other. And they were able to do that with -- with Facebook.

GLENN: So, Tristan, this is something that we've been warning about since before Donald Trump came down that escalator and said he was going to be president. We had been warning for years that the Russians are deliberately trying to infiltrate and control the conversation and split us apart as a nation.

TRISTAN: Right.

GLENN: Nobody really wanted to pay attention. Everybody denied it. And I think still there's a lot of people who will listen to what he just said and say, "Oh, yeah, big deal, so it was -- no, it really was a big deal.

TRISTAN: Yeah.

GLENN: However, how do we -- how do we -- how do we want Google and Facebook to start controlling or deciding who gets to speak and who doesn't?

TRISTAN: Yeah. Well, this is an incredibly difficult area. Because essentially what we've created is systems that have exponential impact, right? There are apparently, as of yesterday, we found out in a judiciary committee, there's five million advertisers on Facebook. So if some of them are -- say China or North Korea. Or, you know, Russia. How would we know? You can't vet 5 million advertisers. Right?

So we had this problem where essentially by creating exponential impact that has the ability to take one advertiser and send the message to ten people in a very specific Zip Recruiter. And there's no way given all those different ad buys, happening literally 100 million times a second. When you load a page on Facebook, you know, in that snap of your fingers, there's this instant auction, and millions of people are competing for your attention. And Facebook can't look with human beings at every single one and say, is that Russia? Is that North Korea?

So we have this real problem on our hands, where we basically created this kind of runaway artificial intelligent system, except instead of the terminator, it's basically saying -- given this goal of, what can I show this human being that will capture their attention?

And it works really, really well. But it's not aligned with our democracy. Because what's good for capturing just your attention, basically is not the same as what's good at capturing everyone else's attention. So it takes society, like a paper shredder, through -- you know, it takes whole societies of input and spits out this sort of shredded society that only listens to its own information as an output.

So what we really need to do is change the structure of Facebook, in terms of who is paying. Because if we're the product, which we are. Our eyeballs are sold to advertisers. Which means that their business model is basically to keep us addicted, so that we -- they can keep selling our eyeballs to advertisers. You know, with that arrangement, we're kind of screwed, unless we change who is paying who.

You know, one option is to have people pay Facebook. But we're not going to be very happy about that. Because we've been getting it for free. And another option is have governments pay Facebook. But that's not -- that doesn't feel right either.

The challenge is, we find ourselves indebted into a situation where, you know, we don't like the current situation. We don't want to regulate free speech. But we also don't like the status quo. Because we honestly -- Glenn, I really believe we can't survive when the business model is basically catering to an individual's attention -- the most difficult thing for society is we have to be able to talk to each other and basically have open minds and say, "Well, what do you believe, and what do I believe?" And Facebook basically shreds that process, because we can't -- we don't even listen to the same information anymore.

GLENN: I'm also concerned that, you know, the government has pretty much stayed out of Silicon Valley for a long time, mainly because they're a bunch of dolts that don't even understand technology. I mean, I've talked to people in Washington, and their eyes glaze over, the minute you start talking about anything, I mean, at my level. And they just don't understand it. And you're like, "Oh, dear God, we're in trouble." But, you know, now they're starting to pay attention because it affects them. They see the power of -- of how it can affect people. And once the government gets involved, they will make sure that it helps them.

I mean, they have different goals. So what could -- what could Google or Facebook suggest, that would be good for the republic?

TRISTAN: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, we have this challenge, right? We have thousands of people that go to work today at Facebook. And whatever their choices are, they basically are designing the information flows that affect 2 billion people. There's 2 billion people who use Facebook. As we said last time, that's more of the number of followers of Christianity, 1.3 billion of which use it every day. And so when they're designing the information flows, it's by design. It's going to influence all of those people's thoughts, right? Because they set up, basically whether or not the top of your news feed is your high school friend or it's the baby photos or it's Donald Trump every day. Right?

And so, yeah. I mean, we have to have an honest conversation about a few things. One is, for example, bots.

What people don't realize is that up to 15 percent in the academic literature, they say on Twitter, are bots. Fifteen percent of its users are bots.

GLENN: Explain that for people who don't know what bots are.

TRISTAN: Yeah. Bots are basically things that when you click on a page on Twitter -- you know, you see Glenn Beck or whatever, and it looks like it's you. It's got your photo. But you click on someone else, and it looks they're, I don't know, an Asian-American living in Kansas or something like that. And they're actually not. It's just a fake photo. And it's a fake profile. And the profile is run by a computer, which is called a bot. And the thing is that 15 percent of Facebook -- or, excuse me of Twitter's claimed users are actually bots.

Now, the problem is there's this ability to create manufactured consensus. So when you see, you know, someone tweet something, whether it's the president or it's someone else, you can have hundreds of thousands of people like it that are not people, but they're actually bots. So you can manufacture the sense that these certain messages are popular. You can also make conspiracies become trending. And if you make it trend, you make it true. So the reason I'm bringing this up is, one thing we can do is we make it -- we should have total disclosure for bots. So just think of it like a Blade Runner law. I mean, if you've seen Blade Runner which is out right now, it's all about, how do we know that someone is a human or a bot, or a cyborg?

And what you want is when you're on Twitter, having everything that is a bot to be labeled as such. I mean, why should our discourse be poisoned by essentially bots, especially when in this case, many of them were actually run by Russia? And Twitter has been crawling with bots. And the reason they don't shut them down is their current stock price is dependent on telling Wall Street, hey, this is how many users we have. So they can't shut down all of these other bots because then their user accounts drop, right?

GLENN: Holy cow.

TRISTAN: So that's why we have to have a conversation about why these companies won't really regulate themselves -- self-police themselves.

Now, I'm not a fan of regulation. I just want to make that really clear. I'm not trying to --

GLENN: Neither am I.

TRISTAN: I'm with you.

But the problem is, the status quo is also really not survivable. We need to be able to find some way that these companies have to do more. And given the fact that Facebook dug its heels in the ground for the last, you know, six months -- and, you know, why are we only finding out the day before the hearings today, that 90 percent of Americans were affected by Russian propaganda?

Now, you may not believe that. But that's literally the truth from the mouth of Facebook. And they've got all the data.

GLENN: So, Tristan, I want to go back on one thing you just said. You said, "This is not survival."

TRISTAN: Yeah.

GLENN: That's not hyperbole coming from you. Can you explain?

TRISTAN: No.

Well, you know, I think like you, I believe in free speech, and I believe in our need to be able to talk to each other and ask, "What is important for our society? And where do we want to go?" I mean, if you have kids, you want to ask, like, what do I want the world my kids are going to live in to be? Now, if we can't talk to each other, we can't make those decisions together.

And the problem with Facebook is that its business model is dividing societies, not deliberately, but because it's more profitability to capture your attention by showing things that just cater to your individual mind, right? Just your specific mind. By default, it means that every person is only looking at a feed that's related to their world.

So it's shredding society into these echo chambers where we only see our own beliefs. And I think the danger of that is that if we can't talk to each other, then there's violence. And I don't want to go there. But the point is, we need Facebook and these other companies to be basically -- instead of designing to shred our attention and capture it individually, to be designing for the most empowering, and enhanced public square we've ever built. Because it is the new public square. It's not just a product we used, given the scale of people who use these products. It is the public square.

Now, the question is, who is going to pay for that? And also, who is to say what the public square is? You know, do you want these young California guys at Facebook designing the public square for 2 billion people?

So it really brings in huge questions about governance, and how do you have what somebody -- these companies are private superpowers. They don't have militaries. But they have more influence, certainly on people's daily thoughts, than any government in history, that I know of.

GLENN: They also, at least Apple owns more treasuries than most countries do. So they -- they have more T-bills that they could dump if they wanted to get nasty as well. I mean, they're amassing enormous amounts of power.

Tristan -- go ahead.

TRISTAN: No, no. Go ahead.

GLENN: I just want to thank you for being on with us. And hope we can continue our conversation. It's extremely what you're talking about and what you're doing. Thank you so much. Tristan Harris.

TRISTAN: Absolutely.

GLENN: Founder of Time Well Spent.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.