Filters

With this most recent election, I have been very grateful for the freedom of speech we have in our country, even though the ones who seem to use it most spend most of their time slamming the other side instead of having persuasive discussion. However, it seems like anyone who holds a conservative position, as I do on some issues, lacks the same freedom to speak freely about the positions held. Name calling, berating, and downright hostility are the result in most cases. For the most part, I have held my tongue during all the election-related discussions even though some of the comments were painfully off-base and often off-color as well.

I myself lack the self-restraint to do that long-term. I admit this freely. That's why I have been so grateful for the filters on Facebook that allow me to limit the posts I see on my news feed. All day, every day at school, viewpoints contrary to my own are espoused and recited as mantras in the classrooms. I have no desire to be subjected to the same kinds of mindless passion when I check in on FB. Further, I have a few friends that are radically the other direction, whose constant predictions of doom and gloom, as well as name-calling, further depress me. (Where, oh where are the reasoned discourses I once believed adults should and did have about issues and candidates??) I can suspend temporarily or permanently the posts I see from these friends, and give my mind relief from the constant "warring" when I am in my own home.