By Louise Mathews
We have just returned from week-long trip via American Airlines and Delta. What a great country we live in! We can depart from friendly Savannah-Hilton Head International to pass through hectic Charlotte or Atlanta and end up in gawdy Harry Reid International, the gateway to the Entertainment Capital of the World.
Family whisked us to the sanity of Boulder City, Nev., where we ate, watched football, shopped, visited friends, observed Hoover Dam, and saw the mesmerizing Wizard of Oz at the Sphere (OK, Las Vegas).
On the first leg of the journey, I sat next to a very nice lady about my age. She hailed from Callawassie and was on her way to visit family for Thanksgiving, too. We exchanged pleasantries before the take-off, then settled into reading once we were in the air.
At some point, both of us stopped, and she surprised me by bringing up the topic of ICE raids, possibly because we were traveling to Charlotte. She expressed her dismay about the raids and the fact that ICE agents covered their faces.
I swallowed my desire to respond with, “So does Antifa,” but calmly stated instead that I thought they cover their faces to protect their identities because there have been so many threats against them.
My neighbor stated that ICE agents had raided elementary schools. I asked where that had happened. She didn’t know, but a group of friends and neighbors who met regularly to discuss politics said it had happened. I asked if everyone in the group shared the same political views; she said they did.
My father was an attorney, and often he would prod us to debate the news of the day. We were supposed to defend the position in which we didn’t believe. My next statement came out of that background.
“I think it’s much more interesting and even fun to have debates with a person who has the opposing view.”
To that she responded that I needed to watch more than FOX. She had probably spied the news app on my tablet.
I explained that I read the news; I don’t watch it because I was tired of the hysteria on news channels. Her response was that I should watch ABC or CNN. I said I try to get news from several sources, and that all news sources are biased.
Trying to lighten the tone of our conversation, I expressed a deeply held belief: “Well, politics isn’t everything.”
She retorted, “Tell that to the Jews!”
I stopped. I looked at her. I said, “I don’t understand”.
She said, “Politics was everything to the Jews in Germany.”
We were getting close to someone saying the new awful “N” word. I am convinced that most of the people who use that name have absolutely no idea what National Socialism was. They know there was a dictator named Hitler who killed millions of people, and probably they think the current President is a dictator, so they call him and people whose political thinking is right of center “Nazis.”
I responded with a statement to the effect that what happened in Nazi Germany was an extraordinary descent into evil that was way beyond politics … and that was it. Our plane was on final approach. We landed, said some nice pleasantries about the holidays, and went our separate ways.
On the next flight, I googled ICE and elementary schools. There have been many articles, primarily in the legacy media, about the possibility that ICE might raid schools, but to date ICE has not raided any elementary, middle or high schools. Department of Homeland Security spokespeople have been emphatic in stating ICE does not and will not raid schools.
What we had, in our discussion, was a good example of confirmation bias, which infects all of us to some degree. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, confirmation bias is “… people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional, and it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs.”
I read news mostly from sources that have a more conservative outlook. Obviously, I was sitting with someone who consumes mostly liberal media. I like to scan the headlines on realclearpolitics.com to see the 180-degree difference in viewpoints in the news. I know reading the opposing viewpoints sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable or even angry. I still try to read “the other side.” I listen as well, as friends hold strongly different opinions than mine.
The great thing is that we can read or watch the opposing viewpoints. We cannot all have our own facts, but we can have our own opinions, which is one of the reasons we live in such a great country.
Louise Mathews retired from a career in community colleges, and before that, theater. A 13-year come-by in Beaufort, she has been a dingbatter in North Carolina and an upstater from New York.
