Stop Pointing Fingers
Image from Code Geass: Lelouch of the Revolution, taken from Kotaku
In the wake of this last clusterfuck of reality that we are now forced to deal with, there’s one thing that stands out more than anything. There is a ridiculous amount of finger-pointing going on. There are the standard blame third-party voters. This I understand… and Libertarians are taking the brunt because they managed to get a percentage. Surprisingly, if you were in the liberal echo chamber, you would think it was Stein. She didn’t manage to get even 1% in any state.
But now there’s bigger fish to fry, apparently. Frankly, it’s one that’s burned to death after 8 years of conservative propaganda (and yes, I’m specifically speaking about Fox “News”). Liberals are awful, horrible people and are totally to blame for this. It’s the DNC’s fault because they backed Clinton. If Sanders ran, he would have won.
Yes, I have seen these articles to in the wake of the election. I have made no secret of how I swing. I openly admit to being socialist. I think that government should serve the people. I have never been happy about a candidate until Bernie Sanders. He didn’t make it. For whatever reason, that’s a failure.
Yet, I’m not going to blame the DNC. I’m not going to blame liberals (since I fall to the left of liberals). At this point, it’s not going to help anything but to further disenfranchise those of us that are liberal or further left.
By saying that liberals are to blame, you are creating a divisive dialog, very similar to the concept of “libtards” that has been pushed for 8 years by the right. The fact that we don’t have an equally ablest and divisive title of conservatives should show that we have decided to take the high road for far too long.
More than anything, I think that we, as people who lean to the left. The people who are appalled at the very notion that the alt-right now have a legitimate place in modern society. That we are sitting on the precipice of losing every ally we had because only a quarter of the population decided for this country. One that probably the 50% who stayed home instead of voting are probably now regretting.
While I agree, Hillary was not a great candidate, I think that there is someone who deserves a majority of the responsibility. It’s not the alt-right, it’s not the liberals, it’s not the people who didn’t vote, or who voted third-party. I blame the press. And the bonus is, they are also blaming themselves. They are looking at what they did during this election cycle and taking to heart how they could have done better. The New York Times (one of the most respected papers in the US) recently for how they covered the election. Hell, CNN has also admitted that they are partially to blame for how they covered the election.
The people deserve better than that. We deserve to have a press that’s willing to put itself on the line like it used to. The job of the press is to take people to task and expose corruption. Instead we have a group of yes men who are too scared to get sued for taking a stand. Maybe, just maybe we might get that press back after this debacle.
But let’s not blame each other for (hopefully just) the next four years. We can only reflect on the information that we’re given by the gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers are the press. The press should do better by us. It seems that some sources got the memo. Hopefully many more of them will soon as well.