Posted by Don’t buy the narratives. The media exhists to sell, and the stuff they’re selling stinks. They feature one extreme story and then paint it across the country and our world as if it’s the only story. Whether it’s politics or social commentary, their goal is profit, not building up our country or our culture. They make less profit by bringing attention to the noble and solid aspects of our communities.
Example- Black Friday… Just because some dodo at one Walmart acted like an idiot in one town down south doesn’t mean our whole country acted that way. I saw local shoppers in Bozeman yesterday during the horrid “Black Friday Rush”, and as always, they were acting civilly, politely, and of course without violence. I bet yours looked similar. But by reading yesterday’s national headlines, you’d think every American was shopping with blood on their hands. Ridiculous.
The same goes with the election. Some news people are desperate to paint every Trump or Hillary voter as a certain type of person- usually defining the person by the worst trait of the candidate. Most Americans disliked both candidates immensely. Only a small percent of our population was excited about either, but almost every reporter acts as if the election results automatically means every person who voted was suddenly transformed into a completely different person than they were last year.
Note- Less than half of Republicans chose Trump in the primary. (That’s actually a rare event). Keep in mind, that as the primary continued, there were fewer choices of candidates people actually wanted, so Trump began picking up more of the “fine, I’ll choose him” votes as a result. Most people were actually choosing real conservative candidates who I would happily describe as sane and competent. Some of those people later held their nose under great protest to support Trump, who they strongly disliked, only because of the poor alternative. As often happens, the conservative voters were split amongst several solid candidates, and the outlier -in this case Trump, wins with a larger portion of voters who didn’t represent the majority view of the party. The most contentious convention in modern history followed, supporting my theory that Trump was hardly adored. I suppose the same could be said of Hillary supporters as well. (I do realize there are rabid supporters for both candidates, but that’s for a different column. I didn’t choose the word “rabid” by accident.)
So next time you hear a reporter trying to say how every Trump voter was a racist or every Hillary supporter was “crooked”. Keep in mind that more than likely, even your neighbors on the other side were probably not all that much like whatever candidate they ended up voting for. I’m writing this for my own reminder too. Check out how few people actually supported either in the primary:
