As you may or may not know I am on Facebook. My daughter got me started several years ago. Anyway, most of my 'friends' are former students & colleagues. There's also a smattering of various relatives, i.e. nieces, nephews, cousins, children and their spouses and families, etc. Very few are actual 'friends' in the traditional sense of the word.
So the other day one of my 'friends'-actually a woman about 45 years old who is a former student-posted a picture and accompanying comment celebrating Trump's inauguration. Against my better judgement, I replied with the following question/comment:
"Interesting.
So here's my question and I ask it at the risk of offending someone but
here goes: How can ANY woman with an ounce of self respect support a
pig like this who openly brags about sexually assaulting women? I admit
I'm old fashioned because, well, I'm old. So help me out. What are you
thinking...and I apologize in advance to anyone who's offended."
Well! I sure opened a can of worms with this. Not only did this person's friends attack me but her adult children did as well. One person out of the many agreed with me but we were definitely in the minority.
My reply was an apology and the suggestion that we should probably forget the whole thing and move on. I then blocked her from future news feed because I'm sure the bombardment will continue indefinitely. (Blocking is one way of hiding a person's posts without 'unfriending' them. It's all very complicated and Facebooky stuff).
So what's to be learned here. Well first and foremost something I've always known was proven once again: Human beings have a remarkable way of ignoring what doesn't fit with their belief system while letting in that which does. In psychology it's formally called cognitive dissonance. It works every time and I'm probably guilty of it from time to time myself.
Anyway, I've decided to return to the mantra that has served me well for many years: Keep calm and carry on! What could go wrong?
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