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V11i9 Black and white thinking
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Narrated by Chad Fox

There was a time when disagreeing with your neighbor did not require deciding that your neighbor was a bad person. 

Granted, some of us may remember that time with a little more generosity than it warrants. After all, politics has never been gentle, and the Tri-Cities has never been a place where everyone sees taxes, schools, policing, immigration, growth, or government exactly the same way. I do not think that is a problem — a community that agrees on everything is probably not asking enough hard questions. What bothers me is not that we disagree; it is what we have started doing with those disagreements. 

Somewhere along the way, a policy position became evidence of a person’s character. If you voted for this person, you must believe all of these other things! If you oppose this policy, you must not care about those people! If you question a decision, you are against the entire institution! We take note of one position, and mentally construct the rest of the person around it. 

Social media makes this casual demonization as simple as a few clicks — you look at their profile, think about what they said in a comment, or see something you dislike, and boom! — they are a bad person. It is easier to be confrontational with a profile picture than with a person standing in front of you. Most of us would never walk up to a neighbor at Yoke’s, a school event, or a council meeting, and talk to them the way we may talk to them online. 

When public leaders participate in that culture, the cost is higher. They are not just another person in the comments — they carry the weight of their office or social position, as well as the perceived policy of the governing body they serve on or group they are aligned with. Whether they like it or not, public leaders are an example to the rest of us, and they shape civic disagreement.

In a very local example, earlier this year, NBC Right Now reported that Pasco City Councilmember Leo Perales shared an unverified claim on his councilmember Facebook page involving a student in a girls’ restroom at Chiawana High School. The Pasco School District disputed the underlying claim, and residents went to a City Council meeting to criticize Perales’ handling of the rumor and the communications surrounding it. 

Perales told NBC Right Now that he had spoken with several people connected to the situation and did not believe the district’s response settled the matter, even after Pasco School District investigated and refuted the allegations. 

There are plenty of legitimate policy questions in that conversation — people can disagree strongly about school restroom rules, parental rights, student privacy, state law, and how school districts handle sensitive issues. I am not asking anyone to give up their convictions in the name of being nice. But I think there is a more basic question that must be addressed: What responsibility does a public official have to verify allegations before spreading rumors to thousands of people?

That question is not left or right. It does not require anyone to change a position on transgender policy. It asks us to separate a policy disagreement from the people caught inside it. A kid in Pasco should not become collateral damage in an adult political fight. An ordinary family should not become online content. And having strong convictions does not absolve us of the responsibility of ensuring we only disseminate truth. To me, the standard is simple: If we are going to use the reach that comes with public office to tell thousands of people something about one of our neighbors, we had better be sure we have it right. 

Aside from the above incident, the Tri-City Herald reported that the Pasco City Council unanimously censured Perales in regards to his having disclosed sensitive or confidential information, and treating city staff disrespectfully. Perales denied leaking confidential information or mistreating employees, and described the censure as predetermined political persecution. The Herald also reported that after the vote, he posted an AI-generated image of himself with tape over his mouth on his campaign social media page. 

I am less interested in relitigating the censure than I am in what the whole episode says about how we handle conflict now. A councilmember should challenge city management. A mayor should challenge a councilmember when it is warranted. Elected officials should question spending, ask uncomfortable questions, and demand accountability. I would be concerned if they did not! 

However, being direct is not the same as being demeaning, and accountability is not the same as contempt. Turning every disagreement into the most dramatic social media version of itself may generate attention, but it does not necessarily generate a solution. The standard of discourse cannot depend on whose political team we think someone is on. If a conservative leader is out of line, say so. If a progressive leader is out of line, say so. If someone I normally agree with shares something unverified, or treats people poorly, I should be willing to hold that person to the same standard I would use for somebody whose ideology I generally oppose. Otherwise, civility is not really a principle, it is just another political weapon. 

Another recent example showing the weaponization of dissent is when Pasco had a very real policy disagreement over transportation funding. NBC Right Now reported that the City Council approved a one-tenth-of-one-percent sales tax to support road maintenance and transportation projects. Councilmembers disagreed over whether the need for road funding justified another tax on residents who are already dealing with higher costs. 

That is the kind of disagreement local government is supposed to have!

One person can look at our roads and say we are falling behind, that delaying maintenance only makes it more expensive, and that residents expect the city to take care of basic infrastructure. Another person can look at the same problem and say families are already stretched thinly, and the government should cut costs, pursue grants, or grow the tax base before asking residents for another dollar. Those are different priorities applied to the same problem. 

A person who supports the tax does not necessarily love taxes. A person who opposes it does not necessarily hate roads. Neither position is evidence of how much that person cares about Pasco. That seems obvious when we say it out loud. Somehow, it becomes a lot less obvious once we get into a Facebook comment section. 

There is research behind something I think most of us already understand from experience: anger travels well online. A large study of political posts on Facebook and Twitter found that language attacking or talking negatively about the opposing political group was especially effective at generating shares and retweets. More recent experimental research published in Science found that changing how much partisan hostility people saw in an algorithmic feed could actually change how negatively they felt about the other political side. 

That does not let any of us off the hook — an algorithm does not type the insult or share the rumor; we do. It does not decide that the person who disagrees with us must have the worst possible motive. That is all us! But we should recognize the environment we are operating inside — social media rewards the hottest version of the argument. Nuance does not usually go viral. “I disagree with this person, but I understand why a reasonable person might see it differently” is not exactly clickbait. Rage bait is much more effective.

That is one reason I think local leaders have a particular responsibility online. A national political personality may never meet the people being attacked in a comment thread, but a local councilmember might see them at the next meeting. A teacher who was attacked online may teach their child; a city employee may answer their permit question; a local business owner may sponsor their kid’s sports team. We are not anonymous political categories to one another; we are neighbors, and treating each other poorly online, even by accident, has real-world fallout that can hurt friendships and businesses. In the case of public leaders, it can create ethical or legal consequences for the communities they serve. 

So, how can we take a step to do better by each other online? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but before I post about somebody else, I consider the following: Would I say it the same way if that person were sitting across from me? Do I know that what I am sharing is true? Am I responding to what was said, or am I assigning motive because it fits the political box I put them in? Am I trying to solve something for my community, or am I just trying to make my side mad at their side? And if I hold public office, am I helping lower the temperature enough that people can hear the argument, or am I benefiting politically from turning the temperature up? 

None of this means we have to become timid. I do not want timid leaders, and I do not want people to stop calling out bad policy. Facts matter! Accountability matters! Sometimes an idea is simply wrong, and sometimes a public official deserves strong criticism.

But we should be able to say, “I think you are wrong, and I am going to fight your proposal,” without needing to add: “and therefore, you are a terrible person.”

Washington, DC can make nearly everything red versus blue. Cable news and social media platforms make money by keeping people angry, and turning that anger into engagement. But while the battles are raging online, we still have roads to maintain and schools to run. We still need police officers, firefighters, businesses, teachers, volunteers, and city employees. We still have to figure out growth, taxes, housing, public safety, and how to balance disagreements in an online world so the next generation isn’t living in a society that is constantly at war with itself. 

We are not going to agree on all of it, and I do not think we should expect to. Unity does not mean uniformity, or asking conservatives to stop being conservative, or progressives to stop being progressive. It means remembering that when the meeting ends, the person on the other side of that policy fight still lives here. Maybe that is what I want to see more of from our public leaders, and frankly, from all of us. 

Disagree. Ask hard questions. Check the facts. Hold people accountable. Defend what you believe. 

But when it is over, the person across from you still has to be your neighbor tomorrow. If we win every argument but lose the ability to live and work together, no one is really winning anything.

Bryan Verhei graduated with a degree in Political Science from Eastern Washington University and is currently a small business owner in real estate.

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