This is NOT about healthcare

I’ve confined my healthcare posts to facebook – where so far I’ve been called an %*(&#^ lawyer who is ruining the country along with the current administration (already!  with the #@(*&# lawyer stuff!), as well as been told I must live under a rock, I’m an idiot, a Marxist, and America-hater, and various other fun jollies.  So facebook is just a big ball of angry today, and I’m going to park the angry there and leave it there.  Though I would like to note for the record that I only write about policy differences, and did not attack a single person’s personal person-ness, if you will, so I deserve a Girl Scout cookie.

However, I am interested in what folks think about engaging in political debate in a written forum.  I got the distinct impression from The Professor that he was not best pleased at my commenting today, though it was merely from the set of his mouth when he saw me furiously typing away.  *Note – The Professor neither professes nor attempts to be The Boss Of Me, but being a tremendously private and respectful person, he does occasionally fret about some of my tendencies re: a public blog, having a facebook page, and other online exposure.  I try to keep him out of it all, in respect for his private nature, and as far as the kids go, I only tell cute stories that I’d post in the NY Times for the whole country to read, were they even remotely interesting to anybody but his grandparents.*

And so I wonder . . . who’s right?

There is a lot of hate flying around facebook today.  One thing at which I think I am particularly skilled is diplomacy, and I also sometimes feel that there aren’t enough diplomatic voices engaging in these debates.  We quieter, more reasoned and moderate types don’t tend to work ourselves into QUITE such a lather as the fringe, and so don’t post crazy left-wing or right-wing rants about how [insert leader of opposing party] is bringing about the Death of Freedom.  I generally choose not to engage the fringe, precisely because I know it’s going to end up in me being told I want America to turn into North Korea, or I hate freedom, or my children should be removed from my care because I’m clearly crazy, or I have bad hair, or something equally cruel and not relevant to the issue.  But sometimes when I read the initial fringe-y post and then all the whackadoo fringers who comment on it and how they all work each other up to such histrionics it is UNREAL – well, I feel compelled, as a voice of reason, to at least turn the debate back to substantive issues.  I do it very nicely, and generally my friends are nice back, though we never do agree and I don’t expect to agree.  (It’s THEIR friends who are mean to me, a person they don’t even know!  And isn’t it so much easier to be mean to people you don’t know. . .)

Am I serving a purpose with this, or just shouting into the wind?  Does injecting measured debate help, or waste my breath and expose me to lots of vitriol that I neither need nor deserve?

I sometimes wonder, and usually refrain, but some days I feel a compulsion.

Also, Jack and I are watching The Princess and the Frog, and it is making me absolutely dying to have a beignet.