How are you contributing?

If you eat only Reese's Cups you will get fat and have clogged arteries and lack many key nutrients. If you only cuss dropping F-bombs every other word people will think you are uncouth. If you only speak kindly you will be well remembered.

You are what you consume. You are what you expel. Many times in my life I have apologized for actions that I said were not me, that I did not mean, that maybe I was in a sensitive mood and triggered to react in a way I no longer agreed with. But those apologies, while I fully believe to be necessary lack an element of ownership. I did act in that way, while it may not be what I am proud of, it was me. Again we are what we expel. We are what we consume. Own it.

After a lovely dinner my dad sat at the computer and read the news. I didn't have to ask which news site, it was obvious based on the headlines he read aloud. It was Fox News.

Ok. So what. Well my dad read an article stating "Suspicious Minds: Trump accused of racism for honoring Elvis, as he awards Medal of Freedom to Babe Ruth, Scalia."

That is the exact article headline on Fox News. When my dad read this out loud I immediately became suspicious. One of the best classes I took in college was a course where we studied biases in articles. I don't remember all of it but the key elements were check the person who wrote the article (their credentials), check where it was published (is it generally reputable), and then check the verbiage used within the article for terms we had flagged as probable bias, mainly subjective statements or statements that drew spurious conclusions and implied causation where the evidence only pointed to correlation. The class was a blast and I was good at it, so good in fact that I was accepted into the 400 level course my freshman year. But I digress. I had research to do in between plucking lip hairs as I readied myself for bed. First to the source.

The article accusing Trump of racism contained inane drivel, nothing of impact. Mostly a white male writer decrying the lack of acknowledgment that black rockers of the past dealt with whereas people like Elvis skyrocketed to fame. So to start the breakdown. This article as of just a bit before midnight has 390 comments and while I read through a fair number, probably 100 or so, not a single one agreed with the author. One person in fact drew attention to a point I am getting to. Why try to cause more division between people right now?

Ok so where was this published and written by whom? It was in the Style section of the Washington Post under the 'Perspective' subsection which I have to assume is akin to an opinion column within the Style section. It was written by a music critic. In fact it was written by Chris Richards who "has been the Washington Post's pop music critic since 2009."

A pop music critic wrote an article mostly pissed that Trump awarded the medal of freedom to a dead white rocker. And here's the thing, already we know this guys whole basis for the article is crap since it is a committee that decides on who should receive these awards, sometimes with presidential input, and if all of those 390 comments continued like the first 100, no one agreed with him. No one cared. They thought the opinion was inane drivel. It is an opinion that could have rested in the depths of the internet trolling comments along with other crap. There is always some asshole who will find fault with something. To prove this point I went to YouTube and in the search bar I typed "puppy with duck." I clicked on the first video which was a group of miniature Australian shepherd puppies interacting with baby ducks. 122 people down voted this video. Who the hell doesn't like puppies and baby ducks? Who the hell clicked on a video with a title of "Small pups and Baby Ducks" and decided eh screw this, and pressed the thumbs down button. If you don't like puppies and ducks just don't watch the freaking video. It wasn't misleading.

My point is why give more life to this little pretentious pop music critic that riled up 390 people to comment their displeasure with his short little opinion piece. Back to Fox News. I swear I am going somewhere with this. I hunted down the Fox News article my dad read the headline to and at least part of the article because he quoted the unhappy troll from the Washington Posts' article. But it wasn't so easy to hunt this article down. Why? Well because there were three links. Why were there three links? Because Fox News took this little 'Perspective' piece from the 'Style' section written by the 'pop music critic' and developed three news stories about it. Two video pieces, one including a reaction from a panel of individuals discussing how the left calls Elvis racist, one video describing the article, and then the article ridiculing the perspective piece. I clicked the article itself and scrolled down to read the comments. 5,049 comments.

Do you see that. I will write it out. Before midnight there were five thousand and forty nine comments. Here are some highlights from the first few "Liberals see racism in everything", "libs are mad", "if it isn't anti-American or immoral libs don't like it!!!!", "the libs are nuts", "Liberal News Media", "Liberals complain about Trumps choices-too bad liberal snowflakes."

I could go on and on. In the Washington Post article I did not see one of the 390 comments decry the Republicans, they all criticized the stupid perspective piece. Fox News took that one little piece and made it into three stories that further divided our country. The Grand Canyon was chipped away by trillions of pieces of sand and water particles over thousands of years. Big divides come from little things.

The lesson here is two fold. First we must have a critical eye for the things we see around us from everything; the media, social platforms, books we read. An opinion piece was transformed into something rather significant, a spotlight was drawn to a trollish article and it in turn bloomed into a piece that hundreds of thousands were exposed to and took as an attack. An attack from the left to the right. A quick analysis showed though that even on the "liberal" side there was strictly dissension from the article, though this time without finger pointing except to the author of the article.

The second lesson is my point. We are what we consume. If we only consume junk, we will only expel the same. If I only put hatred inside of myself, I will only have hate to give. There is a massive mental toll on the things we see and hear throughout the day and we in turn speak that out into the world. Today my dad was a ill informed sand fleck on the Grand Canyon today eroding the divide between Americans in this country. And while I don't have the site view statistics on the Washington Post original article versus the three media posts (two videos, and one article) on the Fox News reaction to the article, I have to venture by the sheer spotlighting of it and the fact it had 13 times more comments than the original article it shows that it was exposed far more than the original would have been had it been left alone.

I will close with a few lyrics from a favorite song of mine based off of a Cherokee proverb.
Two wolves inside of me. Both of them hungry. At war inside of me. One overcome with love. One overcome with greed. Hate versus love. Worst enemies. Only one can live. Which one will die that's all up to me. Cause the one that survives is the one that I feed.

Stop feeding the hatred. It is clear which wolf was fed tonight.


Screenshots of comments and the articles for citation purposes:

The number of comments on the Fox News article

Washington Post comments

The troll authors credentials 

Assumption from Fox News commenter stating that anything Trump likes the left will not. The comments on the Washington Post article are in direct opposition to this statement. 

Fox News comment saying that "if it isn't anti-American or immoral the libs don't like it"   Again no one in the comments agreed with the Washington Post article

Showing the video link and article link by Fox News talking about the single Washington Post opinion piece

The Washington Post piece in the section of "Style" subsection "Perspective"

The first comment (of now 391 comments) on the Washington Post article. It is clearly not in support of this article

Other Washigton Post comments. Still no fans of this article.

Annoyance that someone thought this was worth criticizing Trump for.

And the best comment from the Washington Post article. "I don't like Trump, but come on! This is exhibit A for why we are so divided nowadays." I couldn't agree more.