I am sitting at my normal watering hole on this Friday night.
I have a professional day job. I am also a musician. I decided to sit out on a gig tonight. I’m glad I did.
I packed up my tobacco pipe and headed to my bar. I found a friend of mine as I walked in. He is a very vocal liberal. Hates GEOTUS and everything about him. Fine, whatever.
We talked. It somehow shifted to politics. Weird, since I never bring it up if I know I disagree with whom I am speaking with.
He started ranting about Trump. I listened, as always. I didn’t debate. I just listened.
Then, he did something that flipped a switch.
He called me a racist.
I said absolutely nothing racist. I didn’t defend my political beliefs while he was ranting.
He called me “inherinly racist” for being white. He’s white.
I fucking lost it.
I’m not going to go into what I said due to me not wanting to give too many clues about myself and inadvertently doxxing myself to a fucking leftist. But, I will say that I feel invigorated.
I finally started offering rebuttals to stupid leftist shit on social media.
I’m. Done.
I voted for him in 2016 and (cue Goofy meme) I’ll fucking do it again.
Trump 2020. Let’s Make America Great Again once more, Pedes.
Truth! I'm one of those silent observers. Believe it or not, I learned a ton and grew as a person in a way I couldn't have in my normal environment thanks to being exposed to different arguments on the internet. Making an argument is always better than not, especially when you can actually back it up.
It's harder now to get through to people on the internet than it was before, though. In old internet times before every post was given a social credit score, people had to read the words and make a judgment call for themselves weighing the argument being made. Nowadays, if your post isn't outright hidden by a negative score, it carries with it an immediate value judgement given by others. Now, If someone makes what I think is a good point, but their score is at -100, was it actually a good point or did I make a mistake? Everyone around me thinks otherwise, so I must have missed something...
This may be another reason why memes do so well, because they can be distributed everywhere as-is and don't carry a score around with them that could externally sway one's opinion.