Echoes

How is it that Trump is in the lead of the latest Republican poll, with a total equal to the sum of his next *6* competitors?  41% of Republican voters back him, which says something decidedly disturbing about today's Republican party. 

Any time someone says he "says what's on his mind," it's really a way of saying that the prejudices the person experiences are things he or she wishes were accepted by society, that he or she wouldn't be ostracized for saying them.  And, since so many people back Trump, it's clear that a considerable portion of society wouldn't ostracize the person for saying them, either.  It's an echo chamber around Trump, creating a closed society of Trump supporters whose shared beliefs can bounce around within the group and become reinforced and amplified.

There has been a sudden spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes since Trump said he would block Muslims from entering the country entirely, which is a reflection of this echo chamber.  When demagoguery is echoed and amplified, it leads to people being emboldened to take action against other people, partly under the belief that they will get away with it since everyone else feels the same way, and partly because the anger and hate that are bouncing around that echo chamber also amplify until that anger reaches the tipping point. 

I wonder if all of this isn't a result of social media.  I know that in my own Facebook and Twitter feeds, I see mostly those people who agree with my points of view.  As a result, Bernie Sanders groups, progressive groups, groups espousing a progressive interpretation of scripture, and so on, are echo chambers for me, making me believe falsely that more people agree with my ideals than actually do.  While Social Media could perhaps enable people to interact more with others who disagree with them, because of the vitriol spewed from people online who wouldn't act the same way face-to-face, we tend to push people of differing viewpoints aside.

Case in point: a man who goes to my very liberal church, who espouses mostly liberal beliefs, and who at one time was on my friends list.  He went to the Veterans' Day Parade in Tulsa, and protested Muslims marching in the parade by flipping them off.  When I found out, I looked for him on my friends list to remove him - but, it turns out, he had already removed me, perhaps because I had posted so angrily about the people who were protesting.

I feel like it's right to push him and others who agree out of my life, because I don't need that kind of hate, but in so doing, I do wonder if I'm not propagating the problem.  Being friends with someone offers unique opportunities to change minds, to show that good people disagree with their viewpoints, that it's not just their political "enemies." 

That said, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to be that guy...