Rebecca’s Five Crazy Old Tips for Civil Political Discourse on Facebook

 

#1 Check your facts

I can’t tell you how often I see political memes on my Facebook feed, or links to various blogs with politically slanted news stories. I’d wager to say I get several in an hour during the busiest Facebook hours in the evenings. Some of these are legitimate. Sadly, the majority are things that probably have no basis in reality. For instance:

Bo the first dog has a gold dog dish, a personal masseuse who is also a communist Victoria’s Secret underwear model who walks him and has taught him to foxtrot on the taxpayer’s dime.

Or

An armed tea party group went to a local preschool and personally took food out of small preschool children’s mouths and kicked some puppies while lighting pictures of the president on fire on the front lawn.

The memes inevitable go on to say something like, “Oh the injustice”.

Just a hint here folks, just because something is on the internet, does not mean it is necessarily true. It does mean that it has caused some reaction in your mind that made you so concerned/upset/enraged that you decided to share it with your friends. Did you check to see if it was true??? It usually only takes a moment or a brief Google search to find out if Bo gets his toenails clipped by a thong clad Naomi Campbell. (The answer is no, he does not. In case you were wondering.) There are even websites out there that are dedicated to fact checking. They can tell you if right wingers were pasting copies of the constitution to weeping minority children in Detroit. (No, they did not.)

Spreading correct information can help us all learn something. Spreading incorrect information just to make the other guys look worse just serves to make your side seem even crazier.

#2 Think before you link, Know when to scroll.

We all have that friend who reposts every single news story or blog post that comes along that serves to bolster their own opinion about everything. Could it be though, that you are that friend? Think about it. Did you join Facebook just to repost a bunch of blog links that most people aren’t really interested in, just to upset or alienate the other group of friends that doesn’t agree with you or did you join so that you can keep in touch with friends and relatives and post pictures of what you are eating for dinner?

It’s really simple. Just take a moment before you post that link and ask yourself, “Is this really constructive? Does this further my relationships with those I care most about? Would I want to make my crazy Aunt Mabel who makes meow mix casseroles and dryer lint quilts to read this and engage in political discourse with me?”

If your answer is “No”, it’s probably ok to skip the link. You can always private message the link to those that you think would most enjoy it. You can still share your moral outrage, and prevent awkward discussions with people you’d rather not talk politics with anyways.

Remember that these people who are your friends are your friends for a reason. Maybe you are related. Maybe you are married. Maybe you work together. Maybe you both share a dark secret about a midget nun hooker in Vegas. Whatever the case, think about it before you post it. Is it guaranteed to cause a fight? Do you really want to post it?

By the same token, know when to scroll. There is always going to be THAT GUY. You know, the jerk face relative or co-worker that you can’t gracefully unfriend or block who is constantly posting stuff that is inflammatory and insulting despite you linking him to this fantastic post. You know who he is. We all have one. Or two. Or ten. When you see this jerk face’s posts, don’t engage. Just scroll. Move along. It’s just not worth even reading what they post most of the time, so save your 3 seconds and ensuing indigestion and just scroll by. As you scroll past, make sure you call him a few names worse than jerk face under your breath. You will feel better, and anyone around you will be wondering if you are referring to them and might be a little nicer to you the rest of the day, just in case.

#3 The media has only one agenda

That agenda would be money. Yes, that’s right folks. You heard it here first. The media is out to make money. They are businesses. Run by business people. Fox News? CNN? MSNBC? Yup they are all out for your wallet.

“But wait!” you say. “The Gay Liberal Agenda!” or “The Christian Right!”

No.

If you were to call the average American in his home on any given Saturday morning and ask him his agenda, the conversation would probably go something like this, regardless of their political, sexual, racial, or religious persuasion.

Me: Hello sir/ma’am, can you tell me about your personal agenda?

Average American: Well I was thinking about mowing the lawn this morning, then maybe I’ll catch up on some tv and perhaps char a hunk of animal flesh on the grill for dinner tonight. Wait, hold on, what was that honey?

*pause*

In the name of all that is holy, send help! The significant other just said we were going to Ikea to shop for shelving.

Me: Enjoy your meatballs and misery, sir/ma’am.

Now if I were to call the average CEO of a media corporation, the conversation would be a little bit different. More like this:

Me: Hello sir/ma’am, can you tell me about your personal agenda?

CEO: My agenda is to sell a bunch of advertising to a bunch of other companies looking to sell products to consumers in a certain demographic. In order to serve our advertisers, we gear our programming to attract the demographics that our advertisers are looking to sell things to. We don’t lie or make news up most of the time, but we do present it in the way that appeals most to the demographic the advertisers are most interested in selling to. Then I take all of the money that I earn and use it to buy extravagant yachts, furnish them in things that are upholstered in the hides of small endangered animals, name them after ex-lovers and sink them in the ocean. Hey, we all need hobbies. 

Me: ….. Mr. Donaghy?

Now this isn’t to say that you can’t get good or accurate information from news outlets. It’s certainly there. A person who chooses to educate themselves can easily find the truth of the matter. A person who doesn’t choose to educate themselves on issues may find that they are only getting a portion of the story. And a super magic mini eggplant dicer.

Remember that next time you hear the keywords on the news. “Jackbooted thugs” is a personal favorite reference for the “gay liberal agenda” and the “Christian Right” as well. Can you imagine all the namby-pamby, limp-wristed, flower-wearing jack-booted thugs on the left? It’s like the Gay Hippie army and they are here to wallpaper. Or the Church Lady brigade on the right. They are here to make sure all your sex is missionary and that you use a coaster on the furniture. Hallelujah.

#4 Can we cool it with the generalizations?

Why do we feel the need to lump everyone into one of two groups and automatically assume that they all believe the same thing? Not all Liberals are pot-smoking, Godless hippies who are trying to sell their food stamps so they can get abortions. Not all Conservatives are white, bible thumping rich people trying to force third grader to carry guns with which to shoot gay people and illegal immigrants.

There are black, atheist conservatives. There are rich, white liberals that don’t have ties to Hollywood. There are transvestite Asian libertarians. There are Muslim-Catholic Pakistani-Hispanic families who seem to lean politically towards the New York Giants. (I know this family. They do the diversity thing the right way. I also hope to end up in Queens one of these days because I imagine dinner at that house is rockin’.) It takes all kinds to make our crazy world go ‘round.

It would be like saying “All women like to wear aprons.” Some women do, sure. Some women would as soon make you eat that apron as wear it. Some of them may be your wives and girlfriends. You’ve been warned.

The next time you go to lump all people of one political persuasion into a group like that, stop. Not everyone who voted one way or another believes the same as every other person who voted that way. Not every Republican thinks Reagan was a God. Not every Democrat thinks that no one should be able to say a prayer.

What if instead of making generalizations, we asked questions? What if we all got to know each other a little bit better? Chances are that if we left our political leanings out of conversations about what we all believe, we’d probably find that many more of our mutual views as humans coincide rather than conflict. I’m pretty sure no one finds it objectionable to make sure hungry children get fed, or that illiterate people learn to read, or that we all have jobs and maybe make a little more money. That hunk of beast for the grill isn’t going to buy itself. The way most of us differ on issues is more one of how things are to be accomplished, not that they are issues. Learn about each other. Ask questions instead of making pronouncements. Perhaps if we do, we might start to find solutions. You may also find yourself eating fewer aprons.

#5 We are all on the same side in the end and it’s ok if we don’t all agree on everything.

The best part of our country is that we can all pretty much do and say what we want within a certain moral framework without the fear of repercussion from our government. We tend to forget that just because something can be said without fear of government intervention, it doesn’t mean that a thing SHOULD be said. There are still social consequences for what you say. I’m not going to go around saying that my crazy great Aunt Mabel smells like meow mix and mothballs and not expect some response from my crazier cousin Billy-Bob who is Mabel’s favorite and just can’t live without his dryer lint quilt.  It’s just the way the world works. It’s still okay that I think Aunt Mabel may be a few deliveries short of a chicken and liver dinner. It’s even ok for Cousin Billy-Bob to wear nothing but his dryer lint quilt wrapped like a toga around himself while wearing lipstick and watching foosball tournaments on ESPN2 in the privacy of his own home. We are all entitled to our opinions. That doesn’t mean that we have to force our opinions on everyone else, and should they have different opinions, that they are lesser people. When you get in a disagreement with your brother about politics on Facebook, or around the dinner table, remember that this is the guy that you stayed up late at night with daring each other to stick progressively larger Legos up your noses. You probably care about him more than his politics.

The second best part of our country is that everyone’s opinions and beliefs create the framework for a vast and varied dryer lint quilt of people. If we all believed the same thing and nobody’s opinion differed, we’d all be eating the meow mix. It even says so on our money, E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, One. We are all Americans. We are all on the same boat. Ultimately we all want the same thing. We want to be free and live in a nice country where we can enjoy our lives of mowing the lawn and watching Lost on Netflix without the fear of jackbooted thugs knocking down our doors or significant others forcing us into crowded warehouses to discuss the relative merits of sofa slipcovers. Let’s try to remember that. Save Facebook for the really important things, like discussion, learning, trying to make each other better and posting photos of our significant others eating apron lunches at Ikea after telling you that the sofa you picked out looks like something that belongs in a sunken yacht. Leave the rhetoric for the political pages you subscribe to. Opinions are like nose Legos. Everyone has one, no one wants you sticking yours in their nose.

Besides, in the end, it’s not about sitting around waiting for suited stooges in one city to make decisions for us. It’s about us as a people coming together, discussing our needs and finding solutions that work for as many people as possible and then telling our stooges what to do and how to do it. Remember that those stooges are our stooges. Let’s stop being theirs.