Social Media

Social media is a place where everyone has an opinion. Unfortunately, most people express those opinions with anger, name calling, even threats.  It's as if your screaming loud enough or long enough, will make you right and the other guy wrong. It's a place where manners and even basic civility go out the window.  It's a place where obnoxious anger is confused with conviction or justice!

Personally, I love Facebook as a quick way to stay in touch with friends and family, but I have noticed lately that it does cause contentious feelings to arise in my heart, more often than I would like to admit.  I'm a lot like my dad who used to write "scathing" letters to people who said or did things he found to be contrary to his personal belief system.  Fortunately for my dad, he had some cool-off time to decide whether or not to mail them.  That's not an option on Social Media!  It is out of my head and onto my timeline before I have time to think!

No one wants to hear himself called a bigot, homophobic, a misogynist, even a Nazi. It is verbally abusive.  Personally, I am none of those things!  I am a loving, kind, compassionate, and patient person. I'm relatively intelligent, yet here I am letting a total stranger vent his or her spleen on me on social media.  I would not allow that kind of abuse in person.  Why do I rise to the bait when I see it in print? Just being on Facebook doesn't mean it is true!  I have to go to a more spiritual source for truth, and that can't happen is I allow myself to be goaded into my own anger by someone who doesn't even know me.

I was very ill last month and very depressed. I'd use my phone to connect to the world.  But because of my illness, my punch-roller wasn't working well (as in "roll with the punches?") I'd let something get to me and make me miserable for hours.  Why would any sane person do that to herself?

I have, therefore, decided that I am not going to post my opinions on Facebook - at least not in a disrespectful tone.  I am going to address my personal issues with what I see in the media that really bothers me.

#1 issue is listening to people with liberal viewpoints present vitriolic rants that are just a copy of other vitriolic rants when, most of the time, they don't have a clue what they are talking about. Even if they have good points, screaming those points at an inappropriate time or at the wrong venue. They often don't know their history, like the college student who tried to convince me that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in retribution for Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

If you were born after 1950 and didn't pay attention in history class (or weren't taught in history class) don't call anyone a Nazi, especially the President of the United States. You don't have to personally like the man to give respect to the office he holds.

I am not going to argue with anyone about what I am about to write.  It is my opinion and viewpoint based on my experiences in almost 74 years on this earth.  And, yes, I did pay attention in history class and have gone on to study historical issues that interest me like, the rise and fall of Hitler and the Third Reich. So I'm going to share my world by decades, beginning in the 1940s (and please note: I am a war baby, not a boomer.) 

I can't promise to post on a regular basis, but I will let you know on Facebook when there is a new post.  

Here we go!

copyright 2018 Kathleen R. Danielson