In my recent post, “The Corrosion of Public Discourse,” I started with examples of how the American conversation has grown rotten. To recap, people:
- Share memes without checking to see if they are based on truth or misinformation
- Talk past each other rather than to each other
- Slice, dice and distort data points to fit their viewpoint
- Talk down to other people and confuse this as an act of virtue
A day after I published that, one of my Facebook connections posted a meme that exemplified those points:
To me, it’s just another meme that plays fast and loose with the truth and paints huge parts of the population with the same brush. All the standard tropes are present. In this case we have a conservative saying they’re a beacon of virtue, a champion of freedom and the rule of law. Everyone else is shit.
I know just as many Republicans as I do Democrats. Some people genuinely try to solve serious problems with an exchange of ideas, but neither group neatly fits the columns assigned to them. Both groups have faults and virtues.
America has often been at its best when people on both sides compromise for the greater good. I personally prefer that to “us vs. them” memes like the one above.
And so, a suggestion:
If you’re going to make your point with a meme, fine. I do it all the time.
But before sharing, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to examine whether it truly aligns with reality, or if it’s merely painting huge groups of diverse people with the same sloppy brush.
I’ll try to do that, too.