If your job doesn’t require you to follow the news this Christmastime, my advice to you is this: Shut it down. TV, Twitter, Facebook, the whole shebang.
Go head, I won’t be mad. In fact, I’ll applaud you (even as I envy you). As Rupert Murdoch noted, it was a rough week. “Hostage killings in Sydney, mass slaughter in Pakistan, 8 kids killed in Cairns, now 2 NYPD cops killed in Brooklyn.”
It’s hard to be jolly during this magical time of year when you are inundated with negativity and violent imagery. It’s hard to be in the moment with friends and family when you’re worried with anxiety. And ask yourself this: Is there anything you can do about all these problems? Will your Tweets help heal this nation? Will being hyper-vigilant and following the latest news help bring back a life or feed a starving child?
For most of us, the answer is “no.” What we can do is be kind. What we can do is guard our hearts. What we can do is volunteer some time, and maybe a kind word. What we can do is spend time with the ones we love.
It used to be that people essentially went dormant this time of year, that this was the one sacred time when the world of work and politics and “news” took a break from intruding in our lives. Those days, I suspect, are gone for many of us. And that’s assuming you are merely passively consuming media. More likely, you and I are in some way, helping to fuel the fire of fear and bitterness and negativity, via social media platforms.
Media outlets on all sides of the political spectrum are complicit in this, for a simple reason: Divisiveness and outrage fuel clicks and page views. Meanwhile, citizen activists on Twitter view agitation as virtue. They want to stir you up. And whether or not they have noble motives, it’ll take a toll on you. And that is why you should do whatever you can to unplug this week. Seriously. Do it.
(Of course, responsible journalism requires covering newsworthy stories, and the assassination of two police officers certainly qualifies. I’m not objecting to the reporting, but to the use of this tragedy as “content” — and to the politicization of such tragedies. Nor am I criticizing the many responsible debates taking place right now. While many of us were outraged by instances of apparent police abuse in places like New York, it is fair to ask whether or not some of the “anti-police” rhetoric created a dangerous climate. We should not be a nation that reflexively defends bad cops, but I fear the pendulum might have swung too far. When you have protesters screaming about “dead cops,” that constitutes a dangerous mob, not a peaceful protest. The media and political leadership should have more aggressively condemned this speech. But this latest horrific action should not force the pendulum back to the other extreme, either. While we must ferret out bad cops, but we also must simultaneously preserve ordered liberty — and respect the many brave officers who ‘run toward danger.’ These things are not mutually exclusive.)
Increasingly, I’m concerned that tribalism and the urge to score political points is winning the day. For example, some conservatives are pointing out that, in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, some liberals in the mainstream media sought to blame Sarah Palin. This was an absurd thing for them to do, and I was among the first to push back on it. But why bring that up now? If it is to demonstrate media hypocrisy, 1). I’m already aware of it, and 2). is that really your immediate takeaway from the killing of two police officers? Or — even worse — are you suggesting that because liberals engaged in such horrible behavior that conservatives should attempt to do so, too? That this is political #war and that two wrongs make a right.
One could also point to the horrible things said and done by these protesters, and compare it to all the overwrought hand-wringing about tea party rallies. There is a temptation to play this game, to want revenge, paybacks, retribution — you name it. In some ways, this would be fair. Both sides are wronged, and both sides seek revenge. But where does it stop? And what is the responsibility of mature statesmen and commentators — to stoke the fire of bitterness — or to be peacemakers? We all get swept up, but let’s try our best to do the latter.
For those looking for an example we might replicate, let me refer you to Robert F. Kennedy’s speech on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Here are a couple of excerpts which, I think, are appropriate for us today:
… it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black — considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization — black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. … What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. … And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
You can watch it here:
