To start, this piece is meant to share my opinion as perception, not necessarily truth. These are my own personal views and thoughts. You have full right to call me a hypocrite for a lot of parts of this piece, because in all honesty, it is very hypocritical. There is my legally binding disclosure (if only)…let’s go!
She is all over the internet. Love her or hate her, you probably have seen a Tomi Lahren video shared on Facebook at least once.
I am not the biggest fan of these videos.
Here are some of the issues I have with these videos…
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and Tomi is no exception, but there is a difference between speaking opinion as an opinion and speaking it as fact. “Final Thought” videos do the latter.
The videos seem to have a message that there is only one way “to America,” when that is far from the truth.
These videos rarely have factual evidence. Most examples are fallacy and anecdotes, which are good in moderation, but as anyone who paid attention in their Pubic Speaking 101 class knows that both of those things should be avoided in informative speeches, which is exactly what television-journalism really is.
Simplification is something I love, but the deep-rooted issues that America has been struggling with for years can’t be summed up in a three-minute rant.
The videos have a harsh rhetoric toward minority groups in America.
The videos have a lot of anger in them.
The videos seem to perpetuate specific worldviews, which is ok, but the beautiful thing about worldviews is that thousands of them exist.
Now here are my “Final Thoughts”
In all honesty, I feel really bad for Tomi Lahren. She has been pigeon-holed and is loved or hated for the narrow view of her that the people of social media have created. Tomi is a human being and is entitled to her opinion, but she is a human with influence, so she needs to be careful.
Here is my strongest conviction with these videos.
We don’t need this, and Tomi Lahren doesn’t need to do this. She is a young, beautiful woman who is very driven. The fact that she is a household name as a reporter at the age of twenty-four is an incredible feat, but with that comes a lot of influence.
I understand the drama of media and that really is what these videos are, but we underestimate the power of influential rhetoric. People are constantly looking for affirmation of opinions, but our opinions are not meant to change the world, they are meant to form us personally.
These final thoughts are not productive, they only create more division. To be blunt, I typically only see white people sharing her videos on my news feed and non-white people usually share videos bashing her. These are equally harmful to society. This might not be the truth on everyone's Facebook feed, but it is for mine. (This is a pretty strong anecdotal fallacy if you want to point it out when you get mad at me).
She even admits that the country needs to be unified, but how can we do this if we are not open to others?
I do not hate Tomi Lahren, but I do hate “Final Thoughts” videos because of the danger that comes with them, not the opinions.
People who think different than us are never going to go away. We need to learn how to interact with those who are different than us.
The more we close ourselves off from people who are not the same as us, the farther we move away from truly living in community. We move into a world that is the middle school cafeteria with the “cool table” and a table for people who do not belong.
All of our actions (including the sharing of a Facebook post) send messages to other, whether the messages that are being received are true or not is out of our control. If we keep sending messages of exclusivity, our country will only continue to grow in exclusivity.
If we lived life in a bubble, we would truly miss the beauty that is around us, unfortunately, we keep trying to surround ourselves with what we want to hear, instead of what we are supposed to hear.
The world is a complex, and difficult place to live, but is still an amazing and lovely place filled with people similar to the place they dwell.
This country will only come together by unity. Unity does not mean agreeing on everything, but agreeing that we are all different people working together.
Love Tomi’s opinions or hate them, the conversation can’t stop after the outro music of the three and a half minute videos fades. We need to grow and learn from each other instead of just trying to prove each other wrong.
