Tag: Blogs

Why I Don’t Post About Hillary As Much On Facebook

This keeps coming up. “Why do you post so much on Facebook about how bad Trump is, but barely ever talk about Hillary, huh? What, are you ‘with her,’ you blind, liberal zombie???”

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But you get it.

I do post quite a bit against Trump, and I understand how, having been conditioned our entire lives by a pretty strict two-party system, it can be easy to jump to the assumption that the condemnation of one candidate is somehow an endorsement of the other. But I would ask you to look again. If you scroll back through my Facebook page, you can read every post, every comment, every link I’ve ever posted against Donald Trump. Among  them, there is not one Clinton endorsement to be found. In fact, on multiple occasions, you’ll find me expressing distaste for Clinton, calling her corrupt, and communicating the specific sentiment that she does not have and has never had my vote. I invite you to test this claim if you don’t feel like taking my word, but I think most of you reading this already understand that. Your frustration likely lies elsewhere.

“Why overlook her wrongdoings? Why not take her to task as you have Trump?” This is a completely valid inquiry, and I believe it stems from my own failure to be clear about my specific intentions in posting what I post. I’ll explain: see, when I post things to Facebook, those things will be viewed by a very specific audience. Specifically, the people on my Facebook friends list. Now, among these particular people, there exists a trend that is, to put it lightly, troubling. A great deal of those who would see my posts are professing evangelical Christians who regularly twist, pervert, and often simply ignore many basic and obvious tenets of the faith they claim to hold in order to make the claim that support for Donald Trump is consistent with the Christian faith. It is not. It is observably, demonstrably, and obviously not. To claim otherwise is to utterly dismiss Christ and everything He taught. This is what drives my posts.

So again, why not level the same criticism at Hillary supporters claiming their Christian faith as their reason for supporting her? The answer is honestly very simple: on my Facebook friends list, among the specific group of people that is going to see my posts, I have not once seen anyone do this. To be clear, I’m certain it happens. I know that tons of you reading this have seen it happen yourselves, probably on your own newsfeed. And I know I’m sarcastic a lot online, but this one is real, guys. Just because I don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And if you see it happening among your Facebook friends and it offends your conscience, then I urge you to not ignore said conscience, but rather to speak to your audience about it. As for me, communicating such sentiments on Facebook specifically would be the online equivalent of shouting into an empty room.

So let’s wrap this up – My posts are intended to address one specific issue that plagues my particular audience: the grotesque perversion of a faith that is incredibly important to me by those who are “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power.” (2 Tim. 3:5a) I don’t stress when people who don’t share my faith take jabs at it. I can understand that. What I will not stand for, however, is people who claim to share my faith, who claim to study and value its scriptures, abusing it for political ends and sacrificing their consciences on the altar of partisan politics. It’s sickening, it’s enraging, and though I don’t take many things personally, this is one place where I draw the line. I’m not voting for Hillary. I’m not telling anyone else to do so. Maybe you disagree with that, maybe you don’t. Whoever you are, whatever you think, let’s get coffee and talk about it. But at least understand that you don’t have to hop on the comment thread of everything I post to remind me about emails, Benghazi, her treatment of Bill’s accusers/victims, and the fact that she’s probably some kind of lizard-person from space in league with Beyoncé and the disembodied head of Walt Disney. I get it. Neither of us wants Hillary in office; this is something that we have in common. I will not and never have downplayed her many failings, and I speak of Trump’s more often on Facebook for a specific purpose, one which I hope I’ve communicated effectively here. Thanks for actually taking the time to read this; effective communication is important, especially in today’s cultural climate. Later, friend.

neither-one

 

 

The Old Man and the C:\ Drive

An old man sat in his living room, a roaring fire to his right and four of his grandchildren seated on the floor in front of him. “I remember,” the elder wistfully intoned as he leaned back in his gently humming hover-recliner, new from Hammacher Schlemmer and now available at a Sharper Image store near you, “I remember when, if you wanted to play a video game on your PC, ya had to go to the store and buy a disc, sometimes two. DLC was called ‘expansion packs’ back then,” he continued, as his grandchildren just sat there vaping because apparently that nonsense sticks around for a while, “and ya had to go out and buy those on discs, too. Microtransactions were called ‘cheat codes,’ and they were free. And if you wanted to shout unoriginal obscenities and nonsensical racial slurs at other players online, ya had to type it. With your hands!”

“But grandpa,” piped up his grandson, Tyrion Tumblrpage, exhaling just the hugest vape-cloud, you don’t even know, bro. “What about ethics in video game journ-” A muted “thud” sounded as Tyrion was cut off by a vicious running knee from his grandpa, one he never saw coming.

“Sorry, kid,” said the old man as he helped the child sit back up and collect his teeth, “instinct kinda took over for a second there.” Easing back down into his chair, the man folded his hands and let out a deep sigh. “Anyway,” he continued, “you’ve heard me talk about this a thousand times, I’m sure, so I’ll stop boring you all. Pass me the remote, will ya? I wanna see how Deflategate’s goin’.”

**Epilogue**
The old man turned his gaze to the television, raising the remote and changing the channel, only to find a blank screen bearing a simple message in a large, golden font: “By order of Supreme Classy Leader With Huge Hands Who Everybody Loves Donald Trump, the NFL has been disbanded, to be replaced with the return of the XFL. Stay tuned for infomercials for steak and bottled water.”

Well, Here I Am

Beardy

I remember when I first heard the word “blog.” I was 12 years old watching TV in the kitchen (as one does), and heard it spoken by a reporter desperately trying to fill time between events at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

I thought it was a really dumb word.

That being said, here I am 14 years later, officially stepping into the vaunted “blogosphere” (also an incredibly dumb word). For the most part, this is happening because every now and then, I’ll have a thought or two that take a few more words to explain than Twitter’s character limit or the attention span of the average Facebook user will allow. This is where those thoughts will live. As such, there likely won’t be much of a connecting thread between posts. Some may be lengthy “rants” about political or social issues, while others may be movie reviews, and still others light-hearted anecdotes. Basically, if I don’t want to bother my wife by jabbering incessantly about something in particular, it’ll probably show up here.

That’s really all you need to know. The first few posts will be kind of a backlog of some of my longer Facebook statuses from recently; beyond that, I guess we’ll see. Now, on to the jabbering!