Well, it was a nice high while it lasted. [View all]

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Gotta vent somewhere, as I'm feeling a bit down today.

(So congratulations--you guys win. Sorry for unloading on you.)

Some of it relates to just the total bullshit being disseminated attempting to delegitimize the election.

No, I don't think it will ultimately be successful. Like everything else the past 4-5 years, it's all easily debunkable bullshit. But the fact that it will continue to have a wide audience, and that Trump will continue to push it until he's removed from the White House, kicking and screaming, is so sobering and depressing.

Then this morning I got an instruction from my mother-in-law, which was to defriend anyone on my wife's side of the family because apparently they were giving her grief for my postings about the election. Which I will add were respectful and non-confrontational towards everybody but Trump himself. I even attempted to insist it wasn't even a Democrat-Republican, left-right thing, that it was only a right-wrong thing.

(And for anyone who wants to give me grief for being on Facebook, please, just today, spare me. I like being on social media and that's that. So please...not today.)

For years, I didn't raise a peep at whatever nonsense they posted. For friends and classmates, it's different--I was able to have that back and forth debate. But when it's family, especially a matter of your spouses family and you don't want to be viewed as an agent of discord or division, I drew a line and I held back and bit my tongue.

You have to understand that I don't like defriending people as a matter of right. I always hold out hope that people's minds can be changed--not right away, but with gentle guidance and true facts, they might gradually be turned around. I'm an optimist like that. And I like to celebrate what I have in common with other people despite our differences.

But I guess not. I guess the people who decry others as "snowflakes" can't dare to see a well-stated opinion that they don't agree with.

And if it's that bad, there's always the "unfollow" option (a favored tool of mine, which allows me to control my own news feed while still remaining friends and being able to to check up on them as I might so choose), or, God-forbid, unfriend me if it's too much for you to take.

That I have to be the one to unfriend...well, it just depresses me. So much for trying to remain positive.

I just worry about the toxic levels that Trump brought and how it is destroying relationships, and I worry it will continue to linger long after he's gone.

And now I have to worry about my own family dynamic, and possible negative repercussions this might have on that. I did all that I could on my end never to disrupt--I never, ever talked politics because it was the one social circle I didn't want to interfere with, for my wife's sake.

And it's still not enough.

I'm just...dispirited at the moment.

Sorry. End rant/musing.