My son changed my mind. And woke me up.
I have two sons. I love them both dearly and I think, at least, I have a good relationship with them both. One thinks like I do on most things, and we have a very similar worldview. The other is diametrically opposed to my worldview, and we often clash as we do not see eye-to-eye on how things ought to be. Neither of them have any fear opposing me when we disagree on something. Interestingly, the opposition came from the one who usually agrees with me.
Well, not opposition. Rather, a different perspective.
Yesterday, I wrote a post saying that while I was not abandoning the only social media platform I use, I was no longer going to make political posts there. I was moving to the newly popular, ever-growing site, Parler. I have created an account there, and do intend to use it.
Facebook has become a monster. Twitter has been a sewage dump for years now. It's putrid and nasty and filled with people who can barely pronounce their own name, let alone come up with a cohesive and coherent thought. I hate everything about it. Hashtags come really close to summing up all that is wrong with the world. It's dumbed-down approach has been co-opted by the mainstream media as actual news reporting. It's repulsive.
But Facebook, really up until the last year, had remained relatively benign. Sure, it became inundated with ads, incessant "suggestions," and still housed many of the same trolls who blather around on Twitter. But the platform allowed for more rational thought, and allowed for more thorough and coherent back and forth between its users.
But in the last year, solely for the purposes of influencing the election, it not only seriously ramped up its spying on its users, but began censoring the free speech it had once championed to serve it's own bias and political views. It has employed "fact checkers," which are nothing of the sort, but rather Liberal media hordes who believe and pretend they know everything better than we do and cannot allow opposing thought. In essence, it has basically become state-run media, following the whim of the liberal ideology, censoring and axing anything they don't agree with. Liberalism, at its core, does not in any way tolerate opposing thought, despite their claims otherwise, and they've hi-jacked the most popular social media platforms and turned them into little else than the traditional mainstream media trash we see and read everyday.
Clear enough, yet?
As such, Conservatives are staging a mass exodus from Facebook and Twitter to some new, up and coming platforms, including Parler, that promise true freedom of speech. Parler has been so inundated with new members it keeps crashing their system. YouTube is beginning to see the same exodus as it too is beginning to censor the videos of Conservatives. Conservatives are fed up, as they should be, and are seeking outlets where they can truly exercise their right to free speech.
You can read my FB post here if you wish, but my son, who is a Conservative, commented that he disagreed with my decision, and then wrote this...
"The left will do whatever they have to to silence conservatives, and if they can just lock them over on their own platform, then that solves their problem. Force them to lie and cheat, and hopefully that will enlighten some people. If all conservatives leave, then FB can claim to be 100% for freedom of speech on their platform. Don’t let them off the hook, make them fact check truth... I’ll make FB kick me off before I post exclusively on Parler. Now I can enjoy myself a little more over there, having some more fun at the left's expense, but if I hide there, the left wins."
He's absolutely right.
Many years ago in the early 2000's, the Mrs. and I were trying to decide if we wanted to remove our children from public school and place them in a private, Christian school. We sought the advice of many friends, professionals, and others whose advice we valued. My pastor at the time had school-aged children and they were still enrolled in public school. I asked him one day why he hadn't sent his children to Christian school. His response has stuck with me to this day:
{Paraphrasing} "I'm not ready to give up on public school yet. In fact, I would say that part of the problem with public school now is that too many Christians have bailed on it."
It was a sobering and thought-provoking response. He was dead-on accurate. We decided to go ahead and remove our kids from public school anyway. And while I don't fully regret that decision, looking back I see that my pastor was right. And public school is just one example.
It has been the habit of Conservatives in general, and Christians in particular, to simply walk-away when the morals and standards of something erode beyond our own scruples. I'm guilty of it. Instead of staying and fighting for what we know to be right and good, we create our own little rooms and spaces where we can all join together and gripe about how bad things have become outside.
In essence, we have become the very snowflakes we so derisively chide in the Liberal crowds. It's easy for us to post a meme about some liberal whacko whiner who can't handle things in the real world, but then, what are we really DOING about it?
We don't break the law. Which is to say we don't riot and loot when we don't get our way, or when the government strips away yet another God-given and Constitution-promised right, or when the media tells us we should be outraged at some false narrative. That's a good thing, the right thing. But what do we do otherwise? Do we stand and fight? Do we demand more of our elected representatives, and demand they hold to their campaign promises? Do we stand up to tyranny and refuse to allow evil to take over?
Not usually. Instead of holding others accountable for their putrid behavior, we do the "Christian" thing, where we blame ourselves for not "loving" everybody enough, and we accuse each other of being too judgmental and then we just walk away. We create a new space where our like-minded brothers and sisters can reside while bashing those who think differently than us and lament that they've taken away our freedoms. As the old Petra song says, we sit inside our "rose colored, stained glass windows, never allowing the world to come in."
Meanwhile, society is crumbling around us. And we sit by and watch it all happen.
Lately, I have suffered some personal and professional blowback because of my political postings. While I have never once logged a complaint about a colleague with their employer, complained to a pastor about a brother or sister, or cut off a friendship because of someone's political beliefs, unfortunately, I have recently not been afforded the same courtesies. My character been questioned. My professional ethics have been questioned. And my faith has been questioned. All because I believe in Conservative ideals and am not afraid to speak my mind.
Please understand, I'm not crying full-on persecution. But the blowback has recently caused me to pull back. Taking a moment to really think and analyze what you want to say is a good thing. Taking care to word things in such a way as the message will be heard rather than rejected is a good thing. Being cautious not to offend if it can be avoided is wise. But staying silent goes against every fiber of my being. And I have recently resisted speaking out at times for fear of more blowback when I might otherwise have spoken.
I allowed my dissenters to convince me that I shouldn't be so public about my beliefs. I allowed them to scare me away from the platform. It has eaten at me now for a couple months.
My son commented further in my post yesterday in response to another's comment: "...don’t abandon the fight. You’ll never win any arguments or change any minds if you don’t have the fights where people who don’t agree with you (can) see them. And what’s really the point? To change minds or just to get people to agree with you?"Whoa... that's heavy. Am I hoping to change minds and hearts, or just have talking heads nod yes to me?
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