This is my first diary here, so be gentle with me.
There’s an article on msnbc.com today that talks about something I feel is very important. It’s entitled Trump, his supporters, and the persistence of the "reality-gap." Here is an excerpt:
“….what struck me as especially notable about the new survey results is the persistence of the so-called “reality gap.”
* Unemployment: Under President Obama, job growth has been quite strong, and the unemployment rate has improved dramatically. PPP, however, found that 67% of Trump voters believe the unemployment rate went up under Obama – which is the exact opposite of reality.
* Stock Market: Since the president was elected, the stock market has soared, nearly tripling since the height of the Great Recession. PPP found that 39% of Trump voters believe the market has gone down under Obama – which is also the exact opposite of reality.
* Popular Vote: As of this morning, Hillary Clinton received roughly 2.7 million more votes than Donald Trump, but PPP nevertheless found that 40% of Trump voters believe he won the popular vote – which is, once again, the exact opposite of reality.
* Voter Fraud: Even Trump’s lawyers concede there was no voter fraud in the presidential election, but PPP found that 60% of Trump voters apparently believe “millions” of illegal ballots were cast for Clinton in 2016 – which isn’t even close to resembling reality.
* Soros Conspiracy Theory: A whopping 73% of Trump voters believe George Soros is paying anti-Trump protesters – though in reality, George Soros is not paying anti-Trump protesters.
We are, in other words, looking at a political landscape in which much of the president-elect’s core base appears to be living in an alternate reality.”
Today I posted this article in a discussion elsewhere online about our president-elect. I posted several other things in that discussion as well, and was rewarded with the predictable tropes, insults and circular arguments. A typical exchange over politics in many ways, and yet it helped me to realize and articulate something important that I’ve been struggling to find words for.
Tough love. That's what it is.
I sat around for eight years being polite, being silent, watching as the right became more reactionary, more racist, more insulated and isolated in their own bubble of non-reality. As many of us probably did, I believed that eventually they would grow out of it, smarten up, and see what they have been doing to themselves. None of that happened.
With this election, I have decided that I have to call people out on their inaccuracies, and, ya know, <surprise!> they don't like it. The people in the bubble call me all manner of names and tell me that I'm bitter or that I must have had a horrible childhood. They trot out the usual tired tropes and circular arguments in defense of outrageous untruths and turn a willful, blind eye to the blatant racism, sexism, and bigotry of their elected officials.
It’s not comfortable, but I've realized this: I will not stop. My silence, my unwillingness to call out the lies, the deceitfulness, the untruths, the bigotry, all of that made me complicit in my own way. These people have not been challenged in any meaningful way and have been allowed by our society to continue to live in a fantasy world where the sky is green and the grass is blue. It's why someone decided it was a good idea to shoot up a pizza parlor in DC over a fake news story, and there's more of that coming if we don't all start speaking up, speaking out, and standing up for OUR RIGHT to shine a light on actual facts.
Yeah, they can call me names and tell me I'm angry, but what I'm really about is tough love. If they can't take it, they need to get out of the way of the adults in the room who are still interested in doing the hard work that benefits all of us.
I'm not standing down, and I'm not shutting up.