On Not Taking the Bait!

Political Correctness as a response to political corruption…STOP IT!

NRN / Editorial Board 
Contributor / Dr. Kim St. Onge
7/9/2018

ON NOT TAKING THE BAIT

A lot of us spend time online in political discussions. On Facebook, Twitter, sundry formats. To heat or not to heat frequently becomes the question. It may feel like a “be or not to be” situation, as with Shakespeare, but really isn’t.
With the accelerating up-creep in authoritarian tendencies along the “Trump Trail,” encounters more often than not become quickly overheated. The mission should be to engage meaningfully where possible, resist, not accept, add vetted value if possible, get out before the descent into acrimony eats too much of your waking day. Acrimony can indeed be fun, but burns essential time after a while.
We should be talking to like minds as well as those unlike, but always with added value in mind. Agreeing to disagree may be the outcome, but is one that blunts potential commonalities in discourse, and not that useful.
Insofar as trading content with those who are with us, or opposed, using reliable information and sourcing sustains message. Using content appearing sympathetic to cause feels good, but if that content is tainted, this is in fact damaging—not conducive to the reasons for well-executed free speech.
Such an of example the rankly questionable making social net rounds has been the “newsclip” on an alleged Trump cousin obit. While many of us might agree with it, Snopes found the thing false. Let’s call screwed sourcing almost worse than none. It creates an aggravated pothole in the road of our purpose.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trumps-cousins-obituary/
Cool and collected tends to beat riled and misdirected in messaging. We should always try to reach out from the former place, in dealing with allies and opposition alike.