2012: To The Unfriendly Un-Friends Who Have Un-friended Me

It’s been a tumultuous year that has seen me suit up daily for insipid, Sisyphean ideological battles on Facebook. Thankfully, it has calmed down considerably since the beloved and prodigiously dull duo of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan took second place to the Harvard Zombie and his pet snapping turtle. None of this is really important though. Constitutional republics come and go but Facebook friends are forever.

Over the last few months I’ve noticed people disappearing from my news feed. It will usually happen that the comment of an ex-friend will appear on the status update of a current friend. I’ll look at the name and think, who is that person? Weren’t we friends? And I’ll be pretty sure we were, even if I’ve never been quite sure who they are. What happened? I wonder if it’s a glitch with Facebook. You know, a buggy thing. Like, it has nothing to do with the fact that every time he posted a picture of Willy Wonka with some scurrilous caption fulminating some moronic polemic, I pounced like a puma on a butterfly. And then the light bulb went off. Or on. Or…whatever. I had an epiphany. Friends were de-Friending me for political reasons. Passionately liberal Friends were taking exception to my conservative views and expressing their disapproval with an effete, though unequivocal, gesture: by unceremoniously cutting me off from the effulgent riches of their status updates.

Some people might be surprised to learn that Nashville is a liberal city. Tennessee’s 5^th Congressional district, which has included Nashville and Davidson County since 1951, has never had a Republican representative. And though a Democrat has won Tennessee in a presidential election only four times since 1952 (each time a southerner), the capital city has remained safely liberal. If the city as a whole leans liberal then the artists, songwriters, musicians, etc who give Nashville its identity, are the keepers of the flame. In other words, the music scene is made up of passionate, well-meaning people who have no idea what they’re talking about.

It is no secret that I am pathologically unable to avoid those futile skirmishes where nothing is accomplished but hurt feelings. It may account for the monstrous success I continue to defer. But seriously, who wants to hang around with a bunch of people who think alike? I might be an unrepentant partisan but I get along with everyone. I always have. It might be the result of my upbringing—being the youngest of six children in a nutty Irish-Catholic family. You can drop me in almost any social situation and I can hang. When I was a young construction worker I got along swimmingly with the felons I worked along side. And on those occasions when I’ve been seated next to a surgeon, a lawyer, an engineer, a professional oboist, or anyone whose accomplishments might, to an under-achiever, seem intimidating, I am always calm and personable. I carry myself with humility and confidence and we are both thus enriched. Why then do I seem to offend people on Facebook with such wicked consistency? I’ll tell you why.

Even the felons I’ve worked with had the good grace and first grade manners not to say things that are wantonly insulting. It’s a game we play in face-to-face social interactions--keep your opinions innocuous enough so that no one is quite sure what you're talking about. Why then do people, when freed from the constraints of traditional social decorum, write things that in the real world would likely get them punched in the face? Should I feel bad when I respond to a terrifically dumb ad hominem by someone with the policy acumen of a wheelbarrow with something sardonic and condescending (and funny!)? Do they have it coming? Am I no better than them? What am I to do when my efforts to discuss a topic seriously are met with typically flaccid demagoguery? The harder I've tried to proffer a direct, organized, non-demagogic conservative position on some feeble Facebook thread, the more I've been left feeling empty and diminished, as if I’ve been explaining Australian Rules Football to my cat.

Let's get something straight. It’s not that the liberals I know are dumb. Not at all. (Although I should clarify that some of the dumbest people I’ve ever encountered were attracted to liberalism because, let’s face it, what it lack’s in empirically supportable policy positions it makes up for with a superior promotions and packaging department.) The real problem seems to be that liberals really hate conservatives. They can’t stand to occupy the same space, breath the same air, or share the same internet with conservatives. I think this is a real shame. I’ve never considered a liberal unworthy of my friendship simply because he doesn’t understand the correlation between lower capital gains rates and higher capital gains revenue. I don’t base my friendships on frivolities. At least not political frivolities.

Anyway. The liberals are winning! You’d think they’d be more gracious. And, let’s be honest, it’s not like they’re fielding a Dream Team. I think future generations are as likely to marvel that the Democrats were able to give us a worse President than Jimmy Carter as they are to marvel at how the Republicans were able to lose to him. Be nice liberals. We don't have to be Friends, but let's not be enemies. 

Forgiveness is the fragrance

We humans are always on guard, we're too vulnerable to having our pride aroused, ready to become aggressive at the subtlest of perceived offenses. It is as naturally human as playing drums on the steering wheel or peeing in a swimming pool. (Don’t give me that look). You know those times when someone gives you a disapproving honk on the road for some apparent breach of etiquette? You respond by throwing your arms up in the air, as if to say “what!?”. And then the person honks again but longer this time to drive home the point that you are the very thing that is wrong with the world. Naturally you respond by driving five miles-per-hour under the speed limit with their car right on your tail so you can demonstrate how you deal with people who unjustly judge you. Then the person, at the first opportunity, speeds around you and flips you the bird. This is only one example of how one person’s pride, when it collides with another person’s pride, can escalate to a crescendo of comical and dangerous absurdity.

Okay, now lets start over from the beginning, only this time when you pull out in front of that car, you humbly and apologetically wave. Invariably the person who might have been eager to show disapproval now returns your wave with a humble and gracious wave of their own. I guess what I’m saying is, people will almost always return pride with pride and grace with grace. There are very few exceptions to this. Probably the only people who don’t innately adhere to this basic doctrine of human decency are Dallas Cowboy fans and people from Ohio. We are, all of us, eager to forgive because we are all carrying around our own burdensome compendium of human failings. We are quick to forgive because we long to be forgiven. It is good to be humble, but it’s not enough to be gracious to those who are gracious to us. The real trick is to be gracious to the prideful; to be kind and forgiving to those who, on the surface, appear not to deserve it at all. 

Test Run

Ever afraid to pass up the opportunity to be unoriginal and late for a fad, I've set up a blog that will allow me to share my tales of torpor and fictional triumphs with a disinterested universe. Never in history has it been so easy to create bad art and have it ignored by a billion people. The hope for most of us is to create art so bad that people find it entertaining, or at least more entertaining than their job which they are neglecting while they look for bad art and puppy pictures. Is this my manifesto? My mission statement (what's a mission statement, btw? I need one)? No, this is my test run on Blogwankers.shutthehellup.