The Unfriending

Beyond the pale I am about to “unfriend” someone on Facebook, and it’s a pretty big deal for me. Though I’ve been the target of un-friending myself multiple times--mostly over politics—I’ve only exercised my power to “unfriend” once since joining Facebook 10 years ago. It was a little over a year into my Facebook tenure, and the victim of my unfriending was not someone close to me…just a typically remote acquaintance from out of the past. Every day she was posting things on my timeline about how Jesus loved me, and how I had to come to Jesus, and how I had to show my love for Jesus by sharing her posts with others (like I needed that). It was like waking up to a Jehovah’s Witness at your door every damn morning. As Facebook offenses go, it was pretty benign. If I knew how to block her from posting on my timeline, I would’ve done that rather than terminating her with such extreme prejudice. After that, I made a conscious decision not to unfriend anyone because I really don’t like the whole idea of breaking off a friendship with just a click. It’s a little too much like a drone attack…and like a drone attack, once you do it, the damage is done. In our normal, non-Facebook relationships we have a variety of tools and strategies available to us to convey to all concerned that a relationship is over…or at least in trouble…while leaving the door open for recovery.
In this current case, there is no room for recovery…no desire for it on my part even though I know that the person I’m about to unfriend places a high value on our relationship (which really isn’t a friendship at all except in the loosest, most amorphous Facebook meaning of the word). And it really is just happenstance that I came upon the post that has driven me to this extraordinary action. My customary Facebook experience is to check my timeline a few times a day for notifications from friends, then to scroll down the “home” page to see what various contacts have posted. It doesn’t allow a deep dive into everyone’s Facebook doings, but it does give me a random, cursory view. When one of these postings provokes a positive or negative reaction in me, I generally indicate such with a “like” or a comment. I try to remain respectful of people’s timelines no matter what. As far as I’m concerned, a timeline is like someone’s room, and everyone’s entitled to deck it out however they want without engendering a This Property is Condemnedposting. 

But what if?
What if you visit someone’s room and find it festooned with Nazi or Ku Klux Klan regalia…or child porn? As I write that sentence, I realize that question doesn’t have such an obvious answer any more because white supremacy and child predation have become so politicized…so normalized...as to be championed by the President of the United States. A major political party has so embraced the most aberrant civic and social behaviors that they are now flaunted on social media alongside pictures of the grandchildren; reports on fabulous lunches in exotic places; and, yes, praise for Jesus. So not everyone is going to find outrage in the same places.
But allow me, please, to explain why the outrage I found in the video I came across posted on Facebook and represented in the photo above is transcendent outrage. Let us dispense first with the ordinary outrages conveyed in that picture/video. There’s the illiteracy of course: “Trumps is making me look like a total Incompetent, useless *sshole.” Is it all the Trumps? Then it should be Trumps are. And Incompetent is capitalized, why? This is shooting fish in a barrel, so let’s move on to the partisanship. Obama’s being attacked because he’s a Democrat. That’s mid-level outrage…the Internet is full of liberal attacks on Trump because of his politics, so no tears for Barack Obama here. But, stop...wait...how about the outrage of racism? Is Obama being attacked because he’s black? Maybe so, but it’s no more than implied here, which mutes the outrage on that score.
Now let’s get to the heart of the matter, which is the original appearance by Obama to speak on gun violence in America after the Newtown shooting upon which this ad for the Coalition for Trump Superstore is based. That may be one of the most unique moments in US presidential history…surely in Barack Obama’s presidency—a president actually weeping over the state of the union. No agenda. No spin. No self-promotion. Just a raw display of human emotion—emotion beyond party, race, or gender. There are two displays of emotion that are universal—laughter and tears. Both can and have been perverted…canned laughter, crocodile tears. But the real thing—a real smile; a real tear--is precious and profound with power to touch the hearts of masses and bond us together no matter our differences. We cannot help but look at this video of a national leader struggling to express our collective grief and bewilderment at the cold-blooded slaughter of 20 six- and seven-year olds and six adults and not feel like a grieving family.
And yet we live in a time when "these people" walk among us who do not feel part of that family, that grief…indeed, who are contemptuous of it. So contemptuous are they that they would take such a sacred human experience--Obama surrounded by the families of shooting victims--and turn it into an advertisement for Trump hats.
I just spent a glorious holiday with daughter Gillian’s family in Georgia. As always when Gillian and I get together the talk gets around to Us v. Them. Gillian believes that I’ve spent so much time in California’s blue heaven that I see the world too much in those terms. She often makes the case for the basic decency of those she daily encounters in her adopted red state home. I love Gillian’s passion for bridge-building…it’s what led her to join the Peace Corps out of college and has underpinned her career and relationships ever since. And I pride myself on thinking much of that derives from our time together in homeschooling. I think I’m more understanding and tolerant of “Them” than she gives me credit for. I’ve certainly had strong, warm relationships with people I disagreed with politically. And though I find such conversations increasingly difficult in this sharply sundered era, I’m not only willing and able to discuss differences over race, immigration, taxation, guns, environment, education and the myriad other issues that tear us apart, but I believe I have a good sense of where Them is coming from on most issues.   
But this! This Trump Superstore ad…this mockery of compassion and shared pain…this mortal sin against human community tests the outer limits of understanding and forgiveness. This is hard for me because I really do believe that part of our humanity actually encompasses bad behavior of our own and others. It is foundational to Love’s Body, the guiding philosophy of The Nobby Works, that until we accept that we are all capable of acting heinously given the right (or wrong) circumstances, we will be forever broken into Us & Them. But as I told Gillian in our last encounter on this subject, there are times when I just cannot join in a chorus of Come Together:I am he as you are he as you are me
And we are all together
There are times when the behavior of others is so deplorable that no matter how reflective it may be of a kindred weakness, we must do as Oedipus did when his eyes were open to his own crimes—he ripped them out. Less dramatically, I will be unfriending the person who posted the Trump Super Store ad in 24 hours to allow sufficient time for it to sink in that I never want to look into the darkness of such a soul again.