The TUMS were necessary. The whole event made me queasy. And the red, white, and blue TUMS were appropriate to the situation because they help me make my patriotic point.
Lavender hanky Bow Tie o’ the Day warned me, so it was my own damn fault. I went against my own recent “rule.” A few years ago, I decided it was best for my own happiness to not “talk politics” on social media. I don’t make a judgment about those of you who choose to talk politics on social media. If it’s your thing, keep doing your thing. In fact, I’m glad when anyone feels they have a responsibility to participate in the political life of our country. I wish more people would feel it is one of their responsibilities as a citizen to actually be a responsible citizen and to participate. We need to speak out, but we also need to actually do something.
Anyhoo… I lost my mind for a moment recently, and I began to read snippets of a political Facebook post and its comments, which had been accumulating for a couple of hours before my reading eyeballs came along. I then commented a correction to a “fact” which was in the post, which immediately eliminated the need for any of the political argument to continue. (Fortunately, these people accepted a fact for a fact.) Checking the veracity of that one, major fact would have kept the person who wrote the post from feeling the need to write and post it in the first place. And the dozen people who spent two hours becoming angry with each other about the politics they were arguing– well, they would have been able to spend that time more productively and more happily doing anything else. During said online conversation, participants were called vulgar names (including me); profanity was used (even at me); people were falsely accused of being traitors (as was I); more inaccurate “facts” were treated like God’s word. It made me sick to my stomach.
Rhetoric like that is why I made my no-politics-talk-online rule. Some people post things that have very little to do with the actual topic they are discussing and more to do with tearing down others for concluding something different than they themselves believe. That is not “discussing politics.” That is cultivating incivility, anger, and fear. Unfortunately, this is what most of the “political discussion” you can find in any media is like. And I must add that most of what you hear politics-wise in coffee shops, bars, the check-out line, and in living rooms is far too similar to the sketchy yelling and mocking you read and hear online. It’s not well-informed, and it’s not civil. I try to extricate myself from those kinds of conversations.
But I dig history and politics. I dig having conversations with people who see issues very differently than I do. I also believe it’s my duty as a citizen to participate in the workings of our relatively young country. I believe it’s my duty to spend time getting my facts straight, making sure what I have to say is logical, and then presenting my thoughts in a civil manner– even when arguing against something. Civility means you treat people in such a way that shows you don’t think you’re better than everyone who might disagree with you.
When I first made my rule, I couldn’t think of any situation where I could talk politics in civility at this time. Seriously. But I thought about how important it is to me to participate in real political discussion, and I thought about how much I’ve enjoyed these conversations my whole life. I have learned from those conversations. I have grown to respect people’s thoughts and ideas, even as they were world’s away from mine. I have learned to see how and why they came to their understanding of the issue. And they have learned from my thinking. If we hadn’t been friends before a “nice” discussion, we were friends after it. We could work together at that point.
I like to talk politics. I’ll continue to be fascinated by it. I’ll continue to be a responsible citizen, educate myself, and participate in the political process. But I won’t touch politics on social media. And I won’t discuss it in groups. I will sit with you, one-on-one, so we can look each other in the eyes and have a civil conversation about the current state of the US of A. I’ll even make you Rice Krispie treats if you want.