Fake News. Damn liberal media. Bias reporting. Racist conservatives.

We tend to, on one hand, blame the media for inaccurate reporting but at the same time we base our beliefs about things solely on what we see in, the media!

We rally against, or in support of, a particular news network or personality, believing that THIS is the place, or person, from which to get accurate reporting. And we really take these viewpoints to heart! Letting it shape our attitudes and responses. But maybe if we look a little deeper we will see that it is actually the reported content and the delivery that suits our  ego and probably, an already existing point of view.

It does take some effort to be fully educated on all matters. At least enough to ask better questions.

In another way, they say things the way we want to hear them. And then we will turn around and blame another news outlet for not saying it the way we want to hear it and we’ll label it as such using terms like “fake”, “liberal”, “lies”. But can a news outlet always give a full view of things, I mean, there’s not enough time!

We have to educate ourselves!

A narrow, extreme, viewpoint can only arise from lack of a well-rounded viewpoint. When you consider all sides of things and even educate yourself about things beyond your own experience you begin to see that there are a lot of different perspectives out there and that everyone is unique and we can never really know exactly what someone is thinking.

In the form of memes, we will place someone’s picture,  probably unbeknownst to them,  along with some type of comment meant to group all people that look like that, to a certain viewpoint.

For instance, the photo below I found by searching “hippy liberal” and the results are massive, using the same person and all with a different memes meant to ascribe a viewpoint to a particular look:

So, clearly this would have been created by or for people with the perspective that Christians are being attacked. And yeah, yeah I know the trend that was happening. There has been, for a while, a notion by some Christians that they are being vilified because gay people can marry or someone doesn’t like the ten commandments at a government building or what have you. And of course, it’s the liberals that hold these views and all liberals look somewhat like THIS GIRL!

Meant to somehow convey hypocrisy, perhaps?

Does this person even know that her picture is being used? She would have to by now. I have seen this photo for a few years already. What’s her name? What really is her perspective?

Of course I’ll probably get branded a liberal for using this one particular meme because well, ‘why don’t you show one in defense of the other side?’!!

Yeah, OK.

As entertaining and funny as these memes can be sometimes (I really like the Chuck Norris memes) I think, in a sense, they can be dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that we let it paint our perspective at a deeper level. Where we may not even realize it.

So where was I going with this….oh yeah!!

Educate yourself by not relying on the media as your only source of information.

Consider the humanity side of things and not just the opinion side of things.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Jeremy B Maher, 08/19/17