I have a question for all of you guys:

I have a question for all of you guys:

How are you dealing with/using facebook?

I love seeing my friends posts. I really do. There is nothing else like seeing some of my friends crossing the Panama Canal, another friends kids making computers/tablets out of cardboard, others sharing their trips around the world, friends whose kids are now going to college (yikes!), multiple friends that are forging cool things, multiple sci-fi authors that I grew up with I follow and even occasionally have a back and forth!

And of course watching the Falcon Heavy launch via fb live was the easiest / best performance for me on mobile.

All of this is wonderful.

But I struggle.

The dark side of facebook really wears me down.

First, as Michael J Steele has discussed robustly numerous times - FB hits that cortisonal hate & fear reflex so perfectly. All the memes whether from Right or Left, and I raise both hands - I love my memes that attack the Right. But all of these simply stimulate that gland in my brain. It feels good? I am not sure, usually feels bad. Good is like playing a great board game with your friends and family, learning a new skill or fixing something broken, or drifting in a dinghy with a day's supply of beers in an ice chest, or laying around in bed with your honey. Those are good feelings.

I keep raging on facebook - because it is all so *f*cking* obvious to me. I really cannot think of any major public policy that would be difficult for me to decide which way to go. Let me give you some examples:

No lead in water

Pay the troops more, take care of the vets

Kill gross military pork projects

Education, Healthcare, equal pay for all

Pay taxes? Not a felon? Great you are a citizen!

No tax loopholes for the Fortune 500 or for the 0.01% None

Raise the minimum wage

Super fund wind, solar & storage

Raise taxes on coal, oil, gas and gasoline gradually, but consistently until it just doesn't make $ sense.

Guns need to be regulated until the kill rate matches a 1st world country

I could go on and on.

And anyone who I ever sit down with and actually discuss these items pretty much agrees 95%.

But on facebook, we are at World War I tech where the two sides are in the trenches and just slaughter each other.

There are probably about 40 people I have blocked now, and if I see them again and they said the same crap, I would have to work really hard not to simply punch them. But they would never say that stuff live and in person.

I am not new to the internet, I have been running forums and have been on the ugly side of trolls from the days of GOPHER. So what is new now?

Facebook is now powerful enough that it was one of the several distortions that each individually were enough to create Trump.

And now Dreamers - folks that have been living, working and building families for 20, 30, 40 years. And paying their taxes so that the Koch brothers and Apple does not have to - these TRUE AMERICANS are being cruelly ripped from their families, and tossed to countries that they do not know and having all of their shit stolen from them. It is the most UN-American thing I can think of.

The Democrats simply got Lucy'd again and gave up on the Dreamers with 2 years of funding including $26 billion MORE for the military than Trump even asked for. The Democratic party is simply Diet-GOP. Certain callouts: Duckworth, Sanders, Warren are in exception! Yeah, yeah, I will still vote for the Dems... but damn the Democrats couldn't win a poker game if they could see the other sides hole cards.

Of course I will vote, but being absentee, I still pay my taxes, but my vote will not be counted.

So what do I do?

1) Perhaps just make posts on sailing, SCUBA and projects with the family. These all feel good, and are actually very important to me and the family. And folks tell me often that they like the sharing. Maybe I will feel better and others will feel better with less negative posts?

2) Keep going with the rants and mix in #1 above?

3) Make a "diet" 3-5 servings of positive posts for every negative political post?

4) Leverage crypto to create a h*t-l*st website to *** ***** **** **** *****?

What are you guys doing?

Originally posted on Facebook on February 07, 2018.