Short answer: No! That’s because, contrary to how our news media reports it, not all points of view, in fact, have a point. Someone who tells the truth and someone who lies both have points of view. But are their points equal? Are they equally valid? Equally legitimate? No, of course not! And to treat them as if they were equal misrepresents them and the truth itself. This is the terrible end product of “Both Sides Do It” brand journalism. It’s why we get so many false equivalences in place of analysis. Not every point of view is equal to every other. And some points of view have no point at all.
Enter Don The Car Thief
A simple example. A guy named “Don” steals your car right out of your driveway as you watch him from your bedroom window. Thing is, he doesn’t drive away. He only goes as far as the street. There, he starts honking the horn and screaming at you (from your car) that it isn’t yours anymore, now it’s his car.
In the pure abstract (where no rules exist and it’s all “law of the jungle”), yeah, it could be his car. Just because he says.
In the pure abstract where rules do exist however, he’s a thief.
Rules Rule
The question is, which abstract do we collectively choose to call home? The majority of us want the one with rules – the ones we’ve collectively agreed to, not the ones racists and anti-democratic thugs invent on the fly. That means the car thief is a car thief and his victim is the victim of a crime, not a differing point of view.
Now, of course, under the rule of law, a thief isn’t actually a “thief” until proven so in a court of law. Alas, this is justice for the rest of us. If you’re a rich white guy? You may never have to face a day of judgment. That’s because the rich white guys who’ve always controlled the system (up till now) built trap doors into it that allow them to escape justice. Or hold it off forever.
When we turn on the cable news or scan a newspaper (or its digital version), we get a steady litany of clearly illegal things Donald Trump has done – or to which he clearly is connected. If Trump weren’t a rich white man, he would already be serving time – a lot of time. However not only is Trump still walking around a free man, the news media still wonders aloud about Trump’s motives and intent!
How the hell did we get here? Simple.
False Equivalences
The news media places itself above the fray. They refuse to be arbiters of anything except that which grabs attention. That’s why Republican grievance and Democratic legislation get equal weight in news reporting. It’s why white peoples’ “bad feelings” about slavery can get equal consideration to people whose relatives were enslaved. Yeah, there are two points of view there. But those two points of view are not equal in moral weight – or in any other way.
What a shame it never gets reported that way…
It’s taken us two-plus years to deal with a violent assault upon not just our democracy but each and every one of us.
The goal of the insurrectionists: destroy the government we all voted for and swap it out for a government they control entirely. This is happening every day right out in the open! Just because our compromised justice system hasn’t yet proven to a jury that Donald Trump is a criminal doesn’t mean he isn’t one. When we do convict Trump – and I believe we will – Trump’s criminality won’t begin at the moment he’s convicted. It will begin at the moment the criminality began – years and years and years ago.
That means we’ve been living inside his crime spree this whole time. Those of us who’ve shouted about it? We’ve been right. We have been – and continue to be – victims of a crime. Not victims of politics.
Here’s the thing. Someone acting politically is one thing. Someone acting criminally for a political purpose? That’s something else entirely. It’s criminal! But, if you refuse to ever arbitrate – and you equate crime committed for a political purpose with politics? You’ve just skewed our whole idea of politcs.