Say Anything

 My wife encouraged me to stop reading the tweets of the former resident of the White House. The forty-fifth "president" offered me a seemingly endless stream of ridiculous straight lines and opportunities to raise my blood pressure. I attempted to respond to as many of these messages from the Dark Side as possible, in hopes that I might be heard. By someone. On a few occasions, I ended up snaring a red Kool-Aid drinker who wanted to engage me in a battle of wits. It was on these occasions that I realized that the problem was much bigger than I had first imagined. And I eventually followed my wife's advice. I stopped reading the vile bile spewing from the Mandarin and looked to other voices that needed amplification. 

Then that angry voice was shut down, causing all manner of fuss and fuming about Free Speech and how Big Tech was canceling his stream of dangerous misinformation. The pending lawsuits against Google and Facebook and probably Four Seasons Landscaping should be framed as more nonsense to get his noise out into the world. These are private companies who make decisions about what and whom get to use their cap lock button to air their views. 

Meanwhile, there are no shortage of cameras, microphones and keyboards out there to spread the thoughts of the tiniest of brains. It is the same impulse that gets us to slow down as we pass an accident. Or turn over a rock in the garden. There is a real fascination with aberrant personalities. It is only recently that the comment section at the bottom of Yahoo news has reappeared, and even though they ask us to be civil, there are still plenty of folks grinding their ax about whatever happens to be bouncing around in their pointed heads regardless of the topic. It only takes a vicious right swerve to connect the new season of The Bachelor into a rant about cancel culture. 

Yes, I know that I am once again afforded this little box upon which to stand and vent my own spleen, but I want to believe that I tend toward the more rational end of the spectrum when it comes to objective reality. And I know that I loop back all too often to read  the ravings of a lunatic. Or click on the link that claims to show how "the elite" are meeting in a secret location to undermine our personal freedoms. And take our guns. That's what all this vaccination business has been about, you know. 

The old adage suggests that if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. I would like to suggest that if you don't have anything coherent to say, file a lawsuit.