Don’t kill the messenger

Anyone who’s a part of social media has been a part of this phenomenon before: the Facebook argument. Whether we started it, jumped in one, or just watched with a bag of popcorn on our lap — if you’re immersed in social media, you have definitely seen a Facebook post produce multiple comments due to some sort of controversy.

The good thing about having this job is sometimes I get to have some space to air out my grievances, instead of it roaming in cyberspace.

One common theme that pops up is arguing about politics. I get now more than ever why we mustn’t talk politics and religion if we’re to avoid, to put nicely, awkward conversations. But alas, the internet and all of its anonymity glory allows us to say what we’d like without (or at least, perceived to be) consequences.

Talking about what’s going on in current news isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What bothers me is the automatic judgement of a statement based on the messenger.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that we should be open to everything the internet tells us. For instance, those articles on The Onion? Yeah, it’s fake. Satire. Don’t believe that.

What I am talking about is taking something someone really said and arguing for or against it because you may or may not like that messenger.

This happens in politics a lot.

Without getting into the politics of it all, our president, Donald Trump, is ridiculed a lot. Whatever comes out of President Trump’s mouth (or fingers via Twitter) leads to dissenters ready to attack which then leads to defenders ready to attack the dissenters which ultimately leads to a yelling match until the next “controversy” appears.

I can admit, I’ve falling into that trap before.

But I think the best way to handle the controversy (other than of course deleting all of social media and living a less-informed, but probably less-stressful life) is to decipher the message first without taking into context the messenger.

In response to the deadly suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in late May, Trump condemned the terrorist attacks, calling them “evil losers.”

“So many young, beautiful, innocent people living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers,” he said. “I won’t call them monsters because they would like that term, they would think that is a great name.”

“I will call them, from now on, losers because that’s what they are: losers,” he added.

And Trump was ridiculed for his simplistic language. Except he was ridiculed because we’ve gotten to the point where whatever he says will be automatically taken as dumb, due to the reputation as president he’s built so far.

I disagree with the ridicule. Trump was spot on with his description of those terrorists. Losers. That’s what they are. You don’t give them credit by calling them monsters. Being called a monster implies power.

I had this same issue during the President Barack Obama administration. Anything he said was defended or railed against because of that letter “D” indicating Democrat next to his name.

The focus needs to be on the message. Then we can take proper context and dive deeper into what it all means.

There have been plenty of things President Trump has said that I’ve disagree with. But it wasn’t because of that letter “R” beside his name. I can point at many other politicians that I’ve disagreed with that fall anywhere and everywhere in the political spectrum. But it’s because I’ve started to go after the message without taking into context who the messenger is, at least at first.