Yesterday, I was unfriended by two people on Facebook and unfollowed by two blog readers. Welcome to the election high season!
You know, I have unfriended only one person in my long Facebook career. I don't even know when I started using the app actually--maybe 2009? Anyway, after the election of 2016, there was one friend of mine, a close personal friend in the past, who became so extremely aggressive and insulting that, yeah, I went ahead and deleted him. I don't really mind when people disagree with me, but it's the transition to personal attacks that cross the line between reasonable debate and simple rudeness that I find intolerable. Other than that however, I have no problem at all with examining viewpoints that differ from my own and certainly don't hold them against those who hold them. How else would I learn what other people believe and why they believe it?
But as with the period leading up to the 2016 election, one finds once again a fondness for slogans, repetitive falsehoods, and fashionable taunts ('snowflake') to be in vogue rather than any attempt at measured or intelligent debate. This makes interaction on the political level pretty much senseless. I for one am really not interested in blurting out familiar chants and platitudes, which seem all merely tools to be used in restricting one's own fuller appreciation of any issue or conflict.
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