You know where I’m going with this. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’ve got an incredibly important job over the next five months. It’s a bicameral job. Two elements. Both are necessary, only one will leave us lost. (Arguably we’re lost now, so let’s just get these two things done, shall we?)
- Elect a decent person to the presidency.
- Do it clean.
We don’t have the luxury of snarking our way through this election cycle, feeling superior to whatever nitwits we perceive on the other side of the aisle, perhaps forgetting to get our absentee ballot or register and vote in person (with a mask). Complacency is not an option. If we do not get the Orange Menace out of office in November, lord have mercy on our souls.
But we’ve got to do it clean. That means making sure what you post on Twitter, Facebook, or the social media poison of your choice is reliable, verifiable, and measured. That GIF of a Trump Baby in a Poopie Diaper may be fun for a second, but that’s not where we need to be right now. That polemical screed from TrumpSucksBigTime.com might help you feel better, but you won’t convince anyone with it.
Instead, let’s talk about what we like, and what we want, in a president – not what we abhor and distrust.
Me
I don’t want that other mind pollution in my feed or my brain these days. Yeah, pretty soon our Cousin Lucys and Uncle Freds are going to be putting their crap online about Joe Biden and whoever he picks as a running mate. But I’m going to resist the bait. I’ll come back at them with a level head – though I am not afraid to use emotion, either! I for one am very emotional about issues of immigration, racism, and the coronavirus response. But I’m not going to be part of dividing us further by demonizing the other. I’m not going to forward stuff that could easily have come from a Russian troll farm, just to make myself feel momentarily better.
I want to feel long-term better. And the only way to do that is to elect Joe Biden to the presidency. If we can refrain from sinking into the muck, we stand a better chance of doing it AND of looking at ourselves with pride afterwards. More concretely, we have to do our part to stop the propagation of troll/bot crap that is designed to divide us. Live up to our promise.
Here’s a compendium of articles of important counsel on reading the news these days, and how to be a better consumer and sharer of news.
