Americans are angrier than they've been in a generation. Maybe angrier than ever. A lot of people are spewing bile.
Most aren't.
Don't get confused by social media and the outrage du jour. The majority may be angry, but it's still largely silent. Or at least reasonably polite.
Everybody isn't screaming.
Richard Nixon used the term "the silent majority" in 1969 to describe what he considered the majority of Americans – a mass of folks who supported the Vietnam War, but didn't take to the streets as antiwar protestors did.
Nixon may have been wrong – he sure was within a few years, when most Americans opposed the war – but the phrase stuck. Variations of it have been used many times, with varying degrees of accuracy.
However, when I say "the silent majority," I don't mean one side of the political debate. I mean the people screeching on social media aren't the majority.
They're the loud minority.
Think about that the next time you get irritated about people being mean or hostile or dishonest.
They may be right. They may be wrong. They're not the majority. Everybody isn't ranting.
Back when I was an editor at the Daily Republic, one of my duties was to monitor the online comments on the newspaper website.
People could post anonymously. There were key words that would automatically send a post to moderation, but people found ways around it: Using symbols instead of letters. Making slight misspellings. Making racist comments that didn't include a forbidden word.
I had to review comments a couple of times a day. I had to reject some comments that snuck through. I had to approve some comments that had been incorrectly flagged. I had to read all the awful comments.
I once heard a radio talk show host say he loved the listeners, hated the callers. I had a variation: I loved the readers, but disliked most commenters.
That's where we are now in political discourse. It seems like everyone is hostile and angry and mean.
However . . .
Remember that you only see on social media what is posted. You don't see what isn't posted.
You don't see the silent majority.
Seeing 10 tweets or 10 Facebook posts that are outrageous doesn't mean that everyone is outrageous. It means that those 10 people are outrageous. They want you to hear their opinion. They are angry and want blood.
The majority of us may be angry. We may be passionate. We may be convinced we're right and the other side is wrong.
But most of us aren't screaming it from the rooftops, posting it on Facebook, tweeting it or even commenting on it on newspaper websites. Most of us aren't insulting those who disagree with us.
Social media makes us seem meaner, although it really just amplifies what was already there. The past four years has seen an unprecedented level of vitriol in politics. You can decide who's to blame (I know who I blame), but don't make the mistake that everyone is mean and everyone is hostile because "everyone" on social media seems that way.
The silent majority may be angry and may have strong opinions. But they don't post them all the time and bore us.
Most of us are still civil.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
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