On January 18th, I posted a picture from the book I read at the time, The Presidents Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. I had come to the recounting of the 1960 election between Nixon and Kennedy and the telling of how Nixon responded to this electoral loss. Even though Nixon received reports of voting irregularities that he could have based a challenge on, he chose not to challenge, knowing that such a challenge would cause a constitutional crisis, the same crisis that has roiled our country for months.

A Facebook friend shared that post and someone that friend knows commented upon it. He used the first few lines of the two paragraphs visible in the picture to support his belief that Democrats have consistently committed massive voter fraud. His comment leads me to believe that he stopped reading at this point and thus completely missed the ramifications eloquently phrased at the end of the second paragraph. He selected only what he agreed with and ignored the rest.

This demonstrates the incredible danger of selective listening. When. we pick and choose the evidence we believe, we place ourselves on top of a stack of Jenga blocks while removing the very support on which we sit.