It's been building up over the last few days, and I guess it all starts in Ferguson, Missouri. Now, I should say up front that I'm not going to espouse any particular stance on what's happening there... because I honestly don't have one. Save from what I can glean from headlines and overheard anecdotes, I know nothing about what's going on. This is for several reasons:
The first reason is that I want to see what kind of opinion gets formed by a person who only hears headlines and anecdotes about a significant event such as this -- because I think that's how the majority of people actually get their information. And here's what I do know: a young black man, who may or may not have been under the influence of marijuana or even harder drugs, was either robbing or shoplifting from a store (bit of a distinction there, eh?), and when confronted by the police, was subsequently shot and killed by said police for failing to comply with their orders. This touched off days-long rounds of rioting, which resulted in people being hit with rubber bullets and tear gas, and members of the media being harassed and arrested for filming on-duty police officers.
That's it. That's the sum total of what I know at this point. I have no idea whether I've got the details right or not, because the wide world of Interweb news is keen on nothing if not positing conflicting information using as few words as possible. Which brings me to the second reason I'm consciously not following what's going on... It's impossible to look very deeply into a controversial news story like this without being instantly mired in a swamp of opinion, conjecture, racism, and slanted reporting.
Most people I've seen post opinions about what's going on quite clearly believe they know what happened. The worst part of this is that, by publicly announcing your opinions and facts immediately before having time to assimilate and ruminate, you make it that much harder to change your mind on any given situation as it evolves. Since you've already declared how you feel about something to everyone you know 10 minutes after something happens, doesn't it make it that much harder to do anything but more deeply entrench yourself in that conviction?
I felt much the same with the Trayvon Martin case. Within an hour of the story breaking, it seemed, everyone was taking hooded selfies of themselves in protest. At this point, we had next to no information on what actually happened. A member of Neighborhood Watch had shot and killed a 17-year old. That was all the confirmed facts we had at that point, and yet everyone had already declared whose story they believed. Let me say flat out, I think Zimmerman acted wrongly and killed someone in the process. A young man should not have died in that situation. But would I have changed a hoodie-selfie profile photo when I heard about the injuries Zimmerman had sustained, and if I had, would my decision be based on what would my fellow hoodie-selfied friends would have thought? How tempted would I be to just hold to the opinion I had already stated so boldly, even as more evidence rolled out? What kind of contrary evidence would it have taken to get me to publicly state that I was rethinking my status?
*That's* why I'm not following Ferguson closely. I refuse to participate in the inevitable, endless debate about what facts are true, which were reported in error, which ones are planted by the media, and which ones are being perpetuated by local police/the military-industrial complex/the federal government. If I am going to make an informed decision about the issues that have been raised -- whatever they turn out to be -- it will be when passions have had a chance to cool, and a consensus of basic facts agreed upon. I will not decide how I feel about something that's happening hundreds of miles way until I *know* what's happening.
In a world where we all have the potential to be immediately connected, I am appalled that can't figure out how to accurately determine facts and agree on them. I think the problem may be that we (and by that, I mean anyone over thirty) spent the first half of our lives being indoctrinated into the belief that someone in authority who states something as truth has checked their facts, and is not just playing a 21st century version of the telephone game. Or maybe it's the rush to be the first to present information, truth behind it be damned. It's like we're not using this wealth of information we have it our disposal to get to the truth of things; instead, we're extracting from it the bits and pieces that fit the story we've already concocted in our heads.
Look at Trayvon Martin again. We still don't know exactly what happened that night, but what we do know is that there are two diametrically opposed sides to who was at fault. Not only that, both sides have provided exhaustively documented facts, evidence and diagrams precisely detailing why they are right. If you belong to either of these sides, you're fooling yourself if you think you formed that opinion based on the evidence presented and the cases argued... because it's impossible to. No, you're most likely to still believe the exact same thing you announced to everyone ten minutes after it happened.
The news media isn't doing itself any favors, either, by itching to jump in and try to splash facts together before they verify them. One journalist announced on Twitter that they saw a dead body in the street, about the most incendiary thing they could have said at the moment -- it later turned out that it was merely debris (thankfully, non-human) from an unrelated car crash. That's the problem with yelling things out before you really know what they are in an attempt to be first. The hyperbole you tweet in the heat of the moment actually has greater weight than the reasoned conclusion you tweet hours later after you have a chance to figure out what's actually going on, simply because it's a) first and b) more exciting. And there are countless examples of legitimate news agencies picking up such ill-formed reportage and passing it on, making it seem even more real.
So without even the media to trust, we're left floundering in this churning mess of arguing, sniping, and accusing that passes for public debate. The worst part is that I know if I even dip my toe in it, I'm going to end up with a roiling stomachache and my faith in humanity being chipped away a little more. In the end, the truth will end up lying somewhere in the middle, and sadly, none of us are going to know exactly where.
We've got to get better at this. We've just got to.
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