Though I do have strong political views, I'm always very careful about what I share and where. Sure, every once in awhile I will write a post on here, but that's rare. As for social media, I use Facebook and Twitter for different purposes. Twitter is where I post a lot of the political stuff I read, as well as making comments concerning news and politics (you can see my Twitter feed on the bottom right-hand side of this page). I haven't many friends there, mainly followers (around 1800 of them, too!), and so that's my politico go-to.
Facebook, on the other hand, is a place where I interact with people I've known from all facets of my life. Because of this, the only real political actions I perform there involve liking a post here and there. On occasion I will share something, but normally without commentary. There's no need to ever rile anybody up, especially in these times. I never try to engage anyone there out of the fear of creating animosity or even worse, public argumentation. That way, I keep my friends, regardless of their political affiliation. I mean, they are friends for a reason, right? I do have a few friends out there who do post political stuff from the other side, and when I do read what they write, it often takes great restraint not to engage. Thus the case with this so-called friend.
I'm going to call her JD. She used to be a fellow writer on Associated Content and Yahoo Voices, and we got to know each another through there, commenting on one another's pieces and such. For quite a few years, JD and I interacted a lot. She is s talented writer, and eventually we became FB friends.
Though I never was aware of her political views before, her page clearly showed that she had abandoned liberal ideals in favor of conservative ones during the last election cycle. That's putting it mildly, really, because from her posts you could see the transformation from her previous, likable demeanor towards a brash, in-your-face, outright liberal basher. Her posts often made me grimace, but out of respect for friendship, I always just kept on scrolling.
About two months ago, JD posted this to her page:
This post disturbed me, and the comments that followed, including phrases like locked and loaded'and oh, they're gonna find out what real anger is, really got my blood boiling. Those remarks were her own replies to her friends' own incendiery remarks on the post made it all just totally appalling to me. I didn't know what to do, so at first I saved it and then sat on it for awhile. I so much wanted to engage JD on this because to me this was serious stuff. Advocating Civil War? For Donald Trump? Pretty scary if you ask me.
I decided to report the post to Facebook. I didn't really care if she found out or not, but I thought this was too disturbing to leave alone. Within a week, Facebook contacted me to let me know that the post didn't infringe on any of their rules. Sigh! More about this another time...
So after this incident, which happened in May, JD and I continued to be on one another's friends lists, but hardly interacted. I believe that she unsubscribed to my feed a long time ago when she saw my political leanings, but I kept hers on mine. It's always a good idea to know how the other side is thinking. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, you know.
So just yesterday, JD posted something about how George Soros, liberal-leaning millionaire, was behind the whole Charlottesville thing. My jaw dropped, but as per my own way of acting on FB, I said nothing, but I did see that there were like 60 comments, so I began to peruse them. There was this one guy, another liberal friend of hers, who challenged her theory, asking for facts, to which she had none. He was polite and non-threatening in his remarks and he even posted links to prove some of the points he was making.
The now-famous right-wing talking points came up...libtard, snowflake, fake news, blah, blah blah, and every time she responded with a very condescending attitude, name-calling and at one point she even told him to f**k off. The guy never lost his cool, though. I've gotta give him credit for that. He even mentioned in one of his comments that if he was so wrong, then why did some of her friends like his comments. (I was one of them!) She had nothing to back up her claim.
Next thing you know, she posted one of those word boxes that are so popular these days saying that she was itching to clean her Facebook of dumb-ass liberals and how she wanted to get her friend count down to 1,000. Who's she trying to impress? A couple of hours later I received a notice that I had lost a friend. Guess who? Ah well! F**k off JD!
