Letter to another leftist friend

It’s been a while since anyone earned a spot on my wall of letters.

This woman. It’s time for another letter to a leftist friend who has a panic attack, and instead of discussing her opinions, she unfriends and blocks me.

Just a few hours ago on FBIBook, my current nickname for Facebook, an old friend blocked me for commenting on her political post about Obama, which stated, remember the good old days when we didn’t have any controversy with him and his beautiful family, wife Michelle, kids Sasha and Malia?

I haven’t written a post excoriating dealings with a leftist for a while. I’ve written about four such letters, about people who get very upset, unfriend and block me. They are always leftists. Have I been unfriended and blocked by right wingers before? Well yes, but not for years now. It’s the leftists’ turn to be hysterical. And it’s been their turn for perhaps fifteen years. All the hysteria and mania belongs to the left, which is sad, but not unpredictable, easy to spot, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

What I’m curious about, because I’ve never asked before, is, what do they do once they unfriend you? Does their life become easier, happier, friendlier, more serene? I’d like to know. That would seem a worthy goal once one finally decides to end things, pulls the lever, and flushes me out of their life: “Ahh, I feel so good now! Life is delicious!” they must say. Do they feel better?

Okay, to explain, after she reshared a post that she missed the days when Obama never did anything — I forget — disrespectful, loathsome, awful? I felt compelled to join in (yeah, it’s ill-advised). I’ve always known, Trump is arguably awful, a braggarty know-nothing, incurious, illiterate, a rude sociopath. I’m not defending Trump. I’ve always been able to hold two or more truths at once, that we can have presidents like Trump, and Bush, who got us into the massacre in Iraq over fake weapons of mass destruction, and Obama, who dragged his feet over gay marriage, who kept feeding the MIC, who started fake race wars with lies about Trayvon Martin and his “Dear Colleague” letter, who drone-bombed innocents, who deported many more illegals than Trump, and who put children in cages. And gave us the Affordable Care Act.

I am not interested in that jibber-jab, as my students’ moms used to say.

But I am interested enough in discourse that, if you post how nice it was to have Obama, and I say, sincerely, nice — please also note the bad stuff.

Then we had the Chinese investment firm of Jim, Sarah, demented Joe, and crackhead Hunter Biden. Just keep the TelePrompTer rolling and hold Joe’s damn hand.

[EDIT: Lives have been ruined by leftist diktats about MeToo, Black Lives Matter, gender affirming care, George Floyd, and Covid coming from a “pangolin in a wet market.” It’s been savage and vicious. I added this because none of it came from right wingers.]

But all I said was a few details about Barack Obama’s legacy.

Then some friend of this leftist friend pops off, calling me a lunatic who should be deported into a vicious Salvadoran prison to try my luck staying alive in there while the rest of the world forgets about me.

So back to her, I said — I wasn’t taking screenshots so it’s gone, and I don’t remember — You don’t seem very kind, or rational. I think I said, mania such as hers is what keeps us from engaging in reasonable discourse. That if we want extremist language to tone down, we have to stop pushing so many buttons. I tried really hard not to snipe like the satirist I am. I kept it sincere.

But geez, I wanted to say, “Where is Mama’s Little Helper?” but I didn’t! I didn’t do it! I wanted to say, to quote “Desperately Seeking Susan,” “Why don’t you take a Valium like a normal person?”

I’m down a friend on FBIBook now. That’s not the best. I need to build a base. How do you build a base? By saying nice things? I need to say more nice things, become a Mennonite cook, keep my jokes in the kind spectrum of, say, Erma Bombeck.

I just now spent five minutes seeking kind topics like good guys posting Ws, helping place dogs in forever homes. And another five minutes studying sincere quotes like, “This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Pssht, the hell I can’t. I’m not true to myself. The foundation of truthseeking, with me, is dicey at best. You had better block me.

I don’t really hate anyone! I just find it hard to be consistently reasonable.