News In An Echo Chamber

Hello,

I realized recently that I get the majority of my news through social media sites and that’s really got to stop.

Most of the time, I only hear about events important enough to be blared out in all-caps, bolded typeface sprayed all over the worst possible photograph of Donald Trump. While this is helpful in continuing to make me furious and enrage, it’s not really keeping me too informed.

The social media echo chamber is probably the most dangerous thing that’s happening to American politics right now. Both sides are inundated with the same articles and pundit pieces over and over again, reiterating the same points again and again until the reader is whipped into a self-righteous fury abut the other side. We’ve been treating politics like we’re rooting for sports teams and it doesn’t matter how your team wins the game or what your team is doing, because it’s all about your team beating the other team.

It also means that there’s no benefit for a party to go against their President. It’s Republicans versus Democrats, right or wrong. If criticisms are leveled by Democrats against Republicans, it’s clearly a bias. There is no validity to the claims, period, because it’s just a case of sour grapes.

This isn’t just a Republican issue. Democrats were hard pressed to level any criticisms against the Obama Administration, because he was our guy, even though there was plenty that could have been done better by his Administration and he was far from the agent for change that we were hoping for.

We need to stop looking at our political parties like it’s the goddamn Red Sox versus the Yankees. This isn’t about winning points. This isn’t about who can cheer the loudest or who has the most fans in the stands.

People are dying because we have made any type of discussion impossible to have. This is not an exaggeration for some sort of effect. We are embroiled in wars that have no end in sight, because of how we choose to discuss politics. We have communities that have not had clean drinking water or electricity, because our politicians don’t earn any points with their screaming fans for helping American citizens. Refugees are being used as political pawns when they are human beings who came to our borders looking for help.

The only people who are benefiting from this type of theater are our politicians who preen and strut and pontificate. They stoke our rage at the other side and bask in our applause when they score cheap points against each other.

We need to take back the discussion and stop whining and mewling at each other and go back to shouting at the people who are really winning this horrific game.

-D-