Tools for calibration & sense-making: a beginner’s guide to red objects
By: Return To Reason
Tags: Truth Telling, Sensemaking, Media Criticism, Propaganda, Politics

Hey all, hope you had a good weekend. I wanted to share something with you I’ve been mulling over for the last week or so, something I hope to help us calibrate as we move into the next act for wherever it is society is heading. This is something I will be doing an episode on in the near future, but I wanted to at least seed the idea with you for the moment, so that you can begin integrating it into your sense-making apparatus.

First, it’s important to clarify what I mean when I say “sense-making apparatus.” What I’m referring to is the way you sort information coming out of the legacy media, social media, etc. Basically, how you process and categorize “what’s going on right now.” We’re in a remarkably hazardous moment for processing and discerning reality, and it’s only going to get worse. It is imperative that those of us who remain able to critically think about things zealously guard our capacity to do so. With this goal in mind, I want to propose three different categories for us to sort current and upcoming headlines, events, and (fake) news cycles: red balloons, red flags, and red alerts.

(Author’s note: the following is written based on the assumption that the election results will not be overturned. Calibrate and digest accordingly.)

Red Balloons

The classic 1983 pop song, 99 Red Balloons by Nena is one of my favorite songs from the 80’s. Like Bruce Springsteen’s rock anthem Born in the USA, 99 Red Balloons is one of those upbeat songs that masks its true, more melancholy meaning to most casual listeners. It’s also the quintessential “Cold War” song (though I’m not sure how many of those there are to begin with).

The song’s story is told from the perspective of a young person who, along with her friends, buys a bag of balloons at a toy shop, inflating and releasing them into the air at daybreak. The balloons then appear on the radar of an unnamed country, triggering a military response that eventually escalates into World War 3. Nena eloquently captures the ensuing conflict, from the grim fact that war was actually desirable for some people at the time, to the bleak outcome at the story’s end: “It’s all over and I’m standing pretty, in this dust that was a city.” The whole song is absolutely perfect, and perhaps worth examining in detail at a later time. For now, I want to focus on what caused this situation in the first place. Not the balloons, but the eagerness many (“the war machine,” as Nena puts it) had to prove their heroism and worth which blinded them to reason, and caused them to recklessly jump to war and missile-slinging in the first place.

Our daily headlines are replete with red balloons: stories that are made to look gravely important at a glance, but really aren’t. The Leftist legacy media has spent the last four years catastrophizing over every red balloon coming from the Right that they’re now basically allergic to nuance, treating everything like it’s an imminent, existential threat. This is simply a scaled-up version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” except replacing “Wolf” with “Fascist.” On the other side of things, I’ve seen numerous montages of how Fox News covered President Obama, similarly catastrophizing over every little thing to come out of the Obama White House. This has to stop.

The reality of legitimately dangerous policy coming out of a Biden White House is precisely why we need to begin by having the self-awareness required to identify the red balloons. Here’s an example of something I’d consider a red balloon: any headline that pisses me off because of a generic reason connected to general media double-standards, or the fact that I don’t like being reminded that President Trump lost the election. Every time I get a news update on my phone that begins with “President-Elect Biden,” I get sick to my stomach. No joke, I got sick to my stomach from merely typing the previous sentence. It can be easy to confuse that feeling of general frustration with the current state of things, with anger or fear of a specific thing. These are not the same, and we have to discipline ourselves to know the difference.

We can’t afford to make the same mistakes the Leftist establishment media made over the past four years, by turning every little thing into a crisis. When everything is a crisis, nothing is. And as I said, there are legitimate concerns with what the next four years (at minimum) could bring. We will lose all credibility from the get-go if we sound the alarm on every red balloon we see. One heuristic you might use to establish whether or not something is a red balloon is to ask yourself what actually happened in the story. Did something actually happen, or is the feeling you’re experiencing based on the reminder that situation isn’t what you hoped for? If nothing actually happened in reality, it’s a red balloon.

Red Flags

Unlike red balloons, red flags are ideas or events of substance, that have not reached what you might call their “logical conclusion,” or yet have tangible consequences. Here’s a recent example of something I’d categorize as a red flag (bordering on the next red object). California recently voted on Prop 16, which proposed removing language from their state constitution that prohibits making policies which factor in race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. Essentially, it would overturn the standards of equal treatment under the law that were enshrined in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Obviously, this is horrifying. The implications of removing such language from your state constitution are as numerous as they are dangerous. However, there did not appear to be a significant amount of support for this legislation on a statewide level. As such, I see this as a red flag, because to even consider something like that a good idea is worrying. But the fact that it didn’t have any groundswell of support, and never actually passed, keeps it from advancing to the next tier of concern. Another example would be Joe Biden’s unwillingness on the campaign trail to say whether or not he would want to pack the Supreme Court. This is a huge red flag, but nothing has really come of it- yet.

As I see it, red flags are things that have clear implications and tangible consequences when allowed to grow and progress, but have not yet done anything of substance, done very little of substance, or don’t have a clearly accessible path to unmitigated growth. They’re something to keep an eye on. Like when your doctor says “keep an eye on that temperature, and let me know if it continues or gets worse,” red flags follow the same logic. They’re not to be ignored, but they shouldn’t consume too much of your time and attention, either. Check in on them from time to time, make sure you’re aware of their progress (or lack thereof), but don’t spend all your time catastrophizing something that hasn’t happened- yet.

Red Alerts

Red Alerts are what happens when a red flag levels up, and manifests into something tangible, measurable, or observable. If California had seen a huge groundswell of support for Prop 16 leading to its passing, that would be a red alert. If the Democrats manage to take the Senate, and Joe Biden were to even suggest that they should start drafting legislation to expand the Supreme Court, that would be a red alert. I understand that the second scenario here is still a “nothing has happened yet” situation, but when something with dire consequences is proposed and there is a clear, observable pathway forward for it, that’s a red alert. This situation requires your time and attention, and should be treated like an imminent threat to society. To clarify: I’m not advocating for violence or extremism. I’m simply saying that when a red alert arises, that’s where we need to divert our emotional and intellectual energy.

Consider abolitionists. When people realized the horrors of slavery, they directed their time and attention to 1) freeing slaves, and 2) abolishing slavery. That’s what I mean. When a red alert comes along, (and I do believe they will during a Joe Biden administration, as well as the media’s newfound power of literally generating reality), we need to pivot to addressing it head-on. This will look differently for different people. If you work at a government agency, and are being forced to take Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity training once President Trump’s EO banning it has been overturned, that’s a personal red flag for you. That is a place worthy of your attention, because those trainings will absolutely destroy your work environment if allowed to continue multiplying in legitimacy and in supporting bureaucracies.

A current red alert is the power and absurdly widespread acceptance of the legacy media as legitimate truth-tellers, rather than the Leftist Establishment’s propaganda arm. The legacy media is one of the current red alerts I am focusing on, because their power is measurable, tangible, and dangerous (see: the 2020 election). There are, and will be, a handful of red alerts to choose from. I suspect there always are and always will be in a large, prosperous society. When things are good, there are way more roads down than there are up.

Here would be an example of a news cycle containing all three red objects:

(I made these up on the spot, fyi)

-Vice President Kamala Harris promises ‘to address systemic racism in the United States’

-Green New Deal “could finally be a reality” says a confident AOC in Instagram Live video

-President Joe Biden in talks to re-enter Iran Nuclear Deal

-US “isn’t ruling out” moving the embassy in Israel back to Tel Aviv

-Bernie Sanders throws his hat in the ring for Labor Secretary

-Opinion: Yes, Donald Trump should face prosecution for his handling of Coronavirus

-Dem. Senator Mazie Hirono: “Enough is enough. We need to regulate Facebook.”

There is definitely room for interpretation here, and we might not all classify these the same way. For me, the only red alert here is Joe Biden actually engaging in talks to reenter the Iran nuclear deal. It’s foreign policy, which makes it trickier. However, this would likely unravel all the progress the Trump administration made with peace deals in the middle east. The red flags might be the story on VP Harris, AOC, or Mazie Hirono if there was legislation on the table accompanying it. Otherwise, it would just be politicians doing what politicians do, which is mostly spew bullcrap. The rest are red balloons. The Tel Aviv story has no source, and Bernie Sanders asking for a new job doesn’t mean anything; that’s been his schtick for the last six years.

But do you see the temptation to get all bent out of shape over any of those articles? Let’s assume there’s no legislation or supporting evidence of action accompanying any of the statements from AOC, VP Harris, or Senator Hirono. It would still be incredibly easy to get distracted with how bad it would be if the US passed the Green New Deal, or if the federal government (especially if run by Democrats) were to regulate Facebook, or if Kamala Harris were to impose her vision of “equity” on the US. I can already imagine the ways in which Conservative media would (understandably) engage in reactionary segments to any of those headlines. Doing so is their right, and their prerogative. However, I don’t see that as being the most productive use of our time and energy. As I said, we already have a few red alerts on the table. The legacy media realizing they can use disinformation to overthrow the sitting president is one such red alert. The effective institutional capture of many of our cities by Marxist Antifa and BLM mobs is a red alert, especially if you live in one of those cities. The institutional capture of higher education by the ideology that fuels Antifa and BLM is a red alert. The list goes on.

My point is, we have plenty of things to focus on. Reacting to headlines that don’t actually mean anything in reality will only serve to distract us from the dire threats already hammering on the gates of the West. Many were addressing those things prior to President Trump’s election, and many more have joined the fight since, myself included. These are the grassroots fights for the cultural zeitgeist that matter, and require our attention now, more than ever. And if we properly calibrate our sense-making apparatus, we’ll be able to ignore red balloons, and identify red flags when they arise, checking on them periodically to see if new red alerts come on the radar. But until then, we must resist the urge to be distracted by how pissed we are, or how much the new situation ups the ante on the issues I already mentioned. Division and distraction is one way they win. Discipline and focus, that’s how we win 🤙