We have either forgotten or (like me) we went through life without realizing “stuff” that was going on all around us, thinking that our world was calm and relatively peaceful and, for the most part, people engaged in thoughtful and respectful dialogue.
Vietnam and the era of protests came and went while I was in school. I knew a little bit what Neil Young’s lyrics “Four dead in Ohio” represented, but to me, it was a song. I knew, but I didn’t understand.
In the past 10 years or so I have tried to educate myself about our country and our world. But when my Vietnam veteran (two tours) husband sent a video for me to watch “Truth and Myths About The Vietnam War,” I was blown away by the vitriol toward returning military, fueled by propaganda from the media. On my last tour as an active-duty Marine at Headquarters Marine Corps, I knew that we didn’t wear our uniforms in Northern Virginia because of the antipathy toward the military and Vietnam, but I didn’t truly understand. I didn’t truly understand the depth of emotion fueling both sides.
Today, St. Johns County is swimming in the same vitriol, the same raw emotion, the same animosity fueled, this time, by social media.
It feels very personal. It feels very angry. It feels very hopeless. But it isn’t new.
It hits close to home
In 2022, CNN produced a special report titled “Perilous Politics: America’s Dangerous Divide” that chronicles the side effects of the Country’s response to the pandemic. They suggest that, while division at the national level has always been an issue, it has moved to local politics. Back in 2022, when this documentary was produced, it came about because of “a new vein of anger directed at local officials and a nationwide coordination in campaigns to recall or intimidate county supervisors and school board members.”
We see this here in St Johns County. Our elected officials and our county staff are vilified and disparaged for their decisions on a regular basis. Social media sites and public comment at meetings are often mean-spirited and personal rather than dialogue about the issues at hand.
There are a couple of problems with this
First, social media does not fact check anything. Anyone who wants to say anything can do so. And because we are trained to read and believe headlines and sound bytes, so long as they match our beliefs, and misinformation goes viral – to the “right” readers.
Social media also allows people to create pages and groups, and limit access to only those who are “friendly” to the premise of the group. Page administrators may delete what they don’t like and evict those who don’t agree. What’s left is the homogenous group that feeds off each other and has no balance at all to what is being said. This is the antithesis of good decision making – groupthink, where the need for agreement stifles all creativity and innovation.
A second problem with this localized anger is that we start to avoid those who may think differently. Perhaps we avoid them because we don’t want them to try to change our minds. Or perhaps we avoid them because we take serious issue with what has been said on social media, and don’t see a way to reconcile the disparate ideas.
Either way, we lose.
The idea of dialogue is not to change minds. It is to offer a different perspective. Arguing about labels…ideology, politics or other divisive topics…is a no-win argument because it becomes personal.
Instead, going beyond the labels to the issues at hand offers the opportunity to share one’s own thoughts and learn from one another.
As I said earlier, this divisiveness isn’t new but hitting so close to home is uncomfortable and unfortunate.
And the most interesting thing about it…. we could do it differently.
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