Starve the Fire: The Invisible Challenge

Perhaps like many Americans, since the election IG wakes up every morning with a deep sense of dread. Everyday we are assaulted with actions that challenge our very sense of who we are and what we stand for. The news is alarming, the disregard and ignorance of the principles that our democracy was built upon are disregarded as irrelevant, and self-interest and self-aggrandizement have taken center-stage. IG has also thought deeply about how a resistance movement can be successful. Don't we need to stand "for" something more than what we are "against"?

With this week's incomprehensible press conference by Trump, IG started to imagine what might happen if Trump, Spicer, Conway, Miller, and all of the members of the Trump administration that are empowered with spinning, lying, and misinforming the "evil media" were faced with a media boycott?

For the record, IG is a big advocate of a free press and its role in the balance of power. She is not suggesting the media not cover and investigate the actions of our executive, judicial, and congressional branches in search for the truth, but she is imagining what would happen if the press followed its own rules and stopped putting sources that have been proven to be irreliable and not credible in a position of power. The best way to put out a fire is to starve it -- deprive it of oxygen. And for this administration, when the media take the bait they fuel a raging fire of alternative facts and deflection. Can't anyone other than IG hear this administration yell "Squirrel!" and watch dumbfoundedly as a nation turns its head, missing the real story? And there are disturbing and essential real stories just waiting to be told, and plenty of well-positioned people on the inside that have proven willing to assist the media's imperative to keep our government accountable, our press free, and our citizenry informed. An unfettered and free press is the inivisible voice of the democracy.

IG is just one person. But she knows the power of being invisible, the advantage of being in the right place at the right time, and how invisibility can be an effective weapon in restoring critical thinking and focused reasoning. IG asks that you consider and share this challenge to #StarvetheFire with anyone in the media and any citizen who is committed to fighting the current administration's attack on our democracy.

For the press, we need you to reboot with collaborative and collective resolve. Forget about breaking the story first, our democracy is more important than achieving the competitive advantage. What if you, the press, walked out or refused to attend a Trump press conference or briefing? View it online, send a message without being physically present, focus on credible sources. In today's world, aren't sources and verification as prevalent out of the briefing room as in? Are we really getting substantive answers to real questions posed in real time? The responses to date have been great fodder for our satirical comedians, but have proven to be the oxygen the Trump wildfire requires to drive its destructive and undemocratic agenda. Continue to focus on the stories and coverage that Americans need to hear and protect us from our newly found salacious interest in sensational, yet untruthful content. Protect us from news as entertainment, because that is the spark that fuels this incidious fire. Start calling a lie a lie and stop using the term "alternative" as an adjective.

For citizens, pick a cause or causes you are "for" and become active. Write the media you respect and tell them the type of coverage that helps you as a citizen to be informed and the type of coverage that does not. IG thinks we should be reaching out to those that are not "like us" and finding common ground. Our democracy depends on all of us to create "a more perfect union." Get involved and resist the temptation for fueling the fire with the latest sensational tidbit manufactured by this administration. Share the "why" of what you believe in and ask your fellow colleagues, friends, and family what they will do to stand up for what they believe in. IG believes that perspective is our invisible advantage. She recommends reading books like The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America that shine a light on our history. The transition from the Teddy Roosevelt administration to Taft's, provide both lessons learned and evidence that our confederation can survive incompetency, greed, and self-interest.

IG likes to think that the same tactics that are proven to contain and quell a forest fire are applicable here, such as depriving the flame from oxygen, fighting fire with fire, and having skilled and brave fire fighters. She also hopes that once the fire is quelled, the same post-forest fire benefits will accrue to this Trump-scarred landscape. Benefits such as a more diverse ecosystem, a more open canopy that provides more light enabling greater synthesis and growth, and most importantly a biosystem that is more resilient in the future. IG hopes that the destruction may be contained and controlled and that we all become the heroic fire fighters that our ancestors envisioned when they established the United States of America. #StarvetheFire

#Trumpadministration #media #fire #superheroes