I
walked into the post office the other day to pick up my mail and received a new
bile aperture in the process, which some of you doubtless think I deserve.
“I’ve been reading your articles,”
the younger woman started carefully, realizing she’d just been handed the
opportunity she’d been dreaming of:
telling me face to face what she thought. It turns out she’s a Trump supporter and was
offended by my anti-Trump sentiments being expressed in print. "I don’t think you should say those things in
the paper.” she continued. “Everyone knows you're a liberal already. You don’t
have the right.”
She grew angry as she developed her
argument, and shaky as a result. I could
empathize, since the same thing happens to me when I suddenly have the
opportunity to express my discontent to the person I think is causing it. As we left the post office, she ended her
testimony with a string of expletives about the presidential candidate she assumes
I am supporting, all unprintable even as a quotation. As we parted, she told me her name, which I
think was Patricia, although, to be honest, her name disappeared as I digested what
she had spoken.
People are entitled to their
opinions. People are entitled to express
their opinions in print, so long as they are identified as opinions and not a
news article or a factual report. There
are other limiting criteria as well, like profanity and libel, for
instance. But as long as the
speaker/writer claims his/her words as their opinion, the hearer/reader can
keep opinion separate from fact. The
airwaves are kept free, and it maintains equality in a way: each of us is entitled.
Equality
can be damaged by the presentation of opinion as fact: it sets up a kind of authority that is
unearned. Reporters and even researchers
sometimes slip their opinions into so-called factual writings, and detecting
those becomes the art of critical thinking.
It is a painful art to practice because it leaves a person at odds with
the promoters of these “facts,” as well as those who have bought into them as
truth. But without critical thinking we
are simply sheep on the way to being shorn.
Which brings me to the subject of
name-calling. I don’t know if kids these
days still hurl this little saying around the playground, but when I was young
we truly believed the rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names
will never hurt me.” On the east coast
or in previous generations, they might have said “harm me,” but we used the
word “hurt.” The truth is, that was a
lie. Being called a name over and over
again, especially a name that demeans, can cause long-lasting harm which can
take decades to mend, far longer than it takes bones.
And that’s what I’ve got against
your candidate, Patricia. He
name-calls. He name-calls over and over
again until people start to believe it because nobody’s made him stop. It’s libelous, what he’s done with “Crooked
Hillary” and all the other disparaging names he made up for his Republican
rivals. It’s also juvenile. It reflects an unwillingness to debate the
facts, which he also avoids by spouting “facts” that he’s made up just for the
fun of watching otherwise serious people scramble to identify the false
portions of his half-truths, the most serious one being the promise that he’s
on your side.
It’s a con job, friend. If you-all elect him, it’s going to be a rude
awakening and a serious disappointment when his policies take you to the
cleaners along with the rest of the country, while his rich friends (and
himself) get richer.
In my never-very-humble opinion (and
that I admit,) Donald Trump is a name-caller.
And in order not to get hurt in this election, we’ve got to remember
what we learned on the playground: how to
avoid being hurt by name-callers. The
lesson is simple in principle, but difficult in practice: don’t listen.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy
Wischemann is a rural resident writer who still has to practice what she
preaches. Thanks to Patricia for
speaking to me directly. You can send
your anti-name-caller experiences c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below.
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