The Coyotes won last night.
Everyone thought they were going to lose, and they didn't.
Some people are happy, some people are sad, some people are really, really scared. I figure most just don't understand why they needed a Masters and five years experience for just an entry level job.
But I realize today that we all live in our own bubble. The internet has made it so that we only have to associate with, and read things that confirm what we already believe.
As small as my voice may be, I encourage everyone to realize that changing your mind isn't weakness and that it's important to challenge yourself with people and reading/viewing material that you do not agree with.
And just as importantly, those who are fortunate enough to have the facts, whether they are experts, scientists, intellectuals or just anyone trying to tell the truth, they have to find a better way to get their message across than just lecturing people that they may or may not think are below them.
Yeah, it can be very difficult to understand why some people think differently than you do. And it can be easy to go to the tweet zone and tell that guy why you think he's an idiot. But I think we should realize that does nothing. In the history of the world, no one has changed their viewpoint because someone else called them an f-ing idiot.
As we saw last night on a massive scale, they just dig in their heals. I bet if you eliminated the spite votes of people who just resented the idea that a vote for Trump made them racist/sexist/dumb etc. I bet you'd have a completely different result. You can't reach people while belittling them. Why didn't I listen to my gramma on that one?
Whether it's hockey or politics - whether its the learned professor on TV or the stats nerd with his graphs - everything just becomes toxic. It literally couldn't matter less who is right and who is wrong. We get personally offended when people don't agree with us. When they won't see our side, we think they must have something wrong with them or some deficiency. This devolves eventually into a cycle of sniping, condescension, insults and hurt feelings.
And it just leads to two separate camps where everyone pontificates to the people who already agree with them. When they associate with "the others" it is only to heap scorn and be snarky. On the internet you don't have to be right, you just have to get the last word; you just have to be the first one to be appalled and act condescending.
Any fool can see why there's a backlash against political correctness. We live in a world where you can be sexist, but you can't say bitch. You can act in a manner that hurts minorities, but as long as you avoid a certain set of pejoratives, you're somehow not racist. Everyone knows this is fraudulent and non-sensical. The liberals might have all the policies that align with science and textbooks, but they go around shaming people for minor verbal transgressions. To people without a lot of free time because they're giving it everything they have to just scrape by, they can't see the big deal. And even if it really is a big deal, they don't care and you can't make them anything but angry and defensive.
Want an example? Last year everyone made a huge deal because Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly said his team was playing like a bunch of girls. Obviously that is sexist, but to people with real problems, it seems like crying wolf. When you reach a point where you aren't picking your battles but publicly shaming everyone for every minor transgression, you just make everyone who needs to hear your message deaf to it. On a large scale, that's what has happened all across the world as democracies react to globalization by flirting with fascism, dictators and totalitarianism.
So who knows what's going to happen. I have kids and now Donald Trump has nuclear weapons. A guy who brought up a ten year old feud with Rosie O'Donnell during a Presidential Debate. So if I seem melodramatic or whatever, then so be it. I've never wanted to be wrong so much in my life- I hope Donald Trump is a good President. I hope we treat him better than Obama was treated.
I see all this as a result of our disgusting online treatment of each other and the erosion of experts in things like news casting and political discourse. And, obviously, too much choice in information delivery formats.
I am just as guilty as anyone. At some point I decided it was more important to be honest than anything else, and I went around systematically alienating everyone I know whenever they said something I considered dumb. If a graph existed showing the amount of social invites I received before and after I had a facebook account, I think it would be stark and unflattering.
If I have a message or an idea or a contradiction to make in the future, I hope I can go forward trying to do it in a way that makes it OK for someone to maybe come around to my side. I hope I can stop acting entitled in the sense that I think my opinion is right just because I - the great Jimmy Tanner - said so.
Because I think people like me acting like you're an idiot for not seeing things our way are the reason to blame for where we are now. At least partly, and since I am guilty of doing this, trying to change it is the only thing I can reasonably have any control of.
I try to strike a balance between defending my viewpoints and getting angry and I don't always succeed in this. The internet is a toxic cesspool when it comes to how we treat people and weirdly, I essentially stayed off of it until three years ago. Then I jumped right in the deep-end. I am embarrassed for myself and ashamed of participating in this hate culture that has given us Trump. It is contagious.
Whether all that is right or wrong, I guess we'll wait and see. I'm sorry if you came here expecting hockey. If you read this far, hopefully you see my point, but if you don't, I'm sorry that I am a bit all over the place. I think this is relevant because we on this site, at times in the comment section, participate in the toxicity in the same way, just on a smaller scale. I'll do better.
There is a part of Trump's style that does appeal to me. A charismatic bullshit artist who can talk louder than you can? I perfected that style years ago.
But I fear for people who don't look like me today. It's a scary time because it's uncertain. Politics aside, I don't think being a bully is anything to aspire to. I was brought up to believe that bullies are cowards and that its cowardly to attack someone for their disability, their skin colour, sexual preference or gender.
If I wrote about hockey today, I'd consider myself a coward. I don't think that about anyone else though - I feel strongly, maybe they don't. It's all good. I think this needs to be said and I sincerely hope this isn't my last blog here.
I want to be humble and believe that if 150 million people think differently than I do, that I must be missing something. But it doesn't seem that way. The guy who literally does everything I was brought up believing is wrong was just elected and I don't know what that means.
I only know that I don't want to argue. I'm sick of calling people racist and I'm sick of them calling me whatever it is they call me. I'm sick of trying to explain to people the difference between an opinion and a fact.
So I'll write my hockey blogs, and I'll argue my points - but I'll try to do it in a nicer way. I'll try to do my part to make this place (and the world) less toxic. I'll attempt to be more open minded and to explain things in a way that isn't condescending or doesn't suggest that anyone with a brain would know better.
I think if there's a positive that can come this, it's that maybe we'll all realize how useless it is to shout your views into your bubble - because that bubble only consists of people who agree with you, and a few people who hate you and just want to belittle everything you say.
The people who need to hear your message do not care.
There are a lot of reasons why I think voting Trump was the wrong choice, and there were a lot of people saying so - but with our access to so many shows and pundits I don't believe anyone was watching those guys who didn't already agree with them.
And that right there sums up our problem: how do you get important information to people who just plug their ears and shout invectives when confronted with something they don't want to hear?
I don't know the answer, so I'll just try to do better myself.
Read Books. Stand up to bullies. Respect people who think differently than you. And most of all, don't go around telling strangers that they are wrong and stupid.
With love,
Tanner