The following excerpt came to me via private message a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election:
“I enjoy a political discussion with someone who actually thinks, explores, and discusses – regardless of where we may agree or not. Although I couldn’t be more against Trump, I’ve invested in listening to him, tried to understand his positions, and tried to understand why his supporters can be so passionate.”
Mind you, this is just an excerpt – from which I gathered that the underlying assumption of this person was that I both supported Trump and that I was passionate about it. As I continued reading the rest of the message, I remembered something I saw in my facebook feed just a few days before I received this message. A quick click to their facebook wall. A few taps of the PgDn button on my keyboard and I found it.
A video meme with the caption: “REPUBLICANS RUSH TO CAST THEIR VOTES FOR DONALD TRUMP” and the looped video shows a big black hole in the middle of a vast field – with people speed walking straight toward it from all directions, their arms straight down by their sides to indicate a hypnotized zombie-like state. All the Trump voters were speed walking straight into a big black pit. You choose the message:
Are they sleepwalking?
Are they mindless and not paying attention?
Are they too blind to see the pit?
Are they just too stupid to avoid falling into it?
Or are they all insane because they are intentionally pit-bound?
(I won’t promote the video on my blog by embedding it. Here’s the link: if you want to add to the 3.1+ million views.)
As I watched the video on this person’s facebook wall loop over and over again and tried to reconcile it with the sentiment expressed in their private message, I suddenly heard Valerie’s voice yelling at Miracle Max:
See, I learned years ago that
whenever words and actions conflict, the actions carry the stronger – truer – message.
let me say that again.
whenever words and actions conflict, the actions carry the stronger – truer – message.
In this particular instance, the action of taking time and effort to post that video – and the mindset and motivation that led to posting that video – sent a stronger message than the seemingly patronizing invitation to be listened to with an attempt to “understand.”
#backtoyouValerie
And that video meme/private message dichotomy was NOT the only duplicity I was inundated with at that time – or since that time. Over the last year, there have been countless – and I sincerely mean COUNTless – posts by friends and family members mocking and deriding those who hold a different opinion than they do – on many issues. But IRL (in-real-life) conversations have been completely devoid of any acknowledgement that they hold strong negative opinions about people or that they expressed those opinions online by attacking “those people” with sarcasm, ridicule and outright contempt.
Not all who posted were 100% duplicitous. Some, (again assuming I was a “passionate Trump supporter”) actually blocked and/or unfriended me online while continuing (albeit awkward, Stepford and insincere) civil interactions with me in real life.
For instance, a family member posted:
“don’t give a f#&% who you are -friend, family, colleague – if you supported this man, unfriend me. Now. You have no place in my life.”
the day before taking the initiative to blatantly unfriend me, assuming I “supported” DT because I had the audacity to express an opinion that was intolerable by commenting that:
“talking about the character of HC and DT was like playing #GlobalThermonuclearWar.”
How that comment branded me a Trump supporter, I still don’t know.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been shunned by a family member because of an unfounded assumption and I only see this person once a year at most so the biggest impact of this particular online unfriending was the significant reduction of the overused and one-size-fits-all adjective “f#&%ing” in my facebook news feed.
Of course, duplicity was the unacknowledged elephant in the room when the internet-infused courage of this person deflated like a day old birthday balloon during real life interactions: what happens online, stays online.
Except, it doesn’t.
We do not have compartmentalized lives: online and IRL. Everything we post online is an expression of who we are, what we believe, how we think and how we feel. Online attacks aren’t excused or diminished by someone saying they were “just upset when they posted that.”
Our words and actions, regardless of whether they are online or IRL, reveal something of our true beliefs and our character:
“…surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.” [emphasis added] #IreadthereforeIquote
C. S. Lewis
The odd disconnect I have seen with regard to liberals (and I say this instead of Democrats, because one can be a D and be a centrist) is their supposed cherishing of inclusion, but if one believes politically or religiously differently, then one is immediately EXcluded. And mocked. I have friends thankfully all over the political and religious spectrum. I have not unfriended any of them for their differences, only because of their –as you say–duplicity. The endless reh reh reh (don’t know how to spell this) of how awful the other side is and how one should never be friends with them. And honestly, not one has been a conservative. What IS that?