I follow George Takei on Facebook. I was a big fan of the Star Trek tv series as a kid, and now as an adult, I've enjoyed the interesting things that George digs up on the internet and adds to his Facebook site. A little while ago, George posted something about a tragic situation in which a teacher went to the ER and was slapped with a bill for over $100,000 despite having health insurance. Having many friends and family members with various health issues, and in my professional career working with healthcare-related nonprofit organizations, I am well aware of the crisis state our ineffective healthcare system is in. I left, what I thought, was a pretty benign comment about how sad this situation was, and that it was my wish that the leadership of our country would find a healthcare system that would effectively insure all Americans, so no one has to go bankrupt just to receive care.
I checked my FB page later that night, and I had responses to my comment ranging from "thumbs up" positive to people calling me everything from a communist to a socialist traitor to a freeloader to a deadbeat whose health insurance they shouldn't have to pay. No where did I say that I wanted my health insurance covered, I just presented a general idea. As I was reading through the vitriol I realized that for the past three years, I have seen more hatred an animus hurled my way through social media than I have ever experienced in my life.
I was not a popular kid in school, and my middle school years were kind of a nightmare. In the 6th grade, I sat across from a kid in math class who spent three months insulting my appearance leaving me with insecurity issues that would plague me for decades. When I was in the 7th grade, for about a month straight, I was stalked on my walk home from school every day by two girls who threatened to kick my ass. I've been in school yard fights, been punched in the face by a Nazi skinhead, and nearly had to physically take out a crazy former family member who decided she was going to try to get physically aggressive. None of that compares to the hatred I have faced in online interactions, and frankly, I'm exhausted by it.
I was really excited when FB started, because it was such a nice and easy way to keep in touch with people who I loved and cared about. There were friends who I cherished who I rarely had the chance to keep up with, because we were both busy parents and didn't have free time until the wee hours of the evening. FB allowed us to share our lives, our photos, and interesting things we found amusing. As FB added special interest pages, I followed those, because I liked keeping up on different topics, issues, artists, recipes, etc. It was always fun to see what was in my feed. Then it was 2015, and things took a bad turn.
I started to see a lot of hatred being spewed from everywhere. There was an election coming up and those who were conservative felt like they needed to get revenge on those who were liberal. Those who were liberal felt like those who were conservative were incapable of progress. We had candidates who seemed to exploit our differences for their own gain, and a willing public who seemed to want to separate themselves into tribes rather than come together as one people. It got so bad that there were even crazy talks about my state of California splitting into three separate states, because we were just too different to be one single state.
Here's the thing; we aren't that different. Not at all. If you go up to 98% of people on the street in any town in any state and ask them what they want this country to be, most will say that they want the U.S. to be a country of economic prosperity where they can have a good paying job that will support their family comfortably, they want good schools, low crime, and safe neighborhoods to raise their kids, they want good infrastructure so they don't sit in traffic forever and have nice parks and outdoor spaces for their families, and they want the country to be secure from any sort of physical and financial threats, so they can live comfortably and well for the longterm. Conservative or liberal, this is what every American wants, we just might disagree on how to get there.
Given this reality, it's high time we end all of this ridiculous hate. If you find yourself on the computer, late at night, calling someone something so vile that you would be absolutely embarrassed if anyone in your "real life" found out, then maybe you need to check yourself. Perhaps you need to sit down and figure out what is going on with you, and where all this misguided anger is coming from, then do something about it. Go out with some friends, get a puppy, have some nachos. Do something to make yourself happy.
I get that it was cool a few years ago that we no longer had to be "PC", but unfortunately, there were a lot of people who took it as a license to become unabashedly racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and just plain hateful. We need to restore civility to our dialog, and it starts by not leaving hateful and insulting comments, not responding to hateful and insulting comments, and maybe grabbing a Krispy Kreme or two instead of berating one of your fellow Americans.
