Last Updated on January 26, 2022
I ran across a political meme posted by a woman I went to high school with the other day. I felt immediately disappointed by what I found.
A political meme can quickly show you someone’s true colors. In this day and age, you can easily find more vitriol than anyone ever needed. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter allow people to spread such foolishness easily.
But for some reason, those who spread the garbage don’t realize how bad it makes them look.
This political meme featured a poster with two columns.
Some people believe everything in life must be black or white. Or, in political terms, red or blue. They don’t allow any thought that there are shades of gray. But there is always a gray area. Most rational people understand this.
But the overly-charged political types don’t trust reason: they let their anger do their thinking for them.
The poster listed “Republican” on the left and “Democrat” on the right. They probably didn’t realize the irony of that placement.
But each row listed opposites designed to compare the two.
The first row listed, “We believe in God” on the Republican side and “We are atheist” on the Democrat side.
Republicans want, the poster said, to “end abortion” while Democrats prefer to “kill the babies.”
“Marriage=Man & Woman” the Republican side showed a few rows down. Just to the right, under the Democrat side, it read, “Same sex marriage.”
Get ready for the clincher: it said Republicans value “freedom of speech” and accused their opponents of wanting to “silence the truth.”
Even more irony there.
It saddens me that people actually think this way. You could check line by line and find examples of people who side, on some issues, opposite their party.
But no one wants to do that. It’s easier — and intellectually lazier — to think that everyone on one side thinks exactly the same way.
One former president immediately shatters the claims.
The general public doesn’t call Jimmy Carter the greatest president. There were plenty of domestic issues that he wasn’t able to improve, despite impressive foreign policy accomplishments.
But the 95-year-old is easily one of the most moral, religious men ever told office. (Didn’t the poster claim Democrats must be atheists?)
In a 2012 interview, Carter said he wished the Democratic Party would become more Pro-Life. (But the poster claimed all Democrats want to “kill the babies.”)
And back in October, he and wife Rosalynn became the longest-married presidential couple. They’ve spent more than 73 years together…as man and woman.
Who would have thought?
I know it takes time to fact-check things. And I know that when you are so excited to be able to post a political meme you think skewers your enemy, the last thing you want is for facts to get in the way.
But when you post something so obviously false, you’re singing to your own choir of political think-alikes. And you’re telling the rest of the world your judgment deserves serious questioning.
Is that really how you want to look to the rest of the world?
Some may think unfriending someone is an extreme response. But some of us don’t want to see such garbage all day. And if you’re going to be lazy to post that kind of junk, we might take the easy way out and click that “unfriend” button.
Problem solved.