Remember when I wrote about the dumbest Facebook comment ever and how I said I was kind to the poster because an ongoing personal issue had made me short tempered?
Well the author of the stupid comment made like his president elect and doubled down on his initial remark and let off a slew of equally dumb, if not dumber remarks.
I took a moment to consider whether he was trolling us, decided he wasn’t and wondered if the person he was friends with had any idea what kind of person he was.
The Stealthiest Ninja
When you are the stealthiest ninja you make a point to think about whether you want to engage in a Facebook disagreement.
It is hard to maintain your cover and anonymity when you set out to eviscerate someone by showering them with fact and logic or alternatively work to strip them of whatever cover they choose to take.
Furthermore when you think about some of the things you have seen your Facebook friends post you wonder if it makes you hypocritical to go after another.
In this case I chose not to worry about hypocrisy because I felt it was important to point out some of the inconsistencies in his argument just in case there were others who thought he might be correct.
This whole mess started with a post about a Neo-Nazi March whose intent was to terrorize and intimidate the Jewish community in a small town.
I wonder if the foolish commenter saw today that multiple Jewish organizations across the US were evacuated because of bomb threats.
It is the second time in about two weeks or so.
This is unacceptable and won’t be tolerated.
Makes me think of a bad joke we sometimes make about our holidays.
“They tried to kill us. They lost. We won. Let’s eat.”
And we move on.
Once More Into The Breach
Dylan finishes singing about Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door and Jagger follows up with Visions Of Paradise.
I look out into the Texas night replaying events from a couple years past and determine that given the same opportunity I would play them the same way because I did the best I could with the information I had at the time.
It offers some solace but not as much as I want but there is nothing I can do about that because I am dealing with the consequences.
We’re almost one year into it and I am frustrated because I feel like I am playing a game I barely understand with rules that change by the moment.
It is harder than anything I have faced before because there is no walking away or turning around here, not that I am prone to giving up.
But this is different in multiple ways not the least of which is it is far more challenging to try and obtain any perspective, but I do my best and remind myself of the Superchicken motto, “you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”
It is true, I did.
I understood it to be a life long commitment and I have no regrets about having taken it on.
The advantage of being in it for the long haul is I don’t need to win every battle, I just need to win the war.
Dylan comes back on singing Forever Young and isn’t that appropriate.
This parenting thing isn’t for the weak at heart or those who scare easily.
Fortunately neither describe me and so I throw myself back into the breach once again hoping this time I have a better solution than the last.
How Facebook Destroyed Friendships
I need to focus on something other than the one that leaves me grinding my teeth and or makes my stomach ache.
When I stay busy I slip from its grasp and stop pondering, worrying and wondering but I can’t work or work out all day.
I read lots of magazines and more than a few books but somewhere in between I like to mix in mindless entertainment.
Enter Facebook.
The advent of the most recent presidential election and the division introduced new levels of stupidity and rancor there.
Most of the time I find it easy to look at opinions I disagree with and not care because I don’t need all of my friends to agree with me.
I don’t live in an echo chamber nor do I want to.
But not everyone finds that easy to do and I hear from many people who tell me they have unfriended lots of people because they found their political beliefs to be intolerable.
Sometimes I hear from others who tell me they find my own to be awful and they tell me to shove off and then click the unfriend button.
And every now and then I find someone to be too obnoxious for my taste so I get rid of them on my end, but when I unfriend you I don’t say anything.
If I don’t want to be connected to you there is no purpose in giving you a reason. Chances are we were never very close and probably don’t talk outside of Facebook.
There is something very sad to me about it all, the anger and division.
Sometimes it is easy to say Facebook made it easier to identify the racists and the crackpots but those aren’t always accurate descriptions of those we cut loose.
It is what we sometimes say to make ourselves feel better about severing ties.
Think For Yourself
A man sends me a note telling me about how I am no smarter than a steer following the others. He says if I learn how to think for myself I’ll be a much happier person.
I read it, click delete and move on.
There is no upside in telling him anything. I don’t care if he thinks I am a leader, follower or fool.
I have too many other things going on in my life and no time for this kind of nonsense. Those I love and or care about are those who get my attention.
And that is as it should be.
Early this morning, Trump retweeted a quote from some reverend who had said Trump didn’t divide America, it had always been that way.
Maybe so, but he sure as hell is proficient at fanning these flames.
Same with Facebook. Zuckerberg and his crew harp on about connecting the world, not really realizing that the world can be a pretty shitty place, and Facebook’s acceptance of fake news for advertising dollars only goes to exacerbate that shittiness.
If there’s one thing I’m grateful of with Trump’s election, it’s that I got to see the “real” people behind some of my connections on Facebook. And promptly got shot of them.
People will always be idiots. The trick is in how much rope we give them to hang themselves.
I tend to agree that a lot of the ‘jerks’ out there have been and always were that way but Trump did a good job of helping them feel more comfortable about outing themselves.
The fake news is a big problem and something that saddens me because it reminds me about how quick we are to believe things that support our positions.
I’m willing to give some benefit of the doubt because some of the stuff that is pushed sounds plausible and isn’t so over the top as to be unbelievable, but not all.
It is important to be a careful consumer of content and some people just aren’t.