I listen to quite a few podcasts. 131 shows to be exact. That’s a lot of podcasts. Some are more active than others. About 26 of them are music. The rest are made up of current events, stories (i.e. “The Moth”), and lots and lots of geek. There are about seven that focus primarily on technology and its impact.
I’m sure most of you have heard of “Silicon Valley”. It’s not a real place, as far as the postal service is concerned. It is, however a real place for the rest of us. It is located in the southern San Francisco Bay area of California and is where many technology companies hang their hats.
Most of the technology-related podcasts I listen to are based in the southern California area. That’s not surprising, since San Francisco is the hub of technology. The unfortunate side-effect to this is that the folks who do the podcasts report the impact of technology based on what is seen in California.
California, if you haven’t noticed, is NOT the entirety of the world - or just the United States for that matter.
Much of what I hear has little-to-no impact by the time it reaches my part of the country (Ohio). You think I’m kidding? I’ve yet to see anyone riding a Segway down the streets of Seven Hills…
This localized focus is not limited to just technology. If you ever watch cable news, or read “major” publications, you’d think that the entire country resides in either California or New York. The rest of the country, and the opinions expressed, are basically ignored - or worse, taken as the ramblings of the “uninformed masses”.
If you look up a map of election results from the 2016 Presidential election based on votes, you’ll see that the far ends of the country are blue (Democrat) and the middle is red (Republican). The majority of states are red - again, in the middle of the country - you know, NOT California or New York.
The majority of cable news networks and “major” publications are based in California and New York. This is why you hear so much vitriol over the current administration from them. If you don’t pay attention, you’d think that is the way the majority of the country thinks.
So, what can you do? Well, you could turn off your TVs, but that won’t help. You see, those folks think that their opinions are the only ones that matter and you need to think like they do. Just turning off your set won’t let them know that you disagree. You could write them and tell them. You could write their advertisers and tell them. But honestly, it won’t matter. As I said, for some reason, the folks in California and New York think that those of us in the middle are truly in the “flyover states” and can simply be ignored.
And that is what we need to do to them: ignore them.
According to an article in Wikipedia, Donald Trump received 62,984,828 votes. Hillary Clinton received 65,853,514 votes. That’s a difference of 2,868,686 votes. Hillary Clinton received almost six million more votes than Donald Trump in California and New York alone. So, you can see why the pundits in those states were ACTUALLY shedding tears after the election.
In 2016 there were about 200 million registered voters (I’m not even going to refer to the fact that there are over 300 million people in the United States). This means that 71,161,658 registered voters did NOT vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
So, the next time someone whines that we should get rid of the Electoral College, tell them that by popular vote, that big chair in Washington, DC should be vacant right now…
© Emittravel 2018
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