Totally agreed. We have an imbalance of negativity in news media and that's resonating on social media, where people endlessly perpetuate bad or enraging news for more and more clicks. The other horrible aspect is how much it's polarizing us by showing us the worst in "the other side" and persuading us to hate each other. I talked about this at length in a post I made a few days ago that was a self critique of the left. People on the right believe that we're all social justice warriors literally burning buildings to the ground in response to someone who used the wrong pronoun coming to speak at a college campus, and people on the left believe that the right are all assault rifle carrying white supremacists who are going to murder all minority groups in their sleep. Both of those extremes are not at all representative of the majority, and in reality, most of us essentially want the same things, but we're all backing the wrong horse and supporting the worst people in an effort to keep our "tribe" on top.
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Absolutely. That's a discussion I have with my students in the classroom. Be careful of the politicized, polarising identity politics that divide us, and be careful of being in your own bubble. It's also my protest against the commemoration of war in Australia. It all smacks of not being aware of the forces that manipulate us into divisive tribes.
Thanks for reading. May your inner duck be powerful, always.