A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words !

Away from communications and the Internet I was disappointed to learn of the violence in Charlottesville when I re-entered “civilization”. I was not surprised though to hear of this news, however.  Although I prefer not to talk about my “past life” on my photography blog, I feel like today is an exception.

For 15+ years I worked for the USA government researching the motivating factors of political violence.  I led a cross-disciplinary team of scientists building models to forecast which international population segments would be most likely to engage in political violence ( I prefer the more scientific term “political violence” to “terrorism” — for violent acts meant to sway policy.)  Our research, and that of other scientists, found that the risk of political violence in the good old USA was high, and getting worst each year.  More emphasis needed to be put on domestic terrorism.  This did happen until political factions in the US government put the kabosh on it.  I continued to present evidence demonstrating the dangerous trajectory we were on.  Eventually I retired as a government scientist to pursue photography as a full-time career.

My decision to change careers still haunts me today.  Should I have continued with this research, especially as the US becomes more unstable?  More and more I observed prejudice and bias in social identity groups working in the US government.