Things are getting a little out of hand. We need to talk.

I’ve always been a person who has valued logic, reason, objectivity. I generally try to limit emotion in my decision-making, especially when that emotion can become ignorance, sweeping generalizations, and impulsive responses or actions. I try to approach issues on a case-by-case basis and avoid the ‘hive’ mentality. I try to remain an independent, rational thinker within a political landscape that seems determined to prey on our deepest fears and anxieties, about ourselves and our identities, about the constantly evolving world around us.

This approach means staying out of political debate, for the most part, especially on social media. I’ll make the occasional political joke, because humor is my ultimate defense mechanism, but anything beyond that is kind of useless, right? Like arguing with a beloved family member with vastly differing views at the dinner table. You’ll both get riled up, make your points, and end up liking each other a little less for the rest of that day. Why bother?

Social media is overstuffed with this type of…I don’t know. I struggle to even call it conversation. It’s basically just cupping our ears and yelling at each other, until all the reasonable people are driven to these small, niche or private spaces, and those conversations very rarely have any impact outside of that small group. Everyone wants to stress the importance of being one America, coming together despite our differences and doing what’s best for us. But do we really care about that? It’s not cynicism. It’s honesty. We want to be right. There’s no possibility for compromise or coming together when whole groups of people think other groups of people are unquestionably wrong or stupid or evil. And yes, every possible side is guilty of this. We’ve stripped ourselves of nuance and individualism. We’ve allowed labels of identity or political affiliation to dominate, forming prejudices and preventing these real discussionsfrom happening. Issues define the person nowadays, and we’re using a whole host of issues to make troubling assumptions about several millions of people. To re-iterate: nobody is innocent of doing this. If you believe in objectivity and avoiding stereotyping or generalizations, you must believe and practice it, especially when it’s inconvenient for you; especially when it’s challenging.

This is all an attempt at some kind of measured lead-in to the main topic of this post. An attempt to bring us together before I present something that will surely divide us. So…well…things are getting a little out of hand. We need to talk about Donald Trump.

The truth is it’s already been out of hand for quite some time. I’ve seen a lot of impassioned reactions from both sides, but measured approaches are going the way of the unicorn, because we’re all freaking out a little bit. It’s like our natural emotional response has been to respond to his bluster and platitudes with those of our own, just like how Trump, both the person and his movement, signal a natural emotional response to trends they didn’t like: so let’s talk about this, without freaking out more.

I want to focus on something specific. One of the automatic defenses I’ve seen for Trump is that “we’ve put up with eight years of Obama, you can deal with Trump now.” And that might be fair with a typical Presidency. It’s a legitimate part of our system. The pendulum swings back and forth; one side’s happy for a little while, then unhappy, then happy again, etc. The problem, as if I even need to say it so explicitly, is that Trump is not a typical President. We can agree on this. I’m not going to touch his policy initiatives or the direction of his administration, because that’s what the original “deal with him” argument is getting at, and why it fails.

Putting up with eight years of Obama meant a difference of opinion when it comes to policy, such as healthcare or ways to best stimulate the economy, foreign affairs, etc. These are ideological differences varying sides of the political spectrum and groups of people are bound to have. And they’re perfectly legitimate. I had plenty of differences with President Obama’s administration. I would have differences with a Mitt Romney administration, as well. The argument of “you can deal with Trump” implies that what’s currently happening is any ordinary re-shifting of the scales that occurs when the opposite political party regains control. It implies that what’s happening is merely a difference of opinion, on policy and the direction of our country. But that’s not what’s happening, right? How can we possibly pretend it is?

As I alluded to earlier, this conversation could be futile, because it very quickly devolves into our guy vs. your guy or gal or whatever. Home team v. away team (except both teams are technically the home team, so it’s more like we’re awkwardly splitting the arena Lakers/Clippers style). It’s a rivalry fueled by “feelings” and not much in the way of informed, nuanced perspectives. The loudest, most extreme voices dominate. With that acknowledgement, and the acknowledgement of the mental leaps people are capable of making when their positions, beliefs, guy, gal, or team are threatened, I want to look at something even more specific, kind of miniscule, actually, because we simply need to start somewhere.

Donald Trump is a guy who in this ABC News Interview, said: “That speech was a home run. That speech, if you look at Fox, OK, I'll mention you -- we see what Fox said. They said it was one of the great speeches…” He goes on to say “you and other networks covered it very inaccurately. I hate to say this to you and you probably won't put it on but turn on Fox and see how it was covered. And see how people respond to that speech.”

Nothing’s being taken out of context here. It’s straight out of his mouth. The President of the United States just said to watch one specific news outlet, one not uncoincidentally very supportive of him and, traditionally, the Republican right, and one targeted toward a specific demographic of the American people. He is presenting Fox News as the one unbiased, accurate account of the truth.

A question for those who are okay with this: imagine if Barack Obama said to watch MSNBC because other networks had been covering him inaccurately. Not that they’ve disagreed with him, but that they’ve been wholly inaccurate, purposefully misleading, and MSNBC was the only reprieve from this. What would your reaction be? Would you be okay with him saying that? The answer is likely no; the answer should be no, for all of us, because it’s an entirely preposterous, unprofessional, and scary thing for any sitting President to say. More importantly, it’s completely unimportant on the scale of preposterous, unprofessional, scary things Trump has said and done; but, again, we need to start somewhere.

The Trump administration’s undermining of critical news sources has continued since then. The GOP’s Mainstream Media Accountability survey asks “Do you agree with President Trump’s media strategy to cut through the media’s noise and deliver our message straight to the people?” Basically, do you think that the White House should serve as your primary source of information? Most recently, the Trump/ media hoopla reached its boiling point with this tweet, declaring the media the “enemy of the American people:”

Sen. John McCain rightfully recognized this statement as something akin to a dictator. I’m in agreement that Trump is not a dictator. Nor do I believe he can actually become one. But McCain, as a student of history, is 100% right by identifying this type of behavior—leveraging one’s self as the only legitimate source of information/truth, attacking the credibility of the free press—as the acts of a totalitarian government. This is exactly how it begins.

Defending Trump in this instance comes down to either loyalty or apathy; I’m not sure which concerns me more. Either way, the end result is the belief that Trump will still do what’s best for the American people, regardless of his warts. He’ll bring in more jobs. He’ll keep us safe. He’s surrounded by good, smart people, and none of these things, these improvements to our everyday lives, would be possible without him. Trump believes that, you can be sure of it. Stuff like this is just noise and doesn’t really matter, it’s the media and the left out to get Trump, as usual.

The one compromise we can make is that this doesn’t come down to Liberal v. Conservative or Democrat v. Republican anymore. It’s not a difference of policy or opinion. The sides aren’t the same; they’ve grown more complicated. We currently have a President and administration who present outright lies, knowingly or unknowingly, at an astonishing clip. They will argue tooth and nail about something that can be very easily disproven, and are at work discrediting any media outlet that attempts to do so, or is even remotely critical of them. I’m not sure if this misinformation comes down to deliberate manipulation of the facts and American public, a targeted effort to distort the truth, or just carelessness. I want to believe it’s the latter (I think it is on Trump’s part), but my gut tells me that, collectively, it’s a purposeful effort to misinform. Regardless of your political affiliation and leanings, this should alarm you. It goes against the very foundation of our country: keeping authority in check. Speaking truth to power.

If your belief is that these things are trivial and distracting us from the real issues, I agree to an extent: I do think the words and declarations of our highest and most powerful public servants should be more carefully considered (aka they should stop referencing fake terrorist attacks i.e. Bowling Green, Atlanta, Sweden), but the media is absolutely guilty of sensationalizing while ignoring more pressing issues. However, President Trump is implicit in this sensationalism. He gives these trivialities as much attention as the media does, because he cares deeply about how they reflect him, and his responses in turn generate more attention. If he could just do his job and ignore the media, like say, I don’t know, every other modern President before him, we wouldn’t have to have this particular part of the discussion. But he doesn’t and he can’t. So, my question becomes this: how can we trust him to create jobs and keep us safe when we can’t even trust him to act like a respectable human being for two hours? When we can’t even ask that he demonstrates the moderate level of self-control required to ignore what people say about him, instead of fanning the flames and complaining about how much they’ve spread later? When the guy is heading back on the campaign trail mere weeks into his administration, because he clearly just doesn’t like his job? How can Americans and the world at large be expected to trust him in matters of the upmost seriousness and importance when he has displayed a unique inability to handle even the smallest ones?

If your response is to immediately point out things the Obama administration did, or past Democrats, or what Hillary Clinton would’ve done instead, I’ve done a poor job getting through to you. Just like I have trouble getting through to people who want to label him and his supporters as every “[blank]ist” thing possible. It’s a bigger job than this. It’s a long, difficult, and not very productive process. All I ask is that we understand these defenses, these mental walls that go up when we engage in these conversations. I ask that we attempt to see each other past our assumptions, labels, and emotions; to see individuals rather than groups. I ask that we seek out reasonable, informed opinions that we don’t necessarily align with. I ask that we embrace information and knowledge of all kinds, rather than recoil from them. Both sides want to say the other side does this more, but we can all be better. We all know we can.

More than anything, I hope this actually is a conversation. I hope it remains one. Because things are getting out of hand. And we definitely do need to talk…

But we also need to listen.