Four years ago, for reasons which should be obvious, I left the Republican party. I am still registered as an independent. Setting myself outside of the two major parties has given me some much-needed perspective. I’m not saying I don’t still have bias. Everyone does. But I try to step outside the echo chamber and analyze stories on their merits and not their political viewpoint.
If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend approaching every news story this way: Could this be true? Where are the corroborating facts, statements, videos? Where is it being reported? Is this based on a social media post of any kind? Is it presented in meme format? I feel like I can’t be the only person who goes through these steps when I hear a “news” story but I sometimes think I am as I scroll Facebook.
Yesterday, people were repeating the idea that Trump is ordering mailboxes to be removed from streets across America to mess with mail-in voting. Now, this is the hard part: set aside the name in the middle of that sentence and all your feelings about it. Read that sentence again. Does that sound like something a President would do? Is it even something he could do? I was skeptical. Upon investigating, I found an interview with a USPS representative who said “the Postal Service has for decades installed and removed its 'iconic blue' collection mailboxes based on the volume of mail received to each. She said that low-volume mailboxes are a financial drag on the Postal Service, which lost more than $2 billion in the second quarter. 'It is a fluid process and figures can vary from day-to-day,' Frum said. 'Historically, mail boxes have been removed for lack of use and installed in growth areas.' ”
Now that you have some context, you can see that there does not appear to be malicious intent here. Furthermore, the USPS has already said they will stop this routine removal of boxes until after the election. Unfortunately, this has not stopped people repeating this misleading story. Now, I am still investigating other aspects of what has been said, but the idea is that Trump is removing mailboxes is false.
What about voter fraud? Multiple news outlets have scoffed at Trump for suggesting that mail-in ballots open the door to fraud, saying there is no evidence for this. But a simple internet search found this quote: “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.” Is this a declaration from a Trump spokesperson? No, it’s from the New York Times in 2012. It’s also noteworthy that, while saying there is no evidence for mail-in voter fraud, many news outlets simultaneously accuse Trump of trying to commit voter fraud. So which is it? Is mail-in voting completely secure, or is it easily compromised? The answer is probably somewhere in between. Either party is capable of committing fraud. Either party is capable of registering a dead cat to vote.
The double standard is driving me crazy. In 2008, the national debt was the most horrible thing in the world (which, objectively, it is). But as soon as Obama got in office, there wasn’t another word about it, despite the fact that he increased it 84%. Once Trump was in, oh, dear, the national debt is important again (which it is, and in fact never stopped being).
How about the morality double standard? Republicans in 1992 harped about Bill Clinton’s infidelities and lack of moral character (which were true), while Democrats insisted that a man’s character has nothing to do with being President (which is also, in some respects, true). Fast-forward to 2016, and the roles are reversed! I guess I’m a simple person, but I try to be consistent. I was against Trump for many of the same reasons I was against Bill Clinton. My stance didn’t change just because the letter after the candidate’s name did. I was against children in cages when Obama did it, and I’m still against it now. I could go on and on.
Frankly, I can’t take this anymore. I have real things in my life that I have to deal with. I don’t want to spend precious time hunting down the truth of every news article I see, but neither do I want to blindly accept something just because it fits my worldview. So I give up. I’m stepping away from social media until after the election, because I just can’t. I will still be diligently fact-checking news stories, but I won’t have to see other people reposting falsehoods they haven’t bothered to check. It’s irritating that I have so many intelligent, well-spoken friends who just swallow whatever they’re fed because they love/hate Trump. Please, stop! Do your research. Don’t hit “share” unless you’re sure.
I will end this on a positive note. I have just come back from traveling halfway across the country to take my son to college, and I have good news. America is still America, folks! As George Washington said in his farewell address, parties only serve to divide us. He saw exactly what would happen, just as surely as if he had a time machine, once we allowed Party to be more important than Country. We the People need to take our country back from the special interests on both sides of the aisle. We need to realize that neither party is 100% right or 100% wrong.
