Letter to Editor | I’m challenging myself to listen; in the process, I might learn something

||| FROM SHARON ABREU |||

I’ve been reading discussions about the current issue of censorship and social media. I think it’s a very important discussion. Censorship of any kind can be a slippery slope. I don’t want FB, Twitter, etc. deciding whether or not my posts qualify for censorship. Yet lies that incite violence can be extremely damaging — way more damaging than what happened at the Capitol last week. For me this brings up a couple of other questions.

One is this: It’s been well established that there has been election fraud in past elections/primaries. I’m not saying there was election fraud in the most recent general election, but gerrymandering and other forms of election fraud (hanging chads, political party organizations putting their thumbs on the scale for certain candidates and lying about doing it, etc.) have happened. And there have been no remedies to those things, but there have been very serious consequences of them. That has set up an atmosphere of mistrust — understandably so. So is there any way we can make our elections system, those corporate entities that currently run the primary elections, and the government more accountable? How do we get politicians, the DNC, RNC, and the corporations that give them big money, to respect the system we supposedly revere so much?

Another is this: How can we do more to value, respect and honor truth in our society? I’ve worked to boil down the problems I see in our country to an overarching problem. When I started educating about climate change over 20 years ago, after educating myself about the issue, I thought climate change was the overarching problem facing our country and humanity. But then I realized that the reason our government wasn’t taking the needed action on climate change (and was getting in the way of progress on the issue on the international level) was because of the influence of big money/corporate interests on our government, and the conflicts of interest created by that money and the alliances our elected officials had with certain industries before they took office. So that became the overarching issue.

But observing how lies have served to influence the way we vote and our support for our government’s acts of aggression on people in other countries, as well as people within our borders, as well as whistleblowers exposing corruption, I boiled down the overarching problem again, to this: Our ability as humans to lie, and our inability to know when we’re being lied to. What can we do about this? How can we sharpen our critical thinking skills, learn to do research together and talk with people who hold differing views/perspectives and expose themselves to different media, before acting on our very strong emotions? It seems to me the American people need to be talking amongst ourselves across political lines a lot more. It feels like a scary thing to do, but as long as we’re polarized, pitted against each other, the big money/corporate interests will continue selling our country out from under us.

I’m challenging myself, and I invite others to join me in this, to wait a second after I get triggered by what someone else says, to practice listening to what they say, and then to respond respectfully with genuine curiosity. I might learn something, even if I still disagree with what they said, and I have a much better chance of connecting with that person and maybe being heard myself. I think we’re being presented with an opportunity to practice this right now. And even though it would be better if we could safely get together in person, we can still practice this.