I unfriended someone on Facebook.
First of all, please make no mistake.
In the grand scheme of things, in a world filled with so many experiences, good, ill and everything in between, that deserve our attention and consideration, my little punch of the delete button, to paraphrase Bogie, "doesn't amount to a hill of beans..".
I only share the action with you by way of making a larger point.
As if you hadn't already figured that out.
People who know me, and/or read me, know that I'm not, by nature or nurture, a knee jerker when it comes to the hot button issues of the day.
While never lacking an opinion, I make full hearted, and throated, effort to look before I leap, think before I speak and ponder before I pontificate.
And while I'm not passionate about, for example, zealously defending, say, the Second Amendment and the interpreted license it apparently gives to everyone with a need/desire to shop the latest Big Lots sales on gun cabinets, I do believe that every "right" that the framers of our Constitution profoundly provided us is worthy, deserving and, at least, entitled to open debate and discussion.
I suppose, if only by literal definition, that makes me a zealous defender of freedom of speech.
And, in that spirit, I am, by both nature and nuture, always ready, willing and able, if sometimes only begrudingly, to hear anything you have to say about anything you have something to say about.
At least, I was.
Or so I thought.
Until yesterday.
Shortly after the bombs went off in Boston.
No reasonable person, worth our notice or concern, can see this act as anything other than what it was.
A horrific act of cowardice, perpetrated by hearts, minds and souls so saturated with hatred and/or insanity that only evil could live in their toxic bloodstreams.
And regardless of any differences any of us might have with each other in terms of philosophy, personal, political or otherwise, all of us who think of ourselves as reasonable people are, as we were after Sandy Hook, as we were after Aurora, as we were what now seems like a long, long ago September day in 2001, united in our horror, dismay, disgust, revulsion and even anger that evil like this can so easily find its way into our school halways, our movie theatres, our tallest skyscrapers....
...and the finish line of our celebrations of the spirit of competition and community.
The postings that flooded my Facebook home page yesterday were pristine proof of that unity.
With one exception.
A woman I do not personally know. A woman who became a Facebook "friend" like many of those friends we acquire on FB, someone who knows someone who knows someone else who actually is someone we know. Someone whose life seems worthy of witnessing or whose occupation might come in handy in our own professional lives.
Or maybe, as the old chestnut cliche' goes, a stranger who is actually a friend we simply haven't yet met.
I won't mention her name here. Because that action would simply spill worms from a can I'm not interested in opening.
But believe me when I tell you that the temptation to damn the worms and shine a light on this woman is pretty powerful at the moment.
Because, amongst the stories of bravery and courage and support and human compassion that are flowing out of Boston like sleek ships down the Charles River, this woman's contribution to the flow deserves mention and then some.
If only as a blunt, crude, even profane reminder of how deeply rooted is this hatred, this hatred that lurks just beneath the surface, churning, bubbling, festering, waiting for another opportunity to be injected into the marrow of our national backbone.
And, most insidiously, not hatred spewing from a stereotypically dark, forboding super villain, hiding in shadows, one arm wrapped around an assault rifle or an explosives detonater, the other affectionately wrapped around a smug, smiling Satan.
But spewing, like vomit resulting from a foul meal, from the heart, mind, soul and lips of a seemingly average, everyday, basically nice person.
The kind of person who might help kids find their way to class in a Connecticut school hallway...or smilingly take your ticket as you enter a Colorado movie theatre.
Or offer you a bottle of water as you run the streets of Boston in celebration of competitiion and community.
Hatred, so apparent, and sad, as to be as repulsive as the sights of shattered store windows, severed limbs and blood stained streets.
Hatred that amongst the calls for thoughts, prayers and compassion flooding the page of FB yesterday, flashed in these eyes with the blinding light of...well....a couple of explosions.
Hatred that gave this seemingly average, everyday, basically nice person the psychic energy to post an unmistakable placement of blame for yesterday's acts of marathon madness on the current occupant of the White House.
An irrational indictment of the political process that, in this woman's twisted sensibilities, was responsible for what she sees to be catastrophic cause and effect.
Those who are responsible, she offers, for placing one man in a house on Pennsylvania Avenue are equally responsible for the dead and dying on the streets of downtown Boston.
No reasonable person reading her post could see it as anything other that what it was.
A terrible, tragic ignorance that has festered into a hatred, an evil that has infected the parts of her heart where concern and compassion for her fellow human beings once, we want to believe, resided.
Ironically, for me, anyway, I would still offer, in the course of purely intellectual dialogue, that she has the right to speak her mind as she wishes.
That's the bedrock of the freedom we enjoy as citizens of this country.
And I would, and will, defend that right no matter how horrific the comment or how much personal revulsion I feel as a result.
But she inspired me to do something that I have never done before.
I unfriended someone on Facebook.
Because I passionately, even zealously, defend her right to free speech.
I simply don't want to hear the sounds of her hatred.
With friends like that....
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