Nobody is Listening
Establishment Republicans don’t listen. The Tea Party doesn’t listen. Trump voters don’t listen. RPV doesn’t listen. Libertarians don’t listen. Jeb! doesn’t listen. You don’t listen.
Yes, you. I’m talking to you. You’re not listening.
We get a lot of comments on Bearing Drift, which is a healthy sign of a large, active audience. Many come from our hardcore readers, and many from those who find the site through social media. As the primary moderator, I have the unenviable task of reading them all. Since the start of the presidential campaign and everybody’s favorite billionaire’s rise to prominence, one of the recurring themes in the comments has been the belief that “nobody is listening.” This is often paired with “…and you wonder why Trump and Canadian Bacon are doing so well?”
This isn’t just in our comments. These comments are similar to ones you will see on Facebook, or any other political website. They all tend to have the same theme – nobody is listening and that’s the problem. If <insert group here> would just listen, everything would be great.
The funny thing is, the commenters are right. Nobody IS listening. But that includes the commenters, too. And it is a problem.
One of the downsides to the internet, especially social media and political sites like ours, is that while it provides an excellent opportunity for a wide variety of voices and ideas to be heard and explored, it isn’t that great for getting folks to listen and think about what is being said. There are more voices talking than ever before in America.
We all know that when you’re talking, you aren’t listening.
I’m not a fan of apocalyptic rhetoric, but if you held a gun to my head and demanded that I tell you what I think is the biggest threat facing America, my go-to response has always been cynicism and apathy. But I have to add something to that answer now, based on what I’ve seen growing over the past few years – an unwillingness to listen and consider opposing views.
Today, more people than ever before are speaking, but nobody is listening. Tonight, the President of the United States will give his State of the Union address. Before he has begun speaking, the various candidates for president will have already pre-butted everything in the speech. I still find the concept of a pre-buttal ridiculous, but it’s expected these days. And after the speech, before anybody has had a chance to process what the man says, there will be at least one GOP response, probably more. Nobody will have listened to the speech, they will simply be responding to what they think he’s going to say.
This isn’t healthy.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree, at the very least, in order to intelligently participate in a representative democracy, the populace must be educated. They must understand the basic issues and have enough information to make a decision about what is the best path forward. Nobody can do that when they are more interested in making their own opinions known than in listening to someone else’s.
I guarantee that there are people who began reading this article and have not even gotten to this point before they’ve started writing their own comments about what I’ve said. Many didn’t get past the first two paragraphs.
We all owe it to ourselves and to our system of government to shut up and stop talking once in a while. I say this as a writer who puts out thousands of words every week to readers, many of whom would prefer that I shut up. I’ve got a reputation for being a know-it-all condescending elitist, and I have long since stopped arguing with people who think that – I’m not going to change their opinion by disagreeing with them. But what I want folks – everybody on both sides of the aisle to recognize – is that I listen. Sure, sometimes I fall victim to the same issue I’m talking about – wanting to be heard more than to listen, but I have done my best to make it clear to our readers that I hear what they’re saying and I understand why they feel the way they do. Most of the articles I have been writing over the last few months have not been attempts to influence our readers. All I am trying to do is put good information in the hands of readers to allow them to better decide political issues of the day. Whether it was the article about Syrian refugees, my attempt to start a conversation about gun policy, or my most recent article about the President’s executive actions on guns, I have not been defending or opposing anything – I’ve been putting out information to help inform our readers. My goal is not to influence, it is to inform. Do with that information what you will.
We need more politicians, more opinion writers, more bloggers, more activists who are willing to do this – provide information, not just try to influence. We also need those same people to stop talking and start listening to those they are talking to. If we can’t acknowledge each other’s concerns, there is no cooperation, and without cooperation, we can’t get anything done.
But this is a two way street – all communication has to be a two way street. Those who complain the loudest that nobody is listening to them need to practice what they preach. Often, the anger and vitriol that I see is coming from people who have been mislead and believe things that are simply not true. There’s a lot of talking and complaining about “low information voters” from folks on my side of the aisle, but in my experience there’s only one thing worse than a low information voter, and that’s a wrong information voter. Folks who learn things that aren’t true, who get spun up about things that aren’t actually happening – by politicians or media figures who want to harness their passion for their own purposes or to make a buck – those folks are no better than those who are lead around because they haven’t taken the time to get educated.
We all need to listen, then talk. Learn, then decide. If we are ever going to solve the problems we face here in America, it has to start with that.
