2022 is here. There will be many attempts to influence you this year. Just like last year and the year before. There are millions of dollars spent every year on advertising to sway the way you think, the products you buy, your belief system, the people you trust and the way of life in this country. In addition to paid advertising there will be influencers who will try to humiliate and demean you if you dare to think for yourself.
Examples of influencers include politicians, news commentators, actors, pollsters, billionaires, social media persuaders and street organizers.
Influencers
Influencers have been a part of your life from the time you were born. It will not be any different in 2022. What can be different is:
• Your awareness that influence is all around you
• Your critical thinking in making decisions for yourself
• Your response to attempts at influencing you
Your first influencers? For better or worse, your parents were your first influencers. Their responsibility was to teach you right from wrong. Your parents may have done this by being great role models. Congratulations. Or, they may have taught you how to be a good parent by parenting completely differently than they did!
Again, for better or worse, a second group of influencers were your peers. Your peers could be siblings or cousins, school-mates or the kids in the neighborhood. Your peers could support you and have your back in times of trouble. Or, the peer pressure and bullying could have been intense. The message being, “Fit in, or else…..” And no one wanted to find out what the “or else” was. See my blog: Surprising Influence That People Have on You
Your third group of influencers came from the media, including the books you read, the TV shows or movies you watched and the music you listened to. If you leaned toward watching rom-coms, you might have grown up believing your partner will ride into your life on a white stallion. If you leaned toward watching the Rocky movies, you may have grown up with the idea that hard work and perseverance will overcome any challenge.
As unbelievable as it seems, as you age, you actually become more susceptible to influencers. Why is that? Because you have been indoctrinated your whole life into accepting and believing what is being spoon fed to you by paid influencers.
An Example of Influence, The Legal System
Recently you have had a wonderful opportunity to see influence in action. All three of the following legal cases have been adjudicated, so it really isn’t necessary to get caught up in whether you agree or disagree with the outcome. The juries in each case heard the evidence presented and made their decisions.
While the presumption of innocence is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court has recognized the presumption of innocence as one of the basic requirements of a fair trial in this country (Cornell Law School – Presumption of Innocence).
The second an event occurs or someone is arrested, influencers from the president to actors portraying the president come out of the woodwork with their opinion as to that person’s guilt or innocence. It would be hard to find anyone in this country who was not familiar with some aspect of these high-profile legal cases:
• Kyle Rittenhouse, acquitted of murder (New York Times – What to Know About the Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse)
• Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking (NBC News – Ghislaine Maxwell convicted of federal sex trafficking charges for role in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses)
• Jussie Smollett, convicted of disorderly conduct, specifically giving a false report to police officers (AP News – Jussie Smollett guilty verdict latest in polarizing case)
Where does influence come into play? If you had the time and the inkling, you could have watched the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in its entirety. You could have picked up on the words, tone of voice and body language of the prosecutor, defense attorneys, judge or witnesses. Because the trial was televised, you were not reliant upon others to provide you with their interpretation of the events in the courtroom. If you watched the trial, you were influenced into your beliefs by your own eyes and ears. Good for you!
From a different perspective, in the Ghislaine Maxwell case or the Jussie Smollett case, your beliefs about the guilt or innocence of Maxwell or Smollett were based exclusively on influencers. The information you received about what went on during the trial was at best second or third hand. All of the information you received about what was presented in court was filtered by influencers. You will never know in its entirety what the jury heard in making their decisions because the trials were not televised.
However, this will not stop influencers from trying to sway your confidence in the jury system. Because of their positions within their community, people listen to influencers and base their opinion based on personalities not facts.
To be clear, juries have been making decisions and people have had faith in those decisions for decades. What has changed is the power of influencers who put information out to the public, making it sound like fact. The opinions of a few are not facts! Cases are then tried “in the court of public opinion”.
Think Piece
It would be easy to get fixated on the perceived merits of the presented three legal cases. But really, the results of the trials are not the important point of this blog. It is intended to be a think piece about how easy it is to be influenced by others, especially those politicians, news commentators, actors, billionaires, paid social media persuaders and street organizers who have an agenda and want to insert their views into you.
How susceptible will you be in 2022 to the barrage of vitriol by influencers? Or will you reserve judgement until you have enough facts to make up your own mind?
With warmest regards,
