#1 Check your facts
I can’t tell you how often I see political memes on my
Facebook feed, or links to various blogs with politically slanted news stories.
I’d wager to say I get several in an hour during the busiest Facebook hours in
the evenings. Some of these are legitimate. Sadly, the majority are things that
probably have no basis in reality. For instance:
Bo the first dog has a gold dog dish, a personal masseuse
who is also a communist Victoria’s Secret underwear model who walks him and has
taught him to foxtrot on the taxpayer’s dime.
Or
An armed tea party group went to a local preschool and
personally took food out of small preschool children’s mouths and kicked some
puppies while lighting pictures of the president on fire on the front lawn.
The memes inevitable go on to say something like, “Oh the
injustice”.
Just a hint here folks, just because something is on the
internet, does not mean it is necessarily true. It does mean that it has caused
some reaction in your mind that made you so concerned/upset/enraged that you
decided to share it with your friends. Did you check to see if it was true???
It usually only takes a moment or a brief Google search to find out if Bo gets
his toenails clipped by a thong clad Naomi Campbell. (The answer is no, he does
not. In case you were wondering.) There are even websites out there that are
dedicated to fact checking. They can tell you if right wingers were pasting
copies of the constitution to weeping minority children in Detroit. (No, they
did not.)
Spreading correct information can help us all learn
something. Spreading incorrect information just to make the other guys look
worse just serves to make your side seem even crazier.
#2 Think before you
link, Know when to scroll.
We all have that friend who reposts every single news story
or blog post that comes along that serves to bolster their own opinion about
everything. Could it be though, that you are that friend? Think about it. Did
you join Facebook just to repost a bunch of blog links that most people aren’t
really interested in, just to upset or alienate the other group of friends that
doesn’t agree with you or did you join so that you can keep in touch with
friends and relatives and post pictures of what you are eating for dinner?
It’s really simple. Just take a moment before you post that
link and ask yourself, “Is this really constructive? Does this further my
relationships with those I care most about? Would I want to make my crazy Aunt
Mabel who makes meow mix casseroles and dryer lint quilts to read this and
engage in political discourse with me?”
If your answer is “No”, it’s probably ok to skip the link.
You can always private message the link to those that you think would most
enjoy it. You can still share your moral outrage, and prevent awkward
discussions with people you’d rather not talk politics with anyways.
Remember that these people who are your friends are your
friends for a reason. Maybe you are related. Maybe you are married. Maybe you
work together. Maybe you both share a dark secret about a midget nun hooker in
Vegas. Whatever the case, think about it before you post it. Is it guaranteed
to cause a fight? Do you really want to post it?
By the same token, know when to scroll. There is always
going to be THAT GUY. You know, the jerk face relative or co-worker that you
can’t gracefully unfriend or block who is constantly posting stuff that is
inflammatory and insulting despite you linking him to this fantastic post. You
know who he is. We all have one. Or two. Or ten. When you see this jerk face’s
posts, don’t engage. Just scroll. Move along. It’s just not worth even reading
what they post most of the time, so save your 3 seconds and ensuing indigestion
and just scroll by. As you scroll past, make sure you call him a few names
worse than jerk face under your breath. You will feel better, and anyone around
you will be wondering if you are referring to them and might be a little nicer
to you the rest of the day, just in case.
#3 The media has only
one agenda
That agenda would be money. Yes, that’s right folks. You
heard it here first. The media is out to make money. They are businesses. Run
by business people. Fox News? CNN? MSNBC? Yup they are all out for your wallet.
“But wait!” you say. “The Gay Liberal Agenda!” or “The
Christian Right!”
No.
If you were to call the average American in his home on any
given Saturday morning and ask him his agenda, the conversation would probably
go something like this, regardless of their political, sexual, racial, or
religious persuasion.
Me: Hello sir/ma’am, can you tell me about your personal
agenda?
Average American: Well I was thinking about mowing the lawn
this morning, then maybe I’ll catch up on some tv and perhaps char a hunk of
animal flesh on the grill for dinner tonight. Wait, hold on, what was that
honey?
*pause*
In the name of all that is holy, send help! The significant
other just said we were going to Ikea to shop for shelving.
Me: Enjoy your meatballs and misery, sir/ma’am.
Now if I were to call the average CEO of a media
corporation, the conversation would be a little bit different. More like this:
Me: Hello sir/ma’am, can you tell me about your personal
agenda?
CEO: My agenda is to sell a bunch of advertising to a bunch
of other companies looking to sell products to consumers in a certain
demographic. In order to serve our advertisers, we gear our programming to
attract the demographics that our advertisers are looking to sell things to. We
don’t lie or make news up most of the time, but we do present it in the way
that appeals most to the demographic the advertisers are most interested in
selling to. Then I take all of the money that I earn and use it to buy
extravagant yachts, furnish them in things that are upholstered in the hides of
small endangered animals, name them after ex-lovers and sink them in the ocean.
Hey, we all need hobbies.
Me: ….. Mr. Donaghy?
Now this isn’t to say that you can’t get good or accurate
information from news outlets. It’s certainly there. A person who chooses to
educate themselves can easily find the truth of the matter. A person who
doesn’t choose to educate themselves on issues may find that they are only
getting a portion of the story. And a super magic mini eggplant dicer.
Remember that next time you hear the keywords on the news.
“Jackbooted thugs” is a personal favorite reference for the “gay liberal
agenda” and the “Christian Right” as well. Can you imagine all the namby-pamby,
limp-wristed, flower-wearing jack-booted thugs on the left? It’s like the Gay
Hippie army and they are here to wallpaper. Or the Church Lady brigade on the
right. They are here to make sure all your sex is missionary and that you use a
coaster on the furniture. Hallelujah.
#4 Can we cool it
with the generalizations?
Why do we feel the need to lump everyone into one of two
groups and automatically assume that they all believe the same thing? Not all
Liberals are pot-smoking, Godless hippies who are trying to sell their food
stamps so they can get abortions. Not all Conservatives are white, bible
thumping rich people trying to force third grader to carry guns with which to
shoot gay people and illegal immigrants.
There are black, atheist conservatives. There are rich,
white liberals that don’t have ties to Hollywood. There are transvestite Asian
libertarians. There are Muslim-Catholic Pakistani-Hispanic families who seem to
lean politically towards the New York Giants. (I know this family. They do the
diversity thing the right way. I also hope to end up in Queens one of these
days because I imagine dinner at that house is rockin’.) It takes all kinds to
make our crazy world go ‘round.
It would be like saying “All women like to wear aprons.”
Some women do, sure. Some women would as soon make you eat that apron as wear
it. Some of them may be your wives and girlfriends. You’ve been warned.
The next time you go to lump all people of one political
persuasion into a group like that, stop. Not everyone who voted one way or
another believes the same as every other person who voted that way. Not every
Republican thinks Reagan was a God. Not every Democrat thinks that no one
should be able to say a prayer.
What if instead of making
generalizations, we asked questions? What if we all got to know each other a
little bit better? Chances are that if we left our political leanings out of
conversations about what we all believe, we’d probably find that many more of
our mutual views as humans coincide rather than conflict. I’m pretty sure no
one finds it objectionable to make sure hungry children get fed, or that
illiterate people learn to read, or that we all have jobs and maybe make a
little more money. That hunk of beast for the grill isn’t going to buy itself.
The way most of us differ on issues is more one of how things are to be
accomplished, not that they are issues. Learn about each other. Ask questions
instead of making pronouncements. Perhaps if we do, we might start to find
solutions. You may also find yourself eating fewer aprons.
#5 We are all on the
same side in the end and it’s ok if we don’t all agree on everything.
The best part of our country is that we can all pretty much
do and say what we want within a certain moral framework without the fear of
repercussion from our government. We tend to forget that just because something
can be said without fear of government intervention, it doesn’t mean that a
thing SHOULD be said. There are still social consequences for what you say. I’m
not going to go around saying that my crazy great Aunt Mabel smells like meow
mix and mothballs and not expect some response from my crazier cousin Billy-Bob
who is Mabel’s favorite and just can’t live without his dryer lint quilt. It’s just the way the world works. It’s still
okay that I think Aunt Mabel may be a few deliveries short of a chicken and
liver dinner. It’s even ok for Cousin Billy-Bob to wear nothing but his dryer
lint quilt wrapped like a toga around himself while wearing lipstick and
watching foosball tournaments on ESPN2 in the privacy of his own home. We are
all entitled to our opinions. That doesn’t mean that we have to force our
opinions on everyone else, and should they have different opinions, that they
are lesser people. When you get in a disagreement with your brother about
politics on Facebook, or around the dinner table, remember that this is the guy
that you stayed up late at night with daring each other to stick progressively
larger Legos up your noses. You probably care about him more than his politics.
The second best part of our country is that everyone’s
opinions and beliefs create the framework for a vast and varied dryer lint
quilt of people. If we all believed the same thing and nobody’s opinion
differed, we’d all be eating the meow mix. It even says so on our money, E
Pluribus Unum. Out of many, One. We are all Americans. We are all on the same
boat. Ultimately we all want the same thing. We want to be free and live in a
nice country where we can enjoy our lives of mowing the lawn and watching Lost
on Netflix without the fear of jackbooted thugs knocking down our doors or
significant others forcing us into crowded warehouses to discuss the relative
merits of sofa slipcovers. Let’s try to remember that. Save Facebook for the
really important things, like discussion, learning, trying to make each other
better and posting photos of our significant others eating apron lunches at
Ikea after telling you that the sofa you picked out looks like something that
belongs in a sunken yacht. Leave the rhetoric for the political pages you
subscribe to. Opinions are like nose Legos. Everyone has one, no one wants you
sticking yours in their nose.
Besides, in the end, it’s not about sitting around waiting
for suited stooges in one city to make decisions for us. It’s about us as a
people coming together, discussing our needs and finding solutions that work
for as many people as possible and then telling our stooges what to do and how
to do it. Remember that those stooges are our stooges. Let’s stop being theirs.
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