Recently, I received a series of reproachful email messages from a close friend of 30 years, in response, he said, to the post on this site about the Tea Party (with which he claims to have no affiliation and know little about).
Based on that post, he accused me of being a socialist, a Nazi, a racist, crazy, a follower of Jessie Jackson, and, furthermore, suggested at least a couple of times that people in general and I in particular do not have the right to live wherever we choose in the country (this latter suggestion is so outlandish that I assumed he was joking the first time he made it, but he subsequently clarified that he was not). There were some other accusations and personal attacks in there as well but they all sort of rambled and one thought did not necessarily follow another in a way I could understand and I could almost sense rage behind his broken, jumbled, and repetitive prose. He made it clear in them however, that we were no longer friends.
To suggest I am not very upset by this would be untrue. I take friendship very seriously and it never occurred to me that our friendship would ever end, much less over uncertain views of mine that I never approached him with and which he had to seek out. Certainly, it would seem to me that there is more here than is meeting my eye, but I don't know what to do about it.
So, all very strange and disquieting. But it would seem to be a sign of the times ... How often are people being un-friended these days for forwarding intolerant, bigoted, email messages to everyone in their address books? Not often enough, apparently, or they would not keep doing it. But suggest tolerance and moderation and that is going too far.
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Mike, what's clear here is several things are happening all at once. First, this country is grinding toward its inevitable splintering. What I mean here is that things have gotten so wide spread and information has become so biased to whatever group puts it out there, that folks just don't know what's real/true anymore, thus they chose to believe the "news" that tends to follow what is right to them. Secondly, knowing that people are not always objective and will fight to the death for a cause or belief which they hold "true", hate, bigotry, racism, all words to define fear of the unknown, becomes more prevalent. Third, the people who are distributing their version of information, realize what they are doing, and are not in any way ashamed to lead whatever army they can muster for their causes. Fourth, people are unable to face what they fear with any kind of rationality, so if you throw a scary term on something, it instantly becomes what the person who hears the word fears. Making rationality a mute point. I believe there will be a revolution in the country, sooner or later, and it will be because people are so afraid not to fight the battles which they are being told are necessary, that they feel compelled to march on without being able to understand fully the repercussions of their actions. There is no place on the internet, television, or radio where people are getting the actual truth, because this is a capitalist society, and the news, just like every other money making venture, is paid to spur people on to war, whatever their sponsors deem that to be. Finally, people are tired, they are frightened of their own mortality, and life with all of it's social networks, and connectability has gotten more and more lonely for them. They simply do not have the energy to go out and find the truth, it is so much easier to be told what to do and think, no matter how repugnant some of us find that notion to be.
ReplyDeleteAs for your friend, I think he had some other reason to unfriend you, and he used this as an excuse.
This may be a bunch of jibbering, but I felt compelled to answer you.
Julie Galbraith
I think you understood exactly what i said . Based on the postive reasons for unfreinding you mentioned in your last paragraph. Calling a whole bunch of people racist because thier political beliefs differ from yours is intolerance. I think that now seeing that Bill Clinton and President Obama backed the key provision of all the various groups associated with teh tea party, not raising taxes this year a colunm on how they are racist bigots since they agree with the tea party is due. If that is what you really believed then.
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