For the last two decades, National Public Radio has read and broadcast the Declaration of Independence on their affiliated stations on Independence Day. This year they not only did that, but they Tweeted it as well.
And oh what a firestorm that caused.
It wasn’t because the 5,000 words took up too much space…it was because as it was Tweeted it was broken into pieces because of the limit on characters the social media platform allows. People, not reading it as a patriotic message, saw it as another example of the liberal media pushing their agenda.
Yup…that’s the DOI…a liberal document if I ever saw one.
It seemed the flare up was as big a media event as the 1938 radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” when people ran out in the street in fear for their lives in New Jersey and New York because the Martians had invaded.
And it was as silly as the newspaper headline in 1948 that proclaimed Thomas Dewey won the presidential election over Harry Truman, illustrated by the guy who said the “buck stops here” himself holding a copy of the paper and laughing.
What caused the mixup?
What caused this mix up? Why did people think one of the founding documents, in fact the first founding document of our country, was a propaganda move by that nasty left wing NPR to try and move its agenda ahead?
The obvious and simple answer would be there are just a lot of stupid, uneducated people out there. But that would be too simplistic, because not everyone who complained and untweeted NPR over it were dumb.
Many were just caught up in the moment and the words as they stand alone, out of context, not within the entirety of the document.
Other reasons can explain this misfire by right wing leaning people who mistook the meaning of the Tweet. People who are right wing (and left wing as well) are sensitive anytime they think their position on anything is being criticized or attacked. They just can’t imagine someone else has a different opinion, and in their minds if they do, they are not a fellow citizen but an enemy instead.
Another reason is that many of these same people apparently don’t even have enough education to recognize that document or even parts of it. Or maybe their indoctrination into a one sided argument all the time made them misjudge the contents.
Certainly getting it in chunks on Twitter didn’t help, but my God, what have we come to when the very document our independence was based upon is seen as a bunch of words that are left leaning…
Well, in fact, maybe they are. Many of our founding fathers were kind of liberal, at least for their time. They believed that man had a right to control his own destiny, that he should be able to address grievances to the government, that he should have the right to vote in real elections and that he not be taxed unnecessarily.
Note that I wrote “he” in each of those sentences. Despite the high ground the DOI took at the time, the composers of this important document were not perfect by any means. They still believed that men were superior to women (so the female part of our population couldn’t vote until 1920), that slaves had no rights at all and that no one was a real person unless they were a white male that owned property.
Thinking about it, it seems that those would be the words from some people with political leanings that complained about the tweet.
It goes to show how many people in our society look at Facebook and think they know what is going on in the country because they consider that a reliable news source.
It shows that people think sound bites on television or radio or on the web tell the whole of a story in a short time, instead of sitting down and reading about it, and contemplating its meaning.
It shows that late night television comedians have more power to sway public opinion than real truthful news does that is presented by professional journalists.
The DOI was aimed directly at King George, who was trying to stamp out any thought that the colonists had rights in 1776. One of the lines of the DOI state “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.” Some who saw the Tweet took that line and others as a criticism of President Donald Trump.
Defund NPR?
One guy even said that this kind of stuff being Tweeted was the reason NPR should be defunded.
At first I thought this all was hilarious…but then I thought more about it…instead I think it was tragic.
When the Internet first came into common use two decades ago, I thought it would be the real dawn of a true information age. I thought it would spread good will and democracy around the world. I thought it would bring people closer together.
I neglected to consider the other edge of the sword. It also allows the uninformed to inform others about everything and nothing. It allows terrorism to spread like wildfire with just a few words. Instead of the truth being flung out to the world to be seen by many, it is hidden by a thousand untruths that surround it, making it indistinguishable.
It has allowed hate and bigotry to foment in places where it traditionally was hidden in a back closet with a few warped minds.
And it shows just how little so many people really know about the workings and the basis of our great country.
How could I be so naive as to not see the many sides of what seemed a good thing?
I am naive no longer.