Shrinking Violets

It's been hot as Hades (for New England. And, yes, I'm a wicked heat weenie) so I've been cranky as all fuck. Shocking. I know.

Given the broiling temps, my stone cantankerosity and the continued flatness of my front trike tire, this next bit was bound to happen.

A woman I used to be “friends” with on Facebook (knew her in high school but we weren’t real, live off-net chums) responded in her usual teabaggy way, (uninformed yet certain she’s got all the complete unimpeachabl facts and the rest of us are just so much dimwitted rabble) to something another high school acquaintance posted. I’d long ago severed my connection with Dim-Marie because of her comments, often out of the blue and off topic. I hadn’t blocked her though.

I have now.

The acquaintance she’d gone off on happens to be a tremendously smart, wise, warm, self aware fellow classmate and, now, Methodist preacher. Sue is 500 kinds of awesome. And she always has facts — real honest to god truth versus the made up and/or wildly skewed dope that’s passed off as reality by the right wing noise machines.

I could have responded to Dim-Marie’s latest comment with facts, links to posts on apolitical sites which deal in verifying and/or debunking the crazy (FactCheck.Org, PolitiFact.com and Snopes.com to name a few). I’ve done that before BUT, in past times, when I’ve bothered to answer her thundering stupidity (Always diplomatically too. Serious — I was!), she hasn’t seen fit to respond or acknowledge.

Crickets!

Clearly, to my mind, she's uninterested in discussion and is simply acting out like a five year old having a tantrum. Or she’s like a crazy street preacher who wants to stand on a milk crate screaming variations on You’re All Going To Hell at passersby.

I feel as though, by unfriending and blocking, I'm being rather shrinking violet-ish — sort of delicate, absolutist, OFF-with-their-head-ish even BUT life's too short to tolerate asswipian simpleton trolls. I truly am willing and able to engage in discussion with folks who don’t share my views. REALLY! It’s rather difficult though when my theoretical debate buddy is only interested in flinging steaming mounds of rhino excrement (which she bills as ‘fact’) followed by a fast stage right exit.

I’ve no time, no time or energy for such nonsense and jejunity.

By the by, Dim-Marie supposedly went to Carnegie Mellon for Economics. Sheesh! Either CM isn’t all that and a bag of chips or her degree from there is as true and real as the 'facts' found on Fox’s sewer of unreality.