We cannot simply like democracy when it suits our beliefs!
I admit I woke up this morning and my heart jumped into my throat. I’m not sure how I would’ve felt if the outcome of this election went the other way.
I really don’t.
It wouldn’t have felt the same though and that I’m sure.
I, like many Americans, was not thrilled by this year’s election. I broke my steadfast rule of never diverging from the ethical role of a journalist of being totally and uncompromisingly unbiased!
I saw a candidate I could believe in and I let it be known.
And no it was not Donald Trump.
(The photographs on this posting are from a Trump rally in Erie this summer I photographed for The Derrick and News-Herald.)
It wasn’t Hillary Clinton either.
I have been called a liberal and a democrat this election season, possibly other years too, but to be perfectly honest I don’t believe I am liberal, conservative or even moderate. I believe in a few things above all and I can thank conversations with my parents, my brothers and sister, friends, a strange old philosophy professor and countless others for these beliefs. But my thoughts don’t fit into a category(I suppose we all say that!)
One belief is Humanity first. Not America first, humanity.
America was founded on principles that were meant to be modified. They were a foundation centered around a concept that was not really known before and certainly not put into doctrine. It was brilliant! The understanding that humanity is of utmost importance and striving for human rights is the ultimate goal of the world!!
It’s this, this very concept that is what makes the idea of America such an astounding concept. It’s what makes it still, to this day, such an undeniably brilliant concept to reach for.
I woke up today faced with what I went to bed last night believing was the unthinkable. I have dear friends and family who voted for the president-elect and, though I’ll be damned if I will ever understand why, I will not love them any less. My mom and dad, who believed enough in his policies to vote for him, also believed in me enough to raise me to think for myself even if it opposes their thinking. And I know they will love me despite the fact I think otherwise about our elected leader!
Even though I might not get it, why I woke up today to this news, there is nothing I can do about it now other than continue the dialogue of my beliefs and the debate with my friends and family. The nice part about it now is we can debate the issues and not the personalities pitted against one another. And we will be able to discern the issues from the personalities now because it is down to just one. It is no longer he or she. It is him and his ideas and plans! The scrutiny has now been simplified so we can dissect the pathway of the next administration.
I am of the belief that America hasn’t ever been anything but great! But it always needs to be improved upon and it needs to be always moving forward. Not backwards.
The two party system isn’t a bad one, but I wish we had a third party! A third party that gains more power and adds to the dialogue.
We sorta what we have now. The Republican party did not win the presidency. The anti-establishment did and the Republican party, until now, was holding on precariously and lightly ready to blame Trump if he lost. Make no mistake about that. The democrats rejected their anti-establishment candidate in order to play it safe and cling to the hope of the first woman president. And this proved fatal (albeit in retrospect) because the notion of dynasties has fallen out of fashion.
Yes, I have very conservative friends who are republicans – who were heart and soul Trump supporters, as was my dad, but the party itself really had no idea what to do with him and were ready to jump ship, but are now ready to hold on.
The anti-establishment won. Republicans are clinging on to the coat tails.
And this brings me somewhat to my reluctance. Within the anti-establishment are several dangerous factions with several dangerous ideas. I am a member of the press – the so-called ‘media’ – and I have to say I wear that label with great pride. I believe so strongly in a free press that I will say America is founded first and foremost on this principle! Because without it we’re doomed to suffer the fates dealt to us by the oppressors and power mongers of the world (look around the world to countries in utter turmoil or under devastating, self-serving rulers and see where their press stands!)
There was a photograph similar to this one above of the back of a shirt reportedly worn by someone at a Trump rally that read, “A tree, rope and a journalist: Some assembly required!” I looked at that photograph hoping it was photoshopped by some whack job, left-winged extremist who hates Trump and wanted to put them in a bad light, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t! It was a real person in a shirt worn to a Trump rally. I cannot blame Trump directly for this shirt, but I can blame him for perpetuating the notion with his on-going disdain for the press. (Note: I have difficulties with President Obama’s press access as well! There have been real control issues there that perhaps needed to be looked at further!)
I’m still shaking my head at that blatent taunt and threat to hang journalists. The distrust of the ‘media’ has reached a level that sickens me and really scares me a little. The fact they used the word journalist perhaps bothered me the most. A journalist is one of the cornerstones of democracy. The fourth estate. So so SO important to free and represented people!
I speak out about the difference between journalist and ‘media,’ but I fear it is lost. Much of popular media is obtained through websites and TV. Visual moving entertainment that is sometimes news, sometimes opinion and sometimes just down right propaganda. It is eye candy that incites! It is driven by a need to feed the beast and that need is a constant flow of information. It moves so fast and has so many platforms it’s impossible for individuals to keep up.
No, newspapers are not free from propaganda. History shows propaganda in print has existed throughout history as well, but that printed word holds an accountability not seen anymore in the television world and certainly not on the internet. And faux news sites are rampant and even more dangerous because many do not even know the difference. And they are not accountable for anything!
There has never been a more potentially dangerous time than right now and never been a stronger need for a balanced and free press! (I’m not trying to sound self serving, if you saw what I get paid you’d understand these words are based on principle, not personal gain!) A free press is essential to progress despite what politicians like Trump and even Sanders says. But we need to educate what is press verus what is media!
When I stood in this crowd in Erie this summer, my goal was to be an unbiased reporter seeking to report what the people there were feeling. I didn’t know what to expect. I got a press packet that told me where I could be and where I could not be.
Now, I didn’t join the military when I was eighteen for the same reason I didn’t pay close attention to that press packet – I don’t like being told what I can and cannot do, especially when it interferes with my trying to do good. I worked my way into the crowd and just blended waiting to be thrown out, but it didn’t happen. I found myself surrounded by hundreds of people who were there supporting their candidate. Not my candidate. Their candidate. I wasn’t sure if I was nervous for my safety, or for being thrown out before I did my job.
I talked to the people and told them what I was doing there as a member of the press and a small local paper a few miles south. I told them I wasn’t supposed to be there but I wanted something different!
I was asked who I supported and I said I was here as a reporter and I shouldn’t really talk about my personal views because I was here to record and understand for my readers their views. I wasn’t lying and when pressed further I admitted I wasn’t a fan of their candidate.
I had an extremely good conversation with this man above, Grant Galloway who told me he was working for the Trump campaign and was even canvassing for the candidate. We didn’t even agree to disagree, we just talked like we were human beings with different thoughts about the approach toward the same goal. And that right there is what I see as the ground on which we can get to where we need to eventually get. We really have the same goals for humanity!Prosperity and health in a society where we can grow.
It’s that simple. Hahaha!
I remember being surprised seeing so many young people at the rally and also talked with a group of teenage college students who I think liked making fun of me, but let me stay where I was. I think they sorta thought I was an old duffus photographer but liked that I was sorta bucking the system by not being where I was told I had to be.
We even did the selfie thing! Theirs was Snap Chat (by the way I hate Snap Chat!)
These folks I met were not the extreme that folks talk about when they call out all Trump supporters to unfriend them on Facebook. These folks wanted something that wasn’t the establishment and, coming from a conservative background or leaning to conservative ways, found themselves in the Trump camp and not the Sanders camp. They weren’t the deplorables that became a rally cry of the Trump faithful for a while.
They just didn’t like where we are and wanted change.
In the crowd, I saw someone from my days at The Meadville Tribune. To this day I cannot say we’re friends but we get along well enough and I think there is some mutual respect. He brought his daughter (center in red hat) to the rally not because he wanted to control her thoughts, but because she is steadfast in her beliefs and wanted to go. (I can say from experience that parental influence can be powerful, but you reach a point you form your own opinions and I know that happened to me somewhere in junior high or high school, so I believe her when she says her support is hers and not just her parents!)
At this point, I was fully convinced that my role as a journalist has to be separated from my beliefs and I was there to tell their story, not my own commentary. And this is key to journalism. We can have our opinions, but we need to be sure we respect others when on a story. And this is where the ‘media’ that Trump and Sanders complained about needs to be checked.
Today, I woke up stunned and a little concerned, but, as I thought about it, it made sense. We in the press haven’t called out our own enough and checked or put down the faux news and columnists/celebrities who are posing on news programs as journalists. We seriously need to call attention to the difference between reportage and ratings/circulation based journalism. I would like the top organizations and journalism schools to address this growing problem of television and internet ‘get the story first’ mentality and begin work on fixing what journalists need to do and how we need to get it to the people. Right now, what we’re doing isn’t working and the result is this election year.
Which has been largely based on he said/she said in the ‘media’ and even in newspapers and little about the true substance of governing and who is capable of governing. I know this is nothing new really overall, but the social media aspect has made it totally out of control!
I would like to say I have ready answers to all of it, but all I have is thoughts and an expressed desire that we spend serious time addressing the problems faced by uncontrolled social media and the apparent ‘feeding of the beast’ mentality that has become the model of corporate media especially and infiltrating down into smaller community journalism where it has no business being.
I trust in the constitution, but we need to be sure the shepherds and gatekeepers are strong to keep the constitution a vibrant and growing concept. The idea of keeping America great depends on it. It really is the closest thing to a human rights doctrine that has been written, but it needs to be constantly modified. Its inefficiencies to explain human rights come to light seemingly every year thus demanding we examine them all over again!. We can accept our founding fathers didn’t know everything, but also understand they did know the basic premise and set us in motion with a beautiful foundation to grow human rights into an absolute belief, not just a convenience belief to be brought out when we need it!. We are all brothers and sisters on this planet!
Let us hope the electorate is right, but also, let us be ever more diligent to insure that they are by continuing to fight for what we as individuals believe! Rioting is not fighting. Shouting is not fighting. posting words on Facebook is not fighting. Even writing blogs like this is not fighting. Fighting is getting involved and making a difference. Fighting is challenging others to think of the possibility they could be wrong but the answers are still attainable. If they are willing to look for them.
It doesn’t end with the vote you cast Tuesday!
As for the other factions that are even more dangerous within the antiestablishment – those that do preach hatred towards others – if we in the press do our jobs correctly and report what exactly these factions are about, the perhaps we can sort through this mess and still work towards eliminating the bigotry and self-serving interests of the power mongers of the world. If the press informs and the people will stand up for their own rights – that is what the founding fathers suggested we all take time to understand.
