Well, though I am interested in politics, it is not my favourite topic. Anyway I find this so unnerving that I felt I had to share it:
These days you can only hear about Meryl Streep and her speech at the Golden Globes:
It’s really nothing spectacular, but I understand it is important for her and many people. So after listening to it I started searching about the base of it (because, yes, although the point could be that violence brings more violence, something everybody knows and which is true, the base where she constructs all her speech is that Trump had mocked a journalist because of his disability), so I decided to see that, as I always try to check what I hear or read.
The truth is that I am really disappointed with what I found, because the truth is that it was worse than simply uninteresting, it was false. The main point of the speech is based on a lie, and that is awful, because it means that after all what have happened most people still don’t understand why Trump won.
And it is sad that so many people seem to have such a low intellectual standard on what’s a good speech, that they acclaim it only because they agree with it, but it is sadder the level of the journalism nowadays. Meryl is very right: we need brave journalists, but more we need honest journalists, and those are very hard to find. I don’t understand how can she claim about their responsibility, being her the first to betray that responsibility she shares with them, being an international voice. Because that is precisely the reason Trump is there, because of the people who won’t make sure of the information they share, or will just attack an opposite voice with any mean, being it true or not. Keep walking this path and Trumps will win many times, because the people — more nowadays as it is very easy to check— notice of these cheap stratagems. If she really wanted to transform the event into political propaganda (even if I could agree on the message, that’s what she does, I am not judging if it’s appropriate), because she has the right to, she could have used many things against Trump, starting simply by analysing some politics or ideas. Instead she chose something easier, as she wanted to make a point, and she made it: “we can be like them*, we can use the same weapons we protest against and defame the same way. We can transform political messages into moral ones”.
Well, I don’t know if she really believed what she said or used on purpose, but that doesn’t fix much. I think it would have been best if instead of believing ourselves better than anyone we could just act better than them.
Before the reader accuses me, I want to make clear that I do not pretend to defend Trump. That’s his job. Even more: I don’t feel any sympathy for Trump, he wasn’t my candidate, and I don’t really care about him or Meryl Streep, I care about the truth. As I say, she could’ve used many true things against Trump, but she didn’t, what also makes me think.
And here you can check it yourself:
Oh, yes, the video is probably made by some hyper-biased channel, you might say. Well, fortunately the good thing is that what you see cannot be biased. When I first saw the journalist scene and the intervention where he supposedly mocks at the journalist, I started to feel cheated, because I really found it difficult to see his gestures as a mock. Maybe if you have asperger syndrome and you have difficulties to interpret other people’s gestures you might directly decide that there is someone making fun from another. But anyway I admitted there could be some doubt. Then I saw other Trump’s interventions, and it was clear to me that it was just a very wrong interpretation from an unfortunate coincidence. In any case a very poor excuse to attack him, existing as there are other arguments against him, less shocking, but less false too.
But hey, this was just ad hominem, of course there wasn’t any intention to arguing or reasoning, it was all about attacking an image. That was the whole point, and it usually (not always) works better.
I really don’t want to hear any excuse: I expect those who ask for honesty to be honest, not to try such a crude manipulation.
Probably part of the problem is this super sensibility that has grown in some sectors, as they understand every word, every breath, always as an attack.
Our ever-teen society needs to mature and stop crying, forget the childish mope, stop the tantrum as a way of arguing and confront difficulties sincerely.
*From their supposed perspective.
