July 10, 2018: Red Hens and red herrings
The Jourmudgeon happened to bump into his regular reader the other day (here’s another coincidence: We had the same parents), and she said, “Jourmudgeon, when are you going to weigh in on the Red Hen controversy? It happened in your community.”
The Jourmudgeon’s response: “The Jourmudgeon will weigh in when The Jourmudgeon has something to say that is worth sharing with other people, and that hasn’t already been said better by someone else.” The Jourmudgeon realizes that that is a break with tradition for The Jourmudgeon. In the case of the Red Hen incident, it is also a break with every other person in the world who has already weighed in via the fraternity house food fight that is social media. (In the case of the Red Hen controversy, of course, this is no metaphor. This one literally is a food fight.)
Characterizing social media as a fraternity house food fight is unfair, really. There is, after all, a certain logic to a food fight, a certain veracity, and even a certain civility, because in the end you get to eat what you catch, there is nothing as real as mashed potatoes, and your opponents can always find sustenance in what you throw at them. Social media, on the other hand, are where logic, truth and civility go to die. (Regarding logic, The Jourmudgeon urges his reader to go to https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/ for a compendium of logical fallacies, and then to apply them to any argument she has read on social media about The Red Hen, from anywhere on the political spectrum.) The Jourmudgeon joined Facebook and Twitter several years ago in an effort to find people who had abruptly disappeared from his email, along with photos of their babies. Curiously, they had never felt compelled to email The Jourmudgeon photos of their dinner, which – The Jourmudgeon realizes he is talking about food again – has become a staple of social media. The Jourmudgeon, for his part, was hoping to use social media to provide some food for thought. Alas.
The Jourmudgeon has watched as people he has long respected indulged in online name-calling and stereotyping. He has watched as people he doesn’t know from a can of paint posted death threats to people who have never met the owner of The Red Hen. He has watched as a candidate for Congress from The Red Hen’s district opted not to show leadership but instead dove head first into the food fight with all the glee and abandon of a 19-year-old fraternity boy. Social media did not engender this kind of smug, pandemic hatred, but they facilitated it. Social media are the bell you can’t unring. Increasingly, most people don’t seem to want to. We put on headphones and listen only to the carilion we find pleasing, enhanced by the echo chamber of like-minded souls. So Trump supporters inoculate themselves against the truth, and ignore anything they find upsetting about their man. Trump haters, meanwhile, assume that Trump hating in itself is a viable political platform that requires no other planks. In both cases, the opposition is demonized rather than engaged.
The Jourmudgeon confesses that he lacks the intellectual gifts to understand how pointing out to your opponents that you hate them and believe they are drooling inbreeders is the best strategy for winning them over to your side, particularly when it comes to voting. “You’d see things my way if you weren’t either stupid or evil, or both,” seems somehow lacking as a compelling argument. Meanwhile, golden opportunities to fix things – through the ballot box and numerous other initiatives – go a-begging.
For his own part, The Jourmudgeon is coming to realize that, while satire should ultimately be enlightening, his too often fails that test, and descends into self-indulgence, superficiality and pandering. The Jourmudgeon instead urges his reader to look for light rather than heat, for nourishment for the soul rather than bread and circuses and food fights. Fact-check stuff:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/
And rely on something besides social media. Here are some recent news stories and columns from across the political spectrum, addressing everything from The Red Hen to political civility to the Supreme Court vacancy to how much better conservatives are than liberals at organizing to Mr. Rogers to the practical folly of ideological extremism. They show why the so-called “fake media” are so much better for democratic sustenance than the food fight. Cheers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/opinion/mister-fred-rogers-wont-you-be-my-neighbor.html
