I lost a Facebook friend over the 2016 Democratic Primary.
Simply naming the action in that fashion minimizes its importance, doesn’t it? I clicked on a list that combines a mixture of lifelong compatriots and casual connections and unselected him. He would no longer see my mix of nerdy science reposts and political rants. I’d lose track of his liberal memes and hometown flavor — I’m frequently jealous of those school friends who found employment where I grew up, where I always preferred to stay if employment would cooperate.
He missed my delighted announcement of the birth of my daughter in December. I’d so keenly anticipated the event that it invested me deeper in a presidential campaign than ever before, and made me feel the nation’s loss more painfully than any political setback I’d previously witnessed.
And even if the symbolism of the connection is cheapened by the online social networking, that does some disservice to the history. We’d become friends of half-similarity, half-necessity in a late-elementary/middle-school environment in which neither of us fit into typically popular circles. That’s not an uncommon story, but it’s more meaningful than one feels at the time. A small online connection some years later isn’t the best medium, but it had value… and the 2016 election was a fairly good reason to embrace it. Both of us were left-minded. I was a political junkie and had been since early in high school, while he was newly engaged. Nevertheless, while on policy our views were very similar, we supported different primary candidates.
That’s not, ultimately, why I chose to sever our cheap little newsfeeds.
He held on to perspectives of the rival primary candidate that were demonstrably false. I argued that his views were inconsistent with objective evidence, to no avail. I pointed out that his cynical view, if true, would have had a clear, visible and catastrophic impact if true… and he referred me to the nether regions of the internet to see the evidence he could not, himself, link. He had a headache. I pointed out that he was echoing the statements and embracing the bait of our outspoken political enemies on the right wing. But even when some of those false weapons were disproved before his eyes, he hung on to the rest. I chose to cut off the connection because it was ultimately incompatible and useless, insofar as I could affect it… and it could well be that he feels the same.
This is my postmortem of 2016:
If Donald Trump had been a politician with an identical profile of success, failure, and scandal, he would have lost. If he’d been a woman, he would have lost. If he’d have been black, he would have lost. If the media had reported in volume proportional to to the severity of its targeted scandals, he’d have lost. If the nation hadn’t been shackled to a multi-decade campaign of media disinformation, he’d have lost.
He loses without Russian interference. He loses without James Comey’s misconduct. He loses if not for an anachronistic and undemocratic electoral college system.
To focus (here, here, and everywhere) on the personal differences of political leaders on the left who each broadly accept (or would extend) the tenets of the 2016 Democratic Party platform is to whistle past the fucking graveyard of every national institution designed to govern by merit rather than image.
We focus on what we can do as citizens in a system weighted to favor the wealthy and the empowered. This means- if you want to change the party — get yourself to the local office, to the convention, and to the primary. If you want to change the country, you get yourself and others to the polls. You get yourself elected. Whether your principles are right or they are wrong,… if they demarcate less than 52% of the voting public, you will lose. Our enemies are falsehood, division, and the right. We have only demonstrated an ability to triumph over one of these at a time… so anyone embracing the first two as a tactic against the third is long overdue to be cut off.
I would welcome him back now, or anytime in the next couple years, when we can talk about the that common enemy.
