Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts senate seat is filled by conservative Republican Scott Brown so “Americans are sending a message.”  In a word, No.

Obama was elected after President Bush & Congress bankrupted the country with an unnecessary war, corporate welfare (which Clinton did too, by the way), and laws favoring the 1% of wealthiest Americans so “Americans were demanding change.“  In a word, No.

Brushing with broad strokes to manufacture correlation for ones views is a common malpractice, despite ones particular political views. Since the majority of people in the US don’t vote, it’s a misnomer to ever say that the outcome of an election is “Americans sending a message” as if all Americans (or any group) are fully aligned.

Outcomes of elections are the result of who spent the most money on the best marketing to manipulate voter emotions enough to create the reaction they wanted. I’ve been in marketing and psychology for 20 years so I see through the machinations.  Don’t be fooled by the blind influence of corporate media stories.

Have you ever heard a politician say “The American people want…” and not heard it followed with a lie to help them get what they want for personal gain?  Why do you think there are 237 millionaires in congress making a salary of $174,000 a year?  To help their constituents or to increase their personal power and wealth?

As an example, President Clinton earned $40 million in speaking fees alone his first 6 years out of office.  Sarah Palin left a $125,000 a year Governor job for a $1.25 million book advance and a commentator position at Fox News though she couldn’t construct a sensible sentence without reading a teleprompter as a candidate. No matter how much expected change President Obama does not deliver on, he’ll be doing fine when he leaves office and so will your nationally elected representatives.

Politicians are not saviors or agents of Satan, they’re people who act on self preservation and self interest as a first defense. Enemies will be manufactured and no matter how scary situations seem or how many demons politicians, religious leaders and mainstream media puppets cook up for us, we will survive.  Believe their actions and ignore their words.

So please stop saying that “Americans are sending a message” as if 1) It’s true and 2) It matters.  Most of us can’t even agree on where to find the best burger in town much less agree on a message to send to politicians who usually vote for their personal and corporate interests anyway.  …but never underestimate the power of groups of committed individuals to generate needed change.  We are a nation of unceasing innovators.

P.S. Another reality check – today the Supreme Court solidified corporate influence to dominate U.S. politics even further by eliminating limitations on funding elections.  We appear to  live in a corporatocracy by, for, and of multinational corporations profits, not a democracy interested in it’s people or their messages. …until the people decide to stop following their influence.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You may have heard that tomorrow there’s some inauguration thing going on.  Apparently there’s been a little bit of news coverage on this event.

Actually, there’s been more media coverage on Barack Obama’s inauguration than any other previous inauguration.  In fact, tickets for the inauguration are going for thousands of dollars online. It seems that The Decider is out and now The Influencer is moving in.  When this man talks, people become energized to do whatever it takes to build a better tomorrow.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After eight years in office George Bush has left America the same way he’s left every business his hands have touched – crippled with his personal fortunes increased.  Lets hope The Influencer can at least steer the ship out of the treacherous storm The Decider created and back towards prosperous shores.

Barack Obama is The Influencer because he’s the first president in modern times to have the power to ignite a fire of service and action into the majority of the American population.  Obamamania has shifted the national mood from confused hopeless thoughts of “WTF?” to declarations of “Yes We Can.”

The man is not a messiah or a magician who can wave his hand and make it all better, but something about him is bringing out the best in people across the globe.  And for that we can all be inspired and thankful.

Tomorrow is not just the inauguration of the 44th American president.  It is not just a historic moment because Americans have elected a black man to lead them.  It is a symbol of change for a population ready to be influenced with integrity and ready to take that experience into how they live and influence the people they care about most and the people they share the world with.

First off, I’m happy that Obama followed my lead and is choosing to get a puppy to open this new chapter of history.  The picture above is my puppy who’s still too young to come home, but I’ll have him well before inauguration day.

Most of the world appears to be ecstatic and elated that America somehow found a man to elect who is the polar opposite of George W. Bush in every imaginable and important way possible.  Then there are political pundits that seem as clueless as ever.

I must disclose that I rarely watch television news which makes cable “newscasters” seem a bit cartoonish when I do watch them.  (Don’t watch the news for a month and come back to it and you’ll see what I mean.)  The fact that most of the content these “news” channels provide is opinion rather fact shows the dilemma of creating 24 hour infotainment to win ratings wars with ever-declining viewership.  Therefore I have a little compassion for them, but only a little.

After Obama’s speech as our new President-elect I surfed through the cable news channels to see what the political “experts” (who are usually over 80% inaccurate in their predictions if you follow them) had to say.

What was interesting is that they were focused on statistics of how white men, Latinos, black women, white women, and other factions voted that they missed the whole point.  Everyone I know who felt that electricity when it was announced that Obama won felt they were having a JFK moment.  This kind of electricity hasn’t surged around in America or around the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Finally we may have a President more interested in equality and rebuilding America than one focused on serving corporate and monied interests.

No, he’s not a messiah, but he does seem to be intelligent, thoughtful, heartful and effective in getting Americans to get involved in creating positive change.  After seeing millions of people donate time, money or both to the campaign it seems like we could be revisiting our historic roots of banding together to clean up after our current natural disasters.  Most of the people who worked on campaigns this season had never done so before and some were over 60 years old.

While pundits over analyze strategy, race and other factors, the electorate that voted for Obama did so for other reasons.  Obama supporters  feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves – righting the wrongs, misdeeds and missteps our nation has embarked upon with imperialistic policies.

Older generations see electing a black man to be president as an historic occasion while younger generations who never saw blatant racism and grew up on hip hop music see this as a “duh” moment.  The most qualified person was elected and skin color is irrelevant in what he can achieve.  Both generations are right while the pundits are still busy ignoring the obvious fact that Obama won because he connected with voters like no other candidate in recent history.

No one knows exactly why anything happens.  We make up reasons in hindsight that fit our particular views and tell ourselves that our interpretation is a fact.  This is just how the human brain works.  So for once, lets not waste time looking to “experts” to see how it happened or listen to them about their inaccurate predictions of what will happen.  (Remember how the election was destined to be between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guilliani?  …How did that work out and why are the same pundits still employed?)  No one will ever be in the same circumstances to create the same experiences that we went through the last two years.  So lets just enjoy the moment and prepare to start a ride on a much different train than any we’ve been on this century.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Something very cool seems to be happening in politics.  It seems like the old politics of fear aren’t working as well as they used to in the current presidential election campaigns.  Maybe people have finally been so pummeled with lies in such a short period of time that they’re less inclined to swallow a mouthful of scare tactics.

Last week there was a lot of talk of how the McCain campaign was focused on making voters afraid of Barack Obama, even to the point of inciting crowds to shout racial epithets.  The thing is, this didn’t help his poll numbers and probably didn’t attract new voters.  It just made the rallies sound like elementary school bullies and their pals taunting and booing on cue.  This leads to the question of why today’s politics seem so antiquated and cartoon-like.

Lets be honest, if a little explosion happened that could be traced back to a terrorist, foreign or domestic, politicians may be able to work the shock doctrine to their advantage as they’ve done for decades.  We just saw the shock doctrine work with the mortgage crisis and stock market crisis allowing the government to use a problem-reaction-solution strategy to partially nationalize and acquire banks and insurance companies.  But even then, Americans may not be so quick to roll over. With the current economic crisis people seem to be more angry than afraid for a change.

It’s interesting how a company laying people off is a crisis for workers but a “restructuring” for management.  Is this an economic restructuring or a crisis?  Who is benefiting from the restructuring?

So why do scare tactics work better than issues in a crisis and in a political campaign?   Have you noticed that the more a person is married to a belief system (Democrats tax and spend or Republicans are the party for business)  the more zealously and easily he reacts to politicians and talk show hosts pointing fingers?  Interestingly, many times these belief systems run contrary to facts.

Seriously, why to adults act like mindless silly children at political rallies and conventions? Psychologically what is happening is that people are reverting back to being children who naively thought their parents were superhuman.  We see this is fundamentalist religious beliefs also, but that is too big a topic to include here.  The relationship is either like adults acting like young children treating the government like a parental god who can fix everything or adults acting like teenagers treating the government like an idiot parent who can do nothing right.

The main answer to the question of why people are so easily manipulated in politics is actually a biological one.  Under normal circumstances humans do the majority of their thinking in the frontal lobes of the brain where critical thinking is king.  But when we’re under stress we think from the rear areas of the brain where the limbic system rules.

The amygdala and other portions of the brain that have been our primary areas of thinking for much longer than the frontal lobe are ruled by emotion and the drive for short term gain.  Because of this, when we most need our critical thinking we don’t use it.

This type of thinking was great in primitive times when stress was related to food, shelter and sex.  In today’s world where our stress is over money, health and relationships, which have long term impacts, we’re predisposed to make bad decisions most of the time.  The fact that most people jump out of the stock market as it goes down even when historically we know that it goes back up and the golden rule is to buy low and sell high is the best example of this.  For more information on how and why our brains deceive us most often read the book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.

In respect to politics we may be in a time of ‘fear fatigue’ from constant warnings of real and imagined threats the last eight years.  In reality, we are hurt and killed most often by unperceived threats like car accidents than from perceived threats like terrorists. Finally, the politics of fear may be losing and the public may be gaining from this circumstance.

The next time a politician goes for your vote with scare tactics, race baiting, or fear mongering remember to stop, take a deep breath, relax and do a little frontal lobe critical thinking.  Remember how many times this record has been played before and how the leaders promising security did not deliver it or even raised your anxiety levels after they were elected.  Both you and your country will be better for it.