Toward the end of the Trump administration, the wife one of my cousins de-friended me on facebook because she did not agree with my political positions.
That’s well and good, really. That’s America, the ability to disagree.
Wasn’t good enough to de-friend me. She had make a big pronouncement of it, a public spectacle of it, if you will.
Her choice. Still America.
Bottom line of what she did, and maybe she doesn’t care, is that I probably won’t ever speak to my cousin again. He’s old, I’m getting old. We probably will have no more actual interplay on this earth.
I’m saddened. What I feel is a deep sadness.
I’m a writer. I write fiction and non-fiction. You can like or not like my fiction. You can agree with or disagree with my opinion pieces. As you wish. That’s America.
I’m also a researcher. Researchers learn to only cite peer-reviewed and accepted sources, those that are based upon scholarly study. They also learn to check out all sources to examine their veracity. They are taught that when one study is paid for by an entity who then determines it’s veracity — well then something smells funny.
You know like all the environmental studies our government relies upon, that our government has paid for and continues to pay for and whose funding depends upon results that support our government’s position. Stinks a little bit.
Researches also learn that when censorship comes into play, which is why 90% of the American people don’t believe the mainstream media anymore and less than 20% approve of our Senators and Congressmen — well then something smells funny and something is fishy.
As a free and curious person, that which they don’t want me to know is precisely what I want to know.
I don’t sit at an electronic device and press “like” then indiscriminately re-post other people’s opinions. I certainly don’t re-post without checking the veracity of what’s being said.
Of course I feel that my personal opinion is right. It’s my opinion. But I don’t criticize, threaten, hate or call names at people who don’t agree with me.
Such vitriol is well…deeply saddening.
Yesterday I happened to see a remark on facebook by a different cousin, same family. It was so filled with venom that I wondered how such ugliness came to be. My uncle, the father of this cousin, was the sweetest man in the whole world. My mother and he deeply loved each other as siblings. Of all the siblings, he was the most sensitively emotional and wonderfully sweet and caring.
I’m shocked that such a public display could come from a child of his. I’m further shocked that some of the “family” could simply like and/or approve of such a public display.
Where and when did we come to believe that such a tantrum could and should be publicly displayed?
It’s this publicly expressed and then the herd-like approval of such ugliness that makes me feel deeply sad.
All together, I fear we’ve lost what matters most within ourselves.
