The obvious answer is because if you are active on social media the conversations are everywhere you go. Unless you make an effort to mute or block them it is almost impossible not to be exposed to an tsunami of opinion disguised as fact.
What bothers/concerns me the most isn’t that the discussions are taking place as much as it is the intolerance that so many people seem to have for those who disagree with them.
It wasn’t always like this, we weren’t always ready to shout down the idiots and embarrass the fools who vote for the other side or at least I don’t think we were.
Truth is, I don’t have hard data I can use to support that so instead of following my hope for more fact in discussions all I have done is added more opinion.
The Conversations We Don’t Have
The conversations we don’t have seem to be the ones where we aren’t pointing fingers and looking for excuses to demonstrate that we can Google facts to pepper our arguments with.
Yeah, I am calling some of us out on that account.
Ever try to win an argument by Googling something so you could sprinkle your argument with facts that make you look well read?
Well some of us follow the links you leave and have discovered that you didn’t read all the way through the article you cited or didn’t understand the numbers so your conclusion is incorrect…you idiot.
Oops, I forgot this isn’t Facebook and lost the civil edge.
didn't understand the numbers so your conclusion is incorrect...you idiot.Click To TweetWhat I really would like to see are more conversations where there is a real exchange and an open mind. A willingness to admit we don’t know much or enough about what we are discussing and a recognition that someone else might.
Would be nice to see our elected officials do more of this. Nice to see our representatives admit what they do and don’t know and limit the rhetoric to real promises that can be kept and not say things just for the purpose of securing votes.
Would You Want Your Child To Be President?
When I was a kid I remember hearing my teachers talk about how anyone of us could be president, provided we met the Constitutional requirements and that all things were possible for those of us who were willing to work hard.
I am not so sure if that is really true anymore. I am not convinced that if you don’t have significant amounts of money to draw upon you can win a presidential election anymore.
Let’s ignore that for a moment and ask ourselves if we would want our children to grow up to be president. It would be a tremendous honor and a way to serve others that few get a chance to do, but…
But I am not sure if I would my kids to go through the chaos and nonsense that are currently part of the process. I am not sure if I want to see what that might do to them and hear the things you have to say to get there.
That is pretty sad and not how it should be.
There are conversations we need to have and conversations we should have but I am not sure how many are taking place.
What do you think?
As someone who lives outside of the US, I an often appalled by the amount of hate and vitriol poured onto your country’s current President – I’ve never seen anyone in office take so much abuse, and I can’t help but feel a lot of it is down to race.
As a Canadian journalist once wrote, it’s your damn President – whether you agree with the politics of the man or not, you respect the office he stands for.
I grew up believing America was a place to aspire to – in the last few years, that mindset has been tarnished, possibly beyond repair. Yes, I know many good Americans, but the overwhelming picture I see coming out is one of entitlement, anger and fear (as in, invoking fear of the generic *you*).
As to Facebook, if only there was a political posts blocker for election year. That being said, I’ve been able to unfriend people easily based on their bigoted posts, so there’s always that knowledge…
Hi Danny,
The rhetoric has been bad for a long time now and as to whether it’s worse now than before, I’m not sure.
The willingness of people to post and share anything that comes through their inbox concerns me. I hope that many aren’t reading before they share because it would take a slight edge off of the nonsense, but not much.
I think we can do better and that we probably are better than we show but it’s a work in progress.
And I agree, the person in office deserves respect.