Participating in Facebook is a remarkable experience. I’ve made contact with friends I thought had been lost to the travails of time and distance and these contacts have warmed my heart.
I’ve become aware of great successes and great pains of my contemporaries and it has offered me a different perspective on life that I am not sure I would have otherwise experienced.
Facebook has also given me a greater exposure to divergent opinions that in some cases surprised me – in others it enlightened me. On the whole, Facebook has been a remarkable experience.
Tonight was something of an exception. I’d added a comment to a former colleague’s Facebook status update about the culpability of George W. Bush’s administration in greatly expanding the national debt – you know, that obvious acknowledgment to the unfunded Iraq War, the unfunded Medicare Part D entitlement, and a series of inconceivable tax cuts (I mean, really – during a war?).
Unfortunately, despite the presence of my smiley-face emoticon, I received a shout-out from a member of the pointy-head crowd. Here it is, framed for all eternity as yet another example of a boorish moron somehow having the wherewithal to operate a computer, setup a Facebook account and post a comment (I removed his last name):
John R. Hey George, this “demon” we have as President has run up the debt for the United States to the level of more than all of his predecessors combined. You will soon learn the truth about Obama and when you do it will be too late. He hates America and he’s going all out to destroy it.
Yes, there are people out there that think the policies are Barack Obama are intended to bring about the destruction of the United States. They actually believe that the man elected President is an agent for another power bent on destruction of the country he was sworn to protect.
Good grief.
What’s remarkable about this post is that it’s from someone who not only graduated high school, but college as well. Actually has a Masters in Teaching.
This actually made me kind of sad. I’d always thought that highly-educated people were imbued with a robust capability for critical thinking.
Sadly, at least in this case, education failed.
