Sorry to vent personal frustration, but don’t really have anywhere else to turn at the moment to do so. So, if you don’t want to read about my own personal trials and tribulations, feel free to move on and read another diary. I won’t be in the least bit offended. :)
Once upon a time, I prided myself on being pretty moderate in my views. Yeah, I leaned left, sure, but I felt I had solid grounding for doing so, and I didn’t begrudge my friends with rightward slants their views for the most part, and there were plenty of times where I could understand their point of view even if I didn’t necessarily agree with it. Such is politics, right? And on such is built the compromises that (should) make up our government.
I didn’t vote for W., but gave him the benefit of a doubt. I got behind him after 9/11, supported going after bin Laden in Afghanistan, etc. Opposed him vehemently on Iraq, though — even in the early days of pushing for it, I couldn’t see any reason at all to rush going in without letting the inspectors doing their job, and if we were still determined to go in, then we needed to build a case to take to our allies and build a coalition like we had in the first Gulf War. It didn’t happen, but well, if we’re going to go in, at least there was the silver lining that we’d get rid of a POS dictator like Hussein, right? But then we screwed all that up, took our eyes off the ball in Afghanistan, too, and….well, y’all can see where we’re at now, all these years later.
But still, W. was the President. I thought W. was generally well-meaning but in over his head, basically a silver spoon frat boy that won the lottery and then had a lot of friends with ill intent giving him bad advice on how to spend it. But it didn’t feel like the country was in existential danger, at least to me.
Then came 2008. I voted Obama, but could have stomached a McCain win, with the exception of his running mate, who I viewed as being possibly less qualified for Vice President than the package of frozen chicken in my freezer. But I didn’t see McCain as being a hardcore ideologue.
And then Obama won, and since then, we’ve seen an ever-increasingly slide by the GOP into raving insanity. I’ve seen formerly rational right wing friends go off the high diving board into the empty swimming pool of conspiracy theories (“Obama’s coming for your gunz!’, “Obama’s a Muslim!”, “Michelle is one o’ them Lezbeeens!”). And now we have the Age of Trump, where with the aid of the internet and FOX News they’ve devolved truly into a cult-like state.
And so now we really start to get into my depressed and demoralized state, and I apologize for the long ramble (really, if you’ve got better things to do, by all means go pet the cat, or read your kids a story). My entire life has been devoted to the pursuit of truth (with a small “t” — if you want theological “Truth” with a capital “T”, I’m not your guy). I studied history and education in college. I had excellent professors on both sides of the political spectrum (none ever explicitly inserted their views into their classes, so for some to this day I have no idea of their politics, and for most of the others it’s just strong suspicion) who inculcated a strong desire for facts, for planting your flag on a defensible piece of ground that you can support with evidence and logic. My Intro to History (first core course we were required to take as History majors) professor went so far as to have us research a topic far removed from his own background, so as not to “taint” us with his own views on the subject. He was a medievalist himself. What did he have us research and write copious amounts of research on that semester? Wounded Knee, a subject about which he knew little more than we did at the start of the semester. Amazing class, and an experience I would not trade for anything. And then at the other end of the degree, we had my Historiography professor, who was as hard and merciless a curmudgeon as you could ask for in a professor and who prided himself on being a GPA-breaker...but damn if I didn’t come out the other side of that class with a far more critical eye towards how history is written.
I have similar stories from other professors. It was beaten into us that you needed to back your assertions up with evidence, and where evidence was lacking, you had to be able to back up your assertions with logical inferences based on what information was available.
And the education courses — of course, you’re trying to teach students higher level thinking. It was similarly beaten into us that the best teachers just didn’t go for rote learning — you climbed that pyramid and you tried to get your students to synthesize what they were learning into new knowledge, to think critically about what you were teaching them, to question and not just take things as gospel from the “sage on the stage”.
Sadly, I never landed a full-time teaching gig (“Oh, you teach social studies? What do you coach?” pretty much sums up why — I was told directly more than once that I was technically the better candidate, but another candidate had the coaching endorsement they needed to fill a hole in the coaching staff.) But I worked in jobs that used my skills — I worked in the museum biz for awhile, then for awhile I was an insurance adjuster, then for many years worked for city government, where I earned a reputation of being the guy that could find out the history of any piece of ground in town or the background behind any ordinance or legal agreement in the city files, even if it was thirty years old. It probably says something that, completely independently, I earned the nickname “Bulldog” from my coworkers in two completely different jobs for my reputation of not giving up on tracking down the facts about something until every avenue was exhausted.
Now, I’m in the process of finishing another degree. I’ll be completing an MA program that will license me as a K-12 Teacher Librarian, with the hope of taking another crack at the education field, even as teachers seem to have both figurative and literal targets painted on their backs. Much of the coursework in earning this degree has focused on research methods, evaluating sources, synthesizing information, and other information literacy topics. One of the jobs of a school librarian is not just to put books into the hands of students (although that’s certainly part of it) but to get them to think critically about what they read, and whether it’s about the theme of the fiction book they’re reading or a website they see a friend link to on social media.
And now we really get to the nub of it. I’m feeling mentally exhausted and demoralized by the steady stream — nay, the tsunami — of fake news we’ve become inundated with, and the willingness of people generally (and the Right in particular) to grab onto it as gospel and propagate it further. Tonight I got into it with a FB friend, an old family friend who has fallen into the deepest pits of RW nuttery, who posted one of the “crisis actor” stories about the Florida shooting. I tried to counter, only to be jumped by one of his friends, whose response to anything I provided to counter as “it’s a liberal site” — no matter what it was. It all pretty much ended with him sharing a link to an outright CT site (crisis actors, 9/11 Truthing, you name it) and my “friend” calling me a snowflake, to which I responded that if protecting a young man who is in severe emotional distress from having had classmates slaughtered just days ago by gunfire from false accusations means I’m a snowflake, I’ll wear that title proudly. But that’s just one tiny, tiny skirmish in the much larger war going on.
Trump and his toadies, the constant stream of false information and propaganda, I’m just so, so tired, so mentally and emotionally exhausted from fighting it. I do what I can to counter it but I just don’t feel like it’s enough, and yes, I know the FIRST thing a number of you are going to throw at me is “don’t engage them”, “unfriend them”, yada yada yada. Yeah, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, so don’t bother giving me that advice because yeah, I’ve heard it before. Old news, move along, Pilgrim. I’ve already now put him on a 30-day snooze and if he doesn't shape up after that ends, I’m just dropping him.
I just find the whole thing (as in the whole fake news landscape, from Trump on down) so….offensive. As in, offensive to my very existence, to everything that I believe I stand for in this world, to the things I hold most dear, offensive to the truth, and facts, and logic, and basic decency. To the point where it’s almost a physical pain when I see the stories on the news about the “Truthers” accusing traumatized high school students of being FBI plants.
Anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time. For the love of whatever you all hold dear in this world, I don’t mind saying I could use a pep talk right now, because I’m really on the verge of waving the white flag and wondering why the hell it’s even worth bothering for anymore.
Edit: Headed to bed now. Thanks so much to those who have commented — it does help. It’s just been hard to keep in perspective tonight. Mueller Time can’t come fast enough.