Random Crap On Facebook, Part Deux

I swear, I have GOT to learn when to stay off that damned site. Unfortunately, I am hopelessly addicted…..and even more unfortunately, I have a low tolerance for political bullshit.

I don’t get it. Somebody needs to explain to me how it is that some folks can talk about wanting tolerance and despising hate, but when I don’t agree with everything they say, they show me INtolerance and hate. It drives me straight up a wall, and while I can go for long periods without calling anybody out on their shit, there is a breaking point, and I reached it this morning.

Although I’m fairly conservative politically, I have several VERY liberal friends who are well-read and intelligent, but who post stuff from far-left websites that’s so outrageous it’s insulting. I have issues with this for a couple of reasons; one, quoting verbatim from the Daily Kos and Mother Jones is intellectually lazy, and two, those ‘publications’ handle polarizing topics with all the sensitivity of a ten-pound sledgehammer. And while the same can certainly be said of right-wing sites like The Tea Party and Chicks on the Right (the latter of which I adore), I don’t feel the need to use them to make my friends feel like dogshit for their beliefs.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. In fact, most of my FB friends know when I’m getting manic because that’s when I start arguing politics and posting memes from my own favorite sites. But today, I lost it when a friend posted a story from some hard-core lefto site whose message was basically that white people deserve to be ashamed of their race because of the atrocities some of our forebears committed upon blacks.

I am absolutely NOT going to get into the politics of race. I make no apologies for disliking President Obama and the way I think he’s ruining the country. However, I don’t think he’s a bad person, and I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what ethnicity he is. In fact, I am one of the least prejudiced people I know……it just never occurs to me to think badly of a person because of the shade of his or her skin. We all bleed the same color, we all are made in the same fashion, and we all love our children the same way.

So when this friend’s post launched into a story about a horrendous attack on a black community in Florida in the early 1900s and wound up as a screed against whites in general, I was PISSED, and I posted a rant of my own. She posts literally twenty or more quotes every day that attack, belittle, and demean anyone who thinks like me, but this one was the capper. I wish I knew how to filter this stuff out of my news feed; she knows perfectly well how I feel about it, and while I would never ask her to change her belief system, a little respect for mine shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Now I’ve got a choice: I can either learn to ignore it somehow—even though it’s in my face every fucking day—or unfriend her. I’m all about listening to the other side of a story, and I do try not to take any of this shit personally; but I don’t need to get whacked over the head with a two-by-four every time I log on to FB. It’s not good for either my blood pressure or my state of mind, and politics just isn’t worth blowing a gasket over.

I know…..that ship already sailed. Maybe it’s time to take a break from the social network for a day or two, which will be like pulling teeth without benefit of anesthesia because I AM so addicted. Or maybe I should avoid it just when I’m sick, irritable, and full of piss and vinegar. Ya think??