Issues are rarely black-and-white, despite polarization

Good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. Issues are rarely black-and-white and you don’t always have to pick a side. 

These seemed like simple and widely accepted principles for much of my life, but it seems over the past decade, the polarization of America has reached a fever pitch. 

I personally point to social media as the main propagator of this “new normal,” but there are many causes and factors that led us here. One of those is the decline of the newspaper industry. 

On social media, we often see these memes, quotes or “gotcha” videos that are shared, believed, liked, loved and passed on as if they were undeniable truths. We see incredibly complicated issues boiled down to finite points that ignore or disregard a variety of contrary evidence. 

We’ve become a society where free speech is being threatened. We have an ever-growing list of words we can no longer use. It’s stifled conversations to the point where we can’t even talk about different sides of an issue without being labeled as a bigot, a snowflake, a social justice warrior or fascist. 

It feels like any conversations about government, social issues, the environment, gender, police, abortion, military and a host of other hot button topics begin and end with only two points of view — right and wrong — and all parties are well entrenched in their beliefs.  

Points of view are often backed by memes or echo-chamber Google searched “information” that’s tailored to support one narrative rather than multiple factors surrounding an issue. 

It’s not just social media. I see it in documentaries. One-sided agenda pushing pieces presented in the guise of journalistic integrity, but without anything that resembles a hint of objectivity. 

In my line of work, I talk to a lot of people and I watch a lot of meetings and listen to people talk at each other far more than I see them talk to each other.

I often hear multiple sides of these issues and I spend time looking…