I want to be clear about something before anyone interprets this as me defending Trump: I am not a Trump supporter. I consider him one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, and I have very little interest in defending either him or his political agenda.

That is precisely why I have a problem with memes like this being presented as factual arguments.

The USS Abraham Lincoln really did return to port after an extraordinarily long deployment. The photograph is real, and the ship genuinely looks rough after spending months at sea. But using that photograph as evidence that Trump somehow left the U.S. military looking like this is misleading. The Lincoln had just completed a 286 day deployment, including roughly 208 consecutive days at sea and about 200 days in a combat zone. That is actually a far more legitimate thing to criticize. Keeping a carrier and its crew deployed for that length of time raises serious questions about operational tempo, maintenance, readiness, crew fatigue, and the strain being placed on the Navy. Those are substantive criticisms that deserve discussion.

Instead, we get this stupid little meme that takes a completely legitimate photograph, strips away all of its context, and presents it as though it is evidence of something it does not actually demonstrate. That is intentionally misleading the people who see it, and then encouraging them to repeat the misinformation because it supports an agenda.

That’s the problem I keep seeing on Lemmy: a legitimate political point gets wrapped in misinformation because the misinformation makes the meme more effective. People then repeat it because it supports a conclusion they already agree with.

I don’t think that’s acceptable simply because the target is Trump.

One of the things that infuriates me about Trump and his political movement is their willingness to manipulate facts, exploit outrage, selectively present information, and construct narratives that are technically based on something real while being fundamentally misleading. We shouldn’t respond to that by adopting the same tactics.

If we believe our position is actually stronger, then we should be able to make the argument honestly.

You can criticize Trump’s claims about “rebuilding the military.” You can criticize defense spending, procurement failures, maintenance problems, military readiness, the defense industrial complex, or the extraordinary deployment demands being placed on the Navy. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to make.

We don’t need to manufacture evidence to make those arguments.

If our standard becomes “misinformation is acceptable when it hurts the people we dislike,” then we’ve abandoned the very standard we’re supposedly defending. Worse, we’ve made ourselves vulnerable to exactly the same rhetorical tactics when they’re used against us.

Being better than Trump and his political movement means more than disagreeing with them. It means refusing to become comfortable with the methods we condemn when they’re politically convenient.