What I recently wrote about President Donald Trump for a Beltway political publication unleashed a backlash that strikes me as sadly symptomatic of at least three larger issues at play in our culture.
My op-ed in the Hill commended Trump for saying, in the press conference he held right after the latest assassination attempt on him, “I ask that all Americans recommit to resolving our differences peacefully.”
I applauded him for praising the attendees at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner for “coming together” as gunshots rang out and Secret Service agents hustled to shield him from danger.
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I went so far as to claim that in promoting a theme of unity, he was, at least for that moment, finally, and improbably, presidential.
I even said, while emphatically acknowledging that I’m no fan of his, that he demonstrated two characteristics I’ve rarely detected in him, namely grace and dignity.
No sooner had I posted my piece on my Facebook page than some of my “friends” had a field day insulting me and the president.
“This reads like an April Fool’s piece,” one commented.
“I assume you’d been drinking when you wrote this,” another said.
Yet another saw fit to call the president “a mass murderer, a fascist, a fraud, a convicted felon, rapist, pedo, liar, cheater, conman, a soulless coward and a total a-hole.”
Still others hyperventilated hysterically, by turns accusing the president of staging the assassination attempt as a PR stunt and being “a damaged and deranged megalomaniac, devoid of even a trace of empathy, having zero understanding of democracy, freedom and equality.”
I felt, as a character on the HBO hit show The Conchords once joked, “misunderstood incorrectly.”
Luckily, a few participants in this free-for-all came to my defense.
“I happen to agree with you,” my friend Stephen Kunes said, “so despite my being a lifelong liberal, that now makes me a pariah.”
“I’m struck by how the commenters seemed to miss your point entirely,” my business associate Jan Elizabeth said. “Say something about the man that is not monstrously critical and the masses go nuts.”
“I was amazed at his calm, sane initial response to this assassination attempt,” my friend Maria Swanson said.
My former dentist, Michael Ferstendig, countered the charges against Trump that materialized on my Facebook page. “Rapist?” he asked. “George [Stephanopoulos] is paying a multimillion dollar settlement for making that false accusation.”
Still, some comments really stung.
“You chose to humanize a person whose actions have resulted in thousands of deaths, the loss of health insurance for millions, the horror inflicted on tens of thousands of hard-working immigrants,” said a friend and former colleague I’ve known for 30 years. “This is who you chose to write about? Give me a break.”
Worst still, I heard from a dear friend I’ve known for 44 years. He’s never commented on my Facebook posts until now. “Sounds like you’re giving him a pass for January 6th and the pardons afterwards,” he wrote, and accused me of getting on my knees and “kissing the ring.”
My quick takeaways here?
First, few people read anymore. As in read closely and comprehensively, with intention to analyze and understand. Rather, they skim, skipping sentences and paragraphs, thanks to our shrinking attention spans. Last year, polls from Gallup and the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that Americans devote less time to reading than ever. Who takes the time to read between the lines? The result is often ill-informed, half-baked opinions.
Second, our society has gone binary in the brain — researchers define this phenomenon as “binary bias.” We perceive either black or white, good or bad, thumbs-up or thumbs-down, with no gray and no in between. Life is an either-or, all-or-nothing deal, nuance and ambiguity be damned. Whatever happened to civil debate? Why bother to interpret an argument, much less discern any subtlety? We prefer to take cognitive shortcuts that process information into action items.
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Third — and this observation is in keeping with the previous two — people hear what they want to hear. Social media algorithms only amplify and aggravate this tendency. We listen only to echo chambers, also known as “information cocoons,” that validate our beliefs, reinforce our prejudices, and close the door on opposing views. Partisan allegiance, or “homophily,” may be human nature, but it’s also risky business. As all too often now happens with AI, we’re spared the inconvenience involved in thinking for ourselves.
And that, as William Shakespeare said, is the rub. We’re bucking the tide. But here’s the irony. Our freedom of speech remains intact, unabridged, and ironclad. More or less. At least for now.
Bob Brody, a consultant and essayist, is a former New Yorker and author of the memoir Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.