With all of the cacophony over the Charile Hebdo terrorists attacks over the last few days (Were the attacks made in the name of Islam? [yes] Did the magazine have a part in provoking them? [yes] Does this mean the magazine is to blame? [No] etc.) It's getting lost that the historic role of provocateur is being diminished in the name of either political correctness or inclusion. There are many reasons society is heaping scorn on publications such as Charile Hebdo and none of them portend a glowing future in terms of freedom of either speech or one's person.
When the New York Times quasi-intellectual, sycophant columnist David Brooks decides he's going to start classifying opinion as either belonging to either the 'adult' or 'children's' tables it's very easy to see where this is going.
All of us, self included, are suffering from an increasingly severe bout of confirmation bias when it comes to our political, and social beliefs. Not only has this reached pandemic status, but we're getting very close to it being a slate-wiper in terms of common sense. A large portion of this problem lies with our inability to understand the shades of gray in politics and personal belief.
For partisans, it's not enough to be on the 'right side' of an issue, you also have to crawl down the rabbit hole of the true believer to ensure that no variance can be tolerated from the official dogma. If you're against radical Islamic terrorists then it must be said that you're against all of Islam by those who fee that the greatest threat to mankind is white, middle-aged workers in the American system. If you're worried about Americans then, according to those on the other side, you must also be hateful of everything American and a dirty communist who wants nothing more than a return to the gulags of the Stalin era.
While it's easy to lay the blame on social media for this, Twitter especially is a terrible bullhorn for political debate, it's also too easy to overstate the media's role in perpetuating these false beliefs. It is just as silly to paint all conservatives with a broad brush as it is to say that everyone of the Muslim faith is a Jihadist in waiting. That said, every Jihadist in waiting IS a Muslim, it's just that understanding that distinction is lost on most. Lost to the point that I'm unsure if society contains the self-awareness to get it back.
Instead, I think we're doomed to an ever-diminishing feedback loop where our proclivities of assigning those we don't like to a second class results in an increasingly smaller subset of opinion.
What I would like to see is an acknowledgement that everyone is sitting at the same 'table', whether or not they agree with us or no. After all, opinions are only worth something in minds of those who hold them. What is important is fact, and reality.
Which is why I titled this post Je Suis Me. I am only me and no-one else. I am not Charlie Hebdo and neither are you. Nor should we be. Our roles in the opinion making process are singular and unique. Whether or not that makes us "trolls" as some might say or "geniuses" as others would point out is entirely the opinions of those doing the labeling.
