The Importance of Political Education and Conversations

I recently spoke with a friend of mine about how different my political conversations are with a lot of my American friends or family members who do not study or who are not interested in politics. I told him there seems to be a disinterest or lack of general knowledge about many topics, and understandably so. Many people have lives, jobs, kids, health issues, or family affairs to take care of. This may make it hard for those to care about issues when they do not directly impact their daily life. In response, he stated it was quite the opposite in his country as it was quite common to have political conversations in many of his social circles back in the Middle East. This led our discussion to the type of media that one typically consumes within the United States. I told him that many receive their news from major networks such as Fox News or CNN. Networks I believe are not healthy for receiving non-biased political information. On top of this, I believe our current state of discourse around American politics makes it easy for people to become defensive when there conflicting viewpoints are present. This leads to conversations that are necessary and important to be shut down without resolve or even simple debate.

With all of this said, I ask you to have a moment of self-reflection to think about the media you typically consume. This is important because with major news networks and now social media, there is a lot of political misinformation present. This not only affects each of us mentally, but also how we manage conversations with those we disagree with. Media networks like Fox or CNN are exceptionally good at emotionally and mentally wearing their audience down, while simultaneously riling them up. I know this is true from my own experience where I would consume media that riled me up. This made it harder to control my emotions and subsequently my desire to consume media and when I did consume media from said networks it came with the price of emotional rage attached to it. I know that I am not alone in these feelings. Therefore, if we as a nation should strive to be politically educated and informed it requires methods outside of media consumption through large corporate corporations such as CNN, Fox News, InfoWars, or Occupy Democrats.

In addition, I would challenge you to think about how you have conversations with those you disagree with. Not everyone is going to view things the way that you do and that is okay, but we need to be able to manage discourse with grace even if others don’t. Simply having a conversation without shutting someone down is important. If you do not know how to respond to something do not get defensive because it is okay to say, “I don’t know, but I will research and get back to you.” If we seek to have conversations with the intent of winning, we can never have healthy political discourse. Practicing these conversation skills while also making changes to the sources we consume is important. Reading information on a topic from multiple news sources to include non-American sources provides us with many different ideas we may never have come across if we live in our bubble.

If you do not want to change the media you consume then my next response would be to approachit with the military concept of, “trust, but verify.” Not only is political education lacking in the United States, but it is now paired with disinformation campaigns that seek to cause disarray. Verifying sources and what you read is an important part of being politically educated and informed since it allows us to have better conversations without resorting to defensiveness for lack of awareness. Being a politically educated populace is significant because it enables us to understand how our country affects the rest of the world – something we do not understand if it is not highlighted. A lot of the people I have met traveling abroad, through my studies, or even during my haircuts overseas have been well informed about what the United States is doing. This is because the policies that we implement can directly affect their countries either positively or negatively. A more politically educated populace allows for better accountability when politicians seek to pass legislation or cover for policies that are detrimental to their constituents. This display of accountability has recently been occurring in town halls across the country as constituents hold their politicians responsible for policies they believe are negatively affecting them. Should we leave ourselves at the mercy of biased news outlets to provide us with reliable information we leave ourselves politically vulnerable.