Surviving my first Facebook election

The election is finally over and after spending billions of dollars annoying the electorate with nonstop advertising and endless phone calls; we proved once again that Florida can’t count ballots worth damn and guys from Massachusetts probably won’t get elected President.

The other thing that I learned is that Facebook can be more politically polarizing than a lapel pin! This was my first election cycle on Facebook and I was taken aback by the avalanche of pure partisan BS that flowed steadily from my computer screen over the last several months.

I joined Facebook to have better access to pictures of my grandkids, to keep in touch with long lost friends and relatives and, mostly, to see which of my old high school and Navy buddies turned into bald old guys; I don’t care about their political opinions.

It never occurred to me that people who are calm and reasonable in normal conversation would be willing to call a me a “treasonous @#%@^*” on Facebook just because we have differing political opinions! I never knew my Mom was so passionate about renewable energy tax credits…she still hasn’t spoken to me since that happened.

I just don’t get it, I really don’t understand why Riley Johnson, a guy who I haven’t seen sine we played football together in the eighth grade, would think I cared about his political opinions. I only sent him a friend request because he married a girl I had a crush on in junior high and I wanted to see if she was still hot, I don’t care what Riley thinks about Governor Romney’s tax returns.

I’m a 55 year-old white retired military officer who works for a defense contractor; I am the poster boy for the Republican’s base demographic. Naturally many of my Facebook friends are members of that same demographic so, my Facebook news page has looked pretty much like a Republican ad campaign for the past few months.

Tuesday night when it became apparent that the President was going to be re-elected I was shocked and a little embarrassed at how poorly the members of my third grade Cub Scout pack and the rest of my Facebook friends were handling the news.

At first there were rumblings that it must be voter fraud or some kind of left wing media manipulation, but when Fox News (the official cable news network for guys who look like me) started calling it for the President, dread and disbelief started showing up in their posts.

Jimmy Parks, my aunt’s ex-husband’s nephew and valued Facebook friend, posted that the Democrats had stolen another election using the outdated Electoral College… until the President took the lead in the popular vote; Jimmy was quiet after that.

My old shipmate, Mike, posted that he was ashamed to be an American today because the voters had failed to make the necessary change at the “worst point in American history.” That was a sentiment shared my several other Facebook friends, many whom look a lot like me…but not me.

First of all, I can’t see how anyone could say that this is the low point in American history, I’m not even sure we can even make the top ten worst moments in American history.  Let’s see, the civil war, the British invading and burning Washington in 1812, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Spanish flu epidemic, the dust bowl, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the assassination of JFK, Watergate and September 11, 2001; we aren’t even in the top ten.

I’m not stupid, I know things are pretty rough for our country right now, but we’ve seen worse and we’ve always come through. This is the country that won Desert Storm then had to survive four years of “Blossom” on NBC; we’ve been through some serious shit!

In my lifetime there have been 5 Republican presidents and 5 Democratic presidents and after each election almost half the people are firmly convinced we picked the wrong guy but we still stand for the National Anthem because win or lose, we’re Americans and that’s how we roll.

In the Navy I served under six presidents, I didn’t vote for four of them, but I continued to serve to the best of my ability because it’s the process, not the person that we swore to defend; well, that and they had a great dental plan in the military back then, but you get my point!

Elections and presidents come and go but America prevails because we’re strong; Facebook….not so much.