Objective Truth & Social Media. Happily Married or Acrimoniously Divorced?
It was some politician who was trying to make the point that criticizing Trump was tantamount to criticizing the 61 million people who voted for him, and the electoral college system that gave him the majority that he needed to win the election.
So his point was that we, (meaning everybody), were supposed to show the proper amount of respect for this man, the office he holds and the people and the system that got him elected.
Alrighty Then
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective
Now because I majored in philosophy and have never been what you would call extremely left or right, except when it came to my tolerance for fools, I saw his philosophical point.
The trouble with it, however, and this is the trouble with a lot of things these days, is that the world has become so polarized that very few people are willing to put forth a well-reasoned and complete picture of any issue they are talking about.
For example: This politician, whoever he is, wants us to respect the 61million people who voted for Trump. But he says nothing about the 64 million who voted for Clinton.
He also says nothing about the number of people who voted for Trump and who, through the worst wave of voter remorse in years, no longer support him. This, in turn, has dropped his approval rating to the lowest in the history of the presidency (37%). So that’s not 61 million anymore now, is it?
He says nothing about the ongoing series of policy failures that Trump has to deal with because he actually doesn’t have a clue how to be a president.
He says nothing about the cabinet he put together, which includes Wall Street robber barons, billionaires, admitted racists and people with no familiarity with the posts to which they have been assigned. So much for “Draining The Swamp.”
He says nothing about the wild and unfounded accusations that Trump has made about the previous administration, Muslim Americans and the Democratic National Committee to name a few.
He says nothing about the systematic breaking of just about every campaign promise he made to his base, none of which have come about.
He says nothing about the proposed dismantling of Obamacare, because the only thing he can think of to replace it with will be un-affordable for millions and millions of the very people who voted for him in the first place.
He says nothing about Trump’s promise to destroy ISIS, within the first 30 days of his presidency, and the fact that there isn’t even a plan to do that after 90 days.
He says nothing about the millions of dollars being spent on security so he can play golf almost every single weekend.
So What’s The Point?
The point is very simple. All you see now on social media or conventional news media these days is opinion. And the opinions are either heavily skewed to the left or the right.
And people know that. So what they do is gravitate and spend their time basically listening to people they agree with.
And they learn nothing because listening to people you agree with only reinforces the beliefs that you already hold.
Most people avoid listening to dissenting opinions because it could provide them with a more balanced picture of reality and perhaps cause them to alter the way they think.
God forbid that should happen these days.
Scrubbing My Own Social Media Floors
Over the past while, I have been accelerating my mission to clean up my online life and try to have more people in it who believe that criticism is a fundamental part of the human learning experience.
I expect to encounter some shit along the way. But I also expect to find some new friends who believe that real knowledge comes from balancing differing points of view and using them to try and find the objective truth about…well, whatever you have.
I understand that this is all a very noble pursuit and that it will definitely shrink the number of people I actually interact with on social media.
But I have always believed that quantity is not quality. And I like to think that a lot of people are coming around to that themselves.
Mainly because they actually enjoy the process of learning and balancing differing points of view and creating their own belief system.
Now There Are Limits To Everything
Over the years I have encountered a number of people that I am more than willing to write off as trolls, charlatans, con men and miscellaneous whack jobs.
But nobody ever said the pursuit of any sort of objective truth was a smooth well-paved highway. It is, in point of fact, a bumpy road filled with potholes and fallen trees.
The Bottom Line
Intellectually, I can deal with just about anything except people who talk out of their asses instead of their mouths.
And because this is all very personal, it’s my decision to interact with these people or not. But I only do so after getting a clear picture of what they are about.
This is a big part of the reason I go after people like Donald Trump. This is a person whose agenda had and has very little to do with anything other than his own self-aggrandizement. It is cloaked in a love of America and passion for making it great again, but his actions do not reinforce his words, and never really have.
So if you’re a Trump supporter, good for you. If you support any cause or lifestyle choice that you’re comfortable with, good for you.
My best advice moving forward is to not get offended when you encounter people who, for one reason or another, won’t want to have anything to do with you.
I have encountered several people that I don’t want to have anything to do with on beBee, on Facebook and on LinkedIn.
But I only made that decision based on the opinion I developed through my interaction with them.
Win some. Lose some. Just keep your head in the game and you'll be fine.
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