Every four years or so, people become significantly more vested and attentive to the first ten amendments to our Constitution.
People who mostly live their lives thinking about how to attend soccer games of both children on Saturday morning while also getting groceries and cleaning bathrooms before the in-laws come over for dinner are suddenly faced with the manufactured choice between being able to shoot their potential rapist in a dark parking garage, or letting 20 kindergarteners die at the hands of a maniac.
Except, of course, the truth is always somewhere in between. Most conservatives have no issue with ending gun show and internet loopholes. Most liberals have no wish to rid the country of guns. I’ve never even held a gun myself, and yet I’m able to walk by the gun club next to my work without shouting angry slogans. Remarkable, right? I’ve also never sky-dived or collected stamps. I’m fine with anyone doing those things as well. I avoid horror movies like the plague. And yet am married to someone who loves them. It’s almost like we’re different people with different preferences, living in the same house by simultaneously indulging and avoiding what doesn’t appeal to us individually.
But as a nation, stoked by the assumption that someone who doesn’t think like us thinks against us, the rhetoric ratchets it up and up until a country that actually sees eye to eye in broad strokes is consumed by animosity toward each other.
And meanwhile, we have a love hate relationship with our very first tenet in our Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech, religion and the press. It’s all good when it’s protecting our value system. When we feel like our principles are being served and validated. But it feels a lot more uncomfortable when our sense of righteousness is encroached upon. Then it’s pretty easy to call foul. Then it’s pretty easy to be shocked by the unprincipled, downright immoral actions of those saying what we would never say. Sanctioning what we would never sanction. Of those reporting what we know in our hearts to be red herrings and outright misdirection, salaciousness for the sake of a bored and hungry, and impassioned, audience.
Lester Holt said, “As Americans, we rightfully place tremendous value on having a free and independent press. Our role as journalists is to give voice to the voiceless, and hold our leaders and institutions accountable. But the circle is only completed when that information is consumed by a free-thinking and engaged audience.”
This morning, reading the latest news cycle, I broke out in hives. I’m prone to hives, so this isn’t like I’d suddenly developed Skittles pox. But I don’t usually develop hives by reading or watching the news. My husband would tell you I often develop verbal deluge syndrome, but not usually hives.
I am wound so tightly lately. The news of the informationally empty but politically charged headlines of more email hoopla made me simultaneously vow to stop reading all news for the next 9 days, and also spend 45 minutes immediately reading a dozen headlines about it. They all said the same thing. What do we know? Not much. Are these emails from Hillary? We don’t think so. Are they emails that have already been vetted? Could be. Are they likely to change July’s FBI verdict? Unlikely. Is Anthony Weiner literally the last person any Democrat is putting on their holiday card list? Yeah. For sure.
“10 days before the election, and there’s no new information there at all,” I ranted to my husband, scratching my hivey neck. “It’s completely irresponsible to even report it.” “There’s nothing to it,” he agreed, “And it won’t take much to spin it to why it was addressed at all.”
Spin. Ugh. When did we become this nation, a people, a world, of Spin Rooms and flashpoints and predetermined bias? Maybe about the time that Gutenberg invented the printing press and opinion could be easily digested from those we’ve never met. Probably much farther back than that.
And that was about when I realized that I was not fulfilling my part of Lester Holt’s contract, or trusting anyone else to do so, either: a circle only completed when information is consumed by a free-thinking and engaged audience. It’s up to me what news I digest, what facts I dig for, what biases I acknowledge or stand against. That’s a bummer, obviously, because knee-jerk reactions and preconception is infinitely easier.
I can’t decide who watches horror movies and who collects stamps. And I certainly can’t, and don’t want to, sit as judge and jury for those whose only crime is not being me, inline with my every preference and predisposition. As much as it sometimes rankles, the point of those first ten amendments is to keep everyone – including me – from becoming a sanctimonious despot, sitting high atop a moralistic throne.
So, I’m going to take a deep breath, push the crazy back down a couple levels, and trust in our estimable system rooted in that sometimes exasperatingly objective and equitable Bill of Rights, intrinsic to our national fabric, allowing everyone a voice on matters of sky-diving, horror movies, and even politics, trusting us each to make free-thinking, engaged and informed decisions.
Adulting is hard.