ALLIANCE, Ohio -- One aspect of American culture that has often surprised me is our tendency to put people into camps. You either believe in creation or evolution. You believe in a women’s right to choose or the right to life. You believe wearing a mask is imperative or it doesn’t matter. You either support President Donald Trump or you’re a “Trump-hater.” You predominantly support Back Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter. You believe we must focus on growing the economy or protecting the environment. You believe “taking a knee” is a fit means of protesting police brutality or it’s disrespectful of our flag. You’re either part of the radical left or the far right.
This tendency to label and place others in camps has clearly grown with the rise of social media, polarizing news programming and divisive political rhetoric over the last few years. Let me suggest that, if we genuinely want to make meaningful progress on issues of faith, race, income inequality, health care, abortion, our environment, and education, it is imperative that we very consciously turn away from false choices and labeling and look in earnest for just, pragmatic and compassionate solutions.
Perhaps the rise of social media like Facebook has facilitated the rise in polarization and labeling. Social media provides a tempting platform from which to promulgate one’s personal views. Unfortunately, images and words can be taken out of context and used to fortify one’s views. Sadly, a once-fun means of sharing our lives with family and friends has devolved into a platform for advancing political views.
George R. Zadigian is a semi-retired construction and engineering project manager.
While Facebook postings have shown themselves to be a poor substitute for the kind of discourse that leads to building consensus, we seem left with little choice but to wait for people to come to that realization for themselves.
The dominance of tweeting, particularly by leaders in government, sadly often reduces complex issues to snippets that foster false choices, polarize us, and set an example for communicating in like fashion. While polar opinions and sharp rhetoric have been a hallmark of our country, including right from our very beginnings, so has civil discourse and debate. Tweets and Facebook posts are hardly a worthy substitute for hearty debate.
The rise of TV news programs that have gravitated into political camps, far from “just the facts,” has also fed into overly simplified views of issues and the presentation of false choices. Our tendency to listen solely to programs that validate our beliefs limits the information we need to judge rightly and inhibits our ability to recognize that others, of different perspectives, may have valid points and ideas outside of the positions we hold so dearly.
Perhaps our two-party political system contributes most to the presentation of limited options and false choices. Politicians often try to press us into supporting them by creating and stoking false choices between their position and exaggerated representations of their opponent’s position. After elections are over, these tactics leave us divided, with little appreciation for options outside of the false choices previously pressed upon us, and cool toward other options and compromise.
Given the height of divisions within our country, the number and enormity of problems plaguing us, the propensity of politicians to push false choices and technologies that readily facilitate labeling, one thing seems clear: If we are going to come anywhere close to resolving our problems, each of us needs to be more diligent about keeping an open mind and respectfully listening to a broader spectrum of voices.
For our own good and the good of our country, let me suggest each of us be open to loosening ties to some of the positions we’ve held so tightly to and for so long. Perhaps an observation Mark Twain made through the voice of Tom Sawyer is worth considering: “It ain’t what ya don’t know that gets a guy in trouble. It’s what you think ya know for sure, that just ain’t so.”
George R. Zadigian is a semi-retired manager of engineering and construction projects who started writing newspaper columns in 1980.
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August 16, 2020 at 04:23PM
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False choices and labeling poison our political discourse. There is a better way: George R. Zadigian - cleveland.com
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