Oh, dang, Maria. That's so hard. Because most of my friends in B'more are drag king queers, often with super super lefty/anarchist/abolish jails political views, my facebook has thankfully almost entirely been an echo chamber of "it's not like that an even if it is there's reasons dammit!" Which I am thankful for.

Yes. Though there are a couple of people on my FB that I'm actively hoping will not comment.

I'm sorry for what you're having to deal with Maria.

Oh, Maria, I'm sorry. I unfollowed a couple of my more conservative cousins a while ago and nobody has made anything but positive, supportive comments on anything I've posted. My one cousin sent a message but just asked if we were ok and offered a place to stay if we wanted. So, that's been nice.

My Baltimore friends are not the problem. It's the PA ones. Because I'm friends with a lot of people who are also regular customers of the restaurant. For that reason, I keep FB as apolitical as possible. Some of them are more racist than I ever thought possible, but it's not my place to tell them to never cross my path again, because then we'd have no business left. It's just disheartening, and the latest drivel is how Freddie Gray had spinal surgery a week ago, and I can't find any independent confirmation of it other than what's on the conservative sites.

Maria,

[link]

Thanks, lisah. Can you believe I had someone tell me last night that the Sun is just as bad as MSNBC and wikipedia? I turned right around and posted that the "proof" he was spouting came from liveleak.com. Didn't make a damned bit of difference.

I hate so very much the habit of always trying to find a way to pin the responsibility for suffering on the individual and not the system, and then using it an excuse to withhold what I would think of as a natural tendency to feel empathy and regret for someone else's suffering.

There's a lot of nuttiness out there. Idaho is resisting an international consistent regulation on child support payments on the grounds it would introduce Sharia law. And in Texas, where the Army is having exercises, the state is keeping an eye on them just in case they're (the Army, that is) is planning on overthrowing the state government. um ... huh?

There was something posted on Facebook in the last few days about how the belief that life is fair leads to people blaming individuals for their problems. If everyone gets what they deserve in a balanced universe, then obviously you deserve what happens to you.

I saw that--makes sense to me.