MOBOCRACY

I try not to get into Facebook discussions with people about politics because I’m not into S&M. At least not yet.

Once, years ago when I told a co-worker that and my husband and I hardly saw each other because we worked on different shifts she said, “That’s good. It’ll keep the marriage fresh.”

She was right, too. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that. So who am I to say S&M might not be the next thing to “keep the marriage fresh”? No one. I’m no one to say it. So, like Vice President Pence and the 25 Amendment not being taken off the table, neither is S&M off the table. Except for the social media table.

A recent example of the kind of rhetoric I’ve seen online was someone responding to the fact that the Air Force veteran who was killed during the riot on the Capitol building had been deemed a “terrorist.”

Part of what they wrote was, and I quote: “This UNARMED woman was in a buildkng OWNED BY THE PEOPLE. PEACEFULLY protesting an act OF SEDITION perpetrated by our vice pres when he IGNORED HIS CKNSTITUTIONAL MANDATE to reject votes counted from ststes where governors had violzted their OWN Constitution…”

Crazily, out of everything they said, was the statement “peacefully protesting.”  I’m sure that people believe that the election was stolen. I’m sure that they think Mike Pence was complicit for not “going along” on Wednesday.

But what I’m not sure of is if the writer has used a dictionary recently or even knows what one is. Last I heard, the definition of peaceful was holding hands and singing “Kumbayah” or lying flat on the ground and chanting “I can’t breathe.”

Some kind of force—An extremely determined spirit guide? A guardian angel with celestial hand restraints?—kept me from responding. I DID, however, take the time to click the laughing emoji.

Immature, I know. But I think everyone’s aware at this point that Facebook has contributed greatly to increasing isolation and retarding emotional growth, along with 20 years of reality TV and every new menu item at Taco Bell.

It started with the Walkman. Remember the Walkman? That’s when tuning out began in earnest, wasn’t it?

I guess I’ve succumbed somewhat, too. What did “laughing” at the person’s post accomplish? Nothing. So I do practice non-participation as much as possible.

I DID respond once, a few years ago, to someone on FB who said they thought that people who killed police dogs should be charged with murder.

I mean, I’m not taking that idea off the table. I mean, look at that puppyyyyyy! Maybe 100 years from now, 200, we can think about that? But let’s start with people first. Right?

There’s a lot of anger in this country that can’t be ignored.

Once we get past the arrests and trials and punishments and justice, if the half of the country that would not riot at the Capitol building doesn’t start talking to the half that did—and would again, and will likely do worse—to find out what’s going on, it feels like it’ll be a slow (maybe fast) escalation to certain doom.

I mean, they’re not all xenophobic entitled racists wearing Nazi paraphernalia.  Some people just want jobs, right?

Meantime, if I DO get into S&M, it’ll be the “keep the marriage fresh” kind, not the FB kind, packed tight with the myriad accoutrements of protest and tribulation but sans any ultimate satisfaction or relief.

I’ll take some light spanking and maybe one wrist tied to the bed with a really, really soft ribbon over that any day. Safe word: kumbayah.