Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

It Has Come To This

Somehow, Bernie Sanders' campaign has infiltrated my Facebook feed.  I keep getting these messages.  Some are benign, walking the reader through voter registration questions - because apparently that's how the "revolution" happens.

But as they increasingly accused Clinton of criminality and being a new Hitler, I finally did something I NEVER do: block content on my Facebook feed.

I have remained "friends" with people for years who all I do with them is argue on Facebook.  But these people aren't my friends, and I don't know why I have to scroll past their stuff.  So I reported them as spam and blocked people like "Eric."  Now I'm getting the same messages from "Melanie."  So, I block her, too.

At this point, I feel more antagonized than interested.  I realize that this is simply reinforcing a previously held position, but isn't that the great peril of the Internet?  Doesn't this account for our extreme polarization?

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