Me 5
Them 5
Just when you thought Donald Trump couldn’t say anything more ignorant, he comes up with this Tweet about four US Congresswomen.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.” – Donald Trump July 14, 2019
Though not naming them, they are:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York;
Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts;
Rashida Tlaib of Michigan;
Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
His ignorance is indisputable when you consider that the first three are natural born US citizens.
Ms. Omar is a naturalized citizen who emigrated to the US from Somalia.
So, Donald, what countries should they go back to that are “totally broken and crime infested?” America?
Then three days later during a Trump campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump started attacking Omar by name. The crowd shouted, “Send her back. Send her back.” And Trump’s response:
He did nothing and later lied about it.
These events brought to mind a meme I saw on my Facebook News Feed which was shared by one of my friends, and I use the term friend arbitrarily. The meme was a photo montage of an Arabic woman wearing a hijab and Ms. Omar wearing a photoshopped diaper on her head. The caption read,
“This isn’t a hijab…it’s a diaper for people with shit for brains.”
I was appalled.
I wrote in Comments that this was disgusting, insulting and that he (my so-called friend) should be ashamed. Civilized people don’t do this.
His response,
“Lighten up, dude. Get a sense of humor.”
I responded with,
“I have a sense of humor, and THIS IS NOT FUNNY! It’s disgusting.”
So what has this got to do with keeping score, and what about this “my friend” guy who shared the meme? I’ll explain in a bit.
The guy was recently added to my Friends list by this method: He commented on a post from a female friend of mine with whom I grew up with, and we attended the same grade school. They share the same last name and are related, so I figured no harm. WRONG!
Even though I don’t remember him from the neighborhood, I clicked on his name and then sent him a Friend Request.
He accepted.
I started getting his posts on my News Feed and quickly realized that he shared Trump’s harsh immigration philosophy and was intolerant of people coming to this country seeking asylum. I tried being respectful from time to time by commenting to him that these people are fleeing from brutal gang violence, murders, intimidation, corruption and lack of decent opportunities to thrive. But this “diaper” meme crossed a line, and I jumped all over his ass about it.
My original female mutual friend of his (and his relative) told me (in Comments) I should forget it and move on. I replied that I couldn’t move on and let somebody get away with this and not be called out for it.
I have no doubt that she has seen the posts that I make dealing with Trump’s hypocrisies and lies. In fact, she’s “Liked” some of them. So it’s possible that she didn’t want to get involved with this because he’s a relative.
I reported the meme to Facebook as Hate Speech against Race or Ethnicity and Religion. As you may know, when you report something to Facebook, you remain anonymous. Amazingly, they agreed with my reporting, and told him they were removing it. I private Messaged my female friend and told her what I had done. I used Messenger so it wouldn’t show up on her Timeline.
Shortly after all this, he unfriended me.
Wow, really?
Facebook’s policy is to send a notification to someone when the remove a post that goes against their community standards, so he probably figured out it was me who reported him because of my comments objecting to the meme. So much for anonymity.
So here’s the score:
Since the summer of 2016 and the Presidential campaigns, I’ve unfriended five people. Three of whom I just got tired of refuting or rebuking their bigoted, ignorant pro-Trump or anti-immigrant memes and posts. So how do I know these posts are bigoted or ignorant? I do my research before I comment, and I always include a citation and a hyperlink to a source backing me up.
Furthermore, it was not so much the posts that provoked an “Unfriend” from me, but the vicious attacks that followed my comments that bothered me. Comments from people who are not on my Friends list but can read my comments.
I just didn’t want to deal with their crap.
These posts covered subjects such as immigration:
“Illegal immigrants get $100 billion in welfare benefits and Congress won’t spend $10 billion on a wall.
WRONG!
Illegal immigrants do NOT get welfare, food stamps (SNAP), SSI (Social Security Supplemental Income) or Medicaid (except in life-threatening circumstances) and the wall was estimated to cost $25 billion.
In the same vein, someone posted a photo of a caravan line of immigrants along the side of a road and the caption read,
“Longest welfare line.”
When I commented (with a source) that they don’t get welfare, this person came back with,
“How do you think they can afford to live here?”
“THEY GET JOBS, DUMMY!”
Incidentally, I reported these specious memes with no results from Facebook. So much for community standards.
Other posts covered (no surprise here) Obama and Obamacare, Hillary, The Clinton Foundation and climate change aka Global Warming.
Irony: The Attorney General of the State of New York dissolved The Trump Foundation and banned any Trump family member, including Donald Sr., from being involved in any capacity in a charitable foundation for five years. Why? The AG said the Foundation was run as Trump’s personal checkbook.
One of the Trump minions that I unfriended complained that in her 50 years she’s never seen a President so disrespected. I told her that in my 60+ years, I’ve never seen a President so divisive,unfit, incompetent and dangerous. He not deserving of respect. He’s a disgrace to the office and the nation. I inserted at least six links to sources backing up my claims.
She reported all of them to Facebook as Spam.
Another person I unfriended was over the Second Amendment and what she wrote after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School MASSACRE in Parkland, FL!
She wrote,
“Who the fuck do these brats think they are telling us adults what to do? And that skinhead (Emma Gonzalez) can go back to Cuba.”
I pointed out to her that Emma was born in the US and is an American citizen. And she (not Emma) has two young kids of her own. Wow! How could a mother of two young children say something so vicious about the survivors of a school shooting?
I then unfriended her.
It took awhile, but I accepted that any kind of reasoning or logic was wasted on these people. I realize this may sound intolerant and close-minded, but, my God, we’ve got a President who has told over 10,000 lies or misrepresentations since taking office. Why do they keep eating his crap up? What will it take?
Maybe when they lock HIM up.
These Trump lovers attempt to rationalize their support by claiming that because of Trump, the economy has never been better. A fact which, I point out, is not entirely true. Trump inherited a growing economy.
- The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.
- Unemployment has been improving since 2011; six years before Trump took the oath.
- Trump’s tax cut will add another $1.4 TRILLION to the National Debt!
- 465 of the Fortune 500 companies plowed about $1 TRILLION of their tax savings into stock buybacks and not pay raises for their employees!
- Obama reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.
When I confront these people with these facts and back it up with sources and links to sources, they fall silent. The Comments thread ends.
And now, the five people who Unfriended me, four were over, you guessed it, Trump.Throw in some climate change denials in the mix because Trump claims global warming is a hoax perpetrated by China. Yeah right!
Eighteen of the 19 warmest years all have occurred since 2001. Global temperatures are the highest EVER recorded.
Trump examples:
“How dare you call him a racist.”
Because he is, and I proved it.
“You’re disrespecting the President.”
Because he disrespects the dignity of the office. He calls the press “The enemy of the people.” He says some white supremacists and neo-Nazis are “very fine people.” He calls a Federal Judge a Mexican. He fires members of his cabinet because they’re stupid losers. (then why did you nominate them) He hires a climate change denier to head the EPA. (What?)
Finally, the fifth friend who unfriended me was over vaccinations and, in general, conspiracy theories. She’s an anti-vaxxer, who ironically runs a support program for opioid addicts.
She says I need to watch the YouTube video VAXXED. I did. I researched it. It’s a fraud and so is Andrew Wakefield, the guy who produced it. I told her that.
No effect.
I got into an argument with one of her anti-vaxxer friends who said she never vaccinated her kids;
“They’re in their thirties and they’re fine”, she wrote.
Later in the thread, she said that I didn’t know what it’s like to sit up with your four year old daughter wondering if she’ll live through the night.
Wait a minute. “Didn’t you say you never had your kids vaccinated? Do you think I’m that stupid?”
My anti-vaxxer friend says there needs to be more studies.
What?
I provided a link to an American Academy of Pediatrics page that listed FORTY NINE peer reviewed studies, the scope of the studies, the conclusion of the studies, the medical journals in which they were published and the dates they were published. All of these studies concluded that vaccines are safe and effective or that the MMR vaccine does NOT cause autism.
She came back with a link with the thumbnail tag “157 Studies Supporting the Vaccine/Autism Link.” I went to the site. It’s Scribd.com. It’s an e-book subscription site which means it is NOT an established and recognized peer reviewed medical journal. ANYBODY, and I mean ANYBODY can publish. It required me to download a PDF for each study. No way. Who knows if I’ll pick up a virus or malware?
I asked how many of these studies were peer reviewed assuming, of course, she knows what that means. That was the last straw. “Why don’t you have an open mind?” she says. “Why don’t you?” says I.
She not only unfriended me at first, but blocked me. She blocked me because her Settings allowed non-friends to comment on her Timeline. A fact of which I took advantage by continuing to vehemently demonstrate how misguided and baseless her beliefs are.
So what’s the bottom line?
This is obviously a personal story of my experiences on Facebook. I do not nor ever will have a Twitter or Instagram account, and I’m sure I’m not missing out on anything. If I wanted to know what Donald Trump is tweeting, I check reliable news sources such as Politico, NPR, The Guardian and three of Trump’s favorite news sources to hate: The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. The reason being that if Trump tweets anything outrageous, hateful or just plain stupid, it’ll make the news.
Also, I’m sure I’m not alone in losing “friends” on Facebook or other social media platforms. In fact one woman wrote on her Timeline that if you didn’t vote fro Hillary Clinton, “Unfriend me now!”
This from an article in the Star Tribune on March 17, 2017:
“I didn’t talk to my parents for several weeks after the election because I didn’t feel like I could talk to them and be rational — I was too emotional,” said Ewell, 39, of Minneapolis. “I was hopeful it would get better, but it just keeps getting worse. I can’t get over it.”
Or from an 8 November 2017 article in The Independent :
“I haven’t spoken to my family since they elected Trump as President one year ago – I’m not ready to forgive and forget”
Or from The Atlantic on November 26, 2018:
How Politics in Trump’s America Divides Families
Since I’ve lost all these so-called Friends on Facebook, my News Feed is basically void of irresponsible, uninformed, inflammatory or bigoted memes or posts.
Go figure.
This gives me more time to post funny videos and pictures of cats.