I did it. I unfriended a Facebook friend. A person who was a peripheral part of my friend group in high school. A person who re-entered my life through Facebook years ago. A person who I have seen in person about five times in the last eleven years, but who I conversed with regularly on Facebook. This is a person who is the poster child for some of the awfulness of the GOP. He will tell people in “private” that he hates Trump, but takes to Facebook repeatedly to defend him, and to belittle those who criticize (in the same kind of name-calling tone that Trump embraces). He considers himself to be socially liberal, and fiscally conservative, but he genuinely believes that he is discriminated against for being a white male. The string of text messages calling me a “pussy” that followed (and led to me blocking his phone number also) made me more comfortable in my decision, but I still have mixed feelings.
Tag: FaceBook
Politics and brand loyalty
I spend a lot of time writing about politics, thinking about politics, and conversing about politics in person and on social media. I am liberal in my approach to most things, and I almost always prefer the candidate from the democratic party over the candidate from the republican party. The things I write about, and comment about on social media, have a pretty clear left lean to them. Even if you don’t know me, and haven’t read anything else I’ve ever written, you would probably guess that I’m pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-immigration, pro-universal health care coverage, I support safety net programs to help those in need, and I am against tax cuts for the rich. I fit the identity in many ways. You’d be wrong to guess that I was vegan (I love to eat, and love to eat a variety of foods, including meat), and you’d be wrong if you guessed that I was against agricultural innovations like GMOs. But here’s what got me thinking about the topic of this post: I don’t feel the need to hide it when I disagree with the democratic party, or when I disagree with something said by a politician that I otherwise support. I also don’t feel the need to hide it when I agree with something said by a politician that I otherwise loathe. That doesn’t seem like it should be shocking to anybody, but I’m not sure that it’s the norm.
Enough
These are hard times. I can handle people who disagree with me about policy. I can handle if you think taxes should be lower and I think taxes should be higher. I can handle if you want a private sector solution and I want the government to do more. I can handle if you think that we haven’t found the right balance of how to help those in need. I can even handle if you think we should use our military more or less than I do. But I still can’t handle if you don’t seem the least bit bothered that a president you love is also loved by nazis. After the election, I hit a low. I wrote about it here. I bounced back from it a bit since, but I’m back to where I started again.
Hitting Bregma 