By David Trinko
The Lima News
The news has been littered with people demonizing other groups of people lately.
It’s Democrats and Republicans portraying their presidential opponents as monsters who will lead our country to ruin.
It’s people accusing Haitian immigrants of stealing their pets in nearby Springfield and eating them, with the belief that same immigrant community in Lima must be doing the same thing.
It’s people frankly forgetting that the targets of their attacks are people too.
I’m absolutely certain today’s column will make me a target of attacks. I have a pretty good idea of what will be said, that I’m another bleeding-heart liberal journalist who can’t see how Joe Biden ruined our country, or I’m an ignorant Donald Trump supporter who blindly follows the lies I’m told. The reality is I’m conservative but mostly live my life somewhere in the middle, like many people in our area.
We as Americans can’t act like this. We’ve got to stop labeling everyone else as our enemies. We act like everything in the world is us vs. them, but in reality it’s just us vs. us.
This is no way to live happy lives. Above all else the American dream ought to be about the pursuit of happiness.
The practice of scapegoating is sadly alive and well. That’s the tendency to take all of our problems and blame them on a particular group of outsiders. It makes us feel better, as it alleviates our own responsibility in our problems.
Our politicians are skilled at this. It’s easy to say the world would be perfect if everything went exactly the way you wished it would go. It’s easy because there’s no way to prove or disprove your hypothesis.
Two of my daughters watched bits of the presidential debate with me Tuesday night. They’re on the cusp of voting in the next few years, but a teacher challenged them to watch it.
What they saw were two presidential candidates who appeared to hate each other, who vilified the very presence of the other person. Both were guilty of this. There was no room for compromise. There was no room for the shared human condition. Both were stripped of their humanity.
Earlier in the day, our news staff spent some time trying to track down rumors about the Haitian migrant community stealing pets for food after hearing vile stories of animal carcasses hanging from clotheslines. The trouble was no one could verify these. If you tried to get details of even which neighborhood where this supposedly happened, accusers shut down their attacks. It’s something they read. It’s something they saw on social media. Perhaps they heard it on TV.
It’s as if we want to believe horrible things instead of applying common sense and our shared experiences first.
I’ll admit I don’t know a lot of Haitian immigrants. The ones I’ve bumped into while living my life seem to be a lot like me, focused on their families and their daily lives. I’ve read and heard about the difficult lives they left behind in what’s deteriorated into a gang-run, dangerous country. I respect those who came here legally to pursue the American dream and are willing to work toward it.
Our staff openly and honestly discussed what we can do to make sure we’re part of the solution, not part of the problem, while sharing the stories of our region. That includes investigating all the interesting claims that come into our newsroom.
Maybe I’m more skeptical about the tales I hear than some are. After all, I work in a profession that jokes, “If your mother says she loves you, get a second source.” If something seems unlikely, too good to be true or too bad to be true, we keep looking until we can prove or disprove it.
We hear all sorts of accusations as journalists. About 95% of what we hear ends up being inaccurate upon further review. Sometimes what you heard or what you thought you saw isn’t exactly what happened.
The world’s not as simple as stereotypes. Every story, no matter how simple, has multiple points of view. Everyone brings different perspectives to it. Everyone brings preconceived notions to it. Those multiple perspectives are what make life interesting and unique.
I just hope we all individually and collectively remember this diversity is what makes our nation special. I’m proud to live in the United States of America, with an emphasis on united.
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See past columns by David Trinko at LimaOhio.com/tag/trinko.
David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
