Once upon a political scientist.

The Insanity of Commenting on News Articles

Or what is Meta for?

That is me looking to the left. It’s my natural position.

How it started.

My parents had us reading newspapers and watching Walter Cronkite by 1968. I was seven.

Back then the lead articles were always Vietnam or civil rights, Apollo space missions or Nixon.

Those were the days when parents could send their children throughout a sprawling suburban neighborhood handing out flyers for the Republican candidate for president with no concern for their safety or the stain on their souls.

What made the political work special to my Rockefeller Republican parents was that when we moved into that neighborhood in 1965 from Arlington, VA, our new county executive was Spiro Agnew.

Agnew jumped from that spot to governor of Maryland to Veep candidate in three years.

He spent enough time as governor to get involved in shady deals that made him the first Veep to be indicted while in office.

[N.B. If you are a Futurama fan, you know Agnew as the headless body that does the bidding of Nixon’s head.]

[NB. First Light is the name of one of my plays. It opened in the Queens Short Play Festival on February 25. The other that opened is Changing a Light Bulb, a minute play. If you like postmodern absurdity…]

Strange but not unprecedented.

In the hoo-haw about a certain former POTUS facing 91 criminal charges, it’s amazing that no one brings up Agnew or even Aaron Burr who was charged with some serious crimes after his term as VEEP ended.

Of course, it doesn’t matter since anyone who supports DJT doesn’t want to hear about anything that eats into their POV.

Which brings us to the insanity involved when anyone of any ideology comments on news items on social platforms or newsfeeds.

No matter how logical and clear, a comment will be embraced by fellow travelers and rejected as worse than fake by opponents.

No one’s mind is changed by reading comments. In fact, the people most amenable to rethinking an opinion in politics steer clear of online news sources.

They don’t want to hear or read the repeated positions that mark everyone as insane.

As far as they are concerned, both left and right do the same suspect things like make stuff up and attack the other side.

It’s unfortunate because their refusal to get involved is an abdication of responsibility in a representative democracy.

The truth is that those who don’t want to take sides already take a side by bowing out. The only people promoting a false equivalency between red and blue tactics are the GOPers, Trumpublicans, and apathetics.

Unable to not care.

Along with many other inputs, my older brother and I began a lifetime’s interest in politics because of our parents getting us to read/watch the news and voluntolding us to be involved.

I carried it to the point of becoming a political scientist.

Except for one semester in 2011, I haven’t taught any political science courses since 1990.

Even though I changed careers three times after that, I remain a political scientist.

[N.B. That contrasts with my second career. I stopped being a lawyer on October 27, 1995. I have not been a lawyer since that day.]

The reason is that I have continued to study politics, particularly political change movements.

The MAGA phenomenon is one of the most bewildering and dangerous political change movements in US history.

Coupled with Russia and Israel ignoring international law to obtain major changes in neighbors, it’s difficult not to respond when people post lies and unfounded beliefs on news articles or when the news sources do the same thing.

I didn’t stop being my third career completely after I was harassed out of my job as a developmental educator.

I still want people to be correct or corrected.

Although I mentioned Meta in the subtitle, I actually don’t post much there on politics or feel the need to tell someone they ought to visit the facts about something that they post.

Most people don’t care about expertise anymore.

The population has helped dumb itself down by refusing to accept the higher quality information and analysis they get from experts.

This expert just concluded a long colloquy with someone bent on ignoring what I wrote and falsely accusing me of doing the same.

That is one example of one of the reasons I am certifiably insane.