Mismessaging

ALTHOUGH I'VE BEEN ON FACEBOOK for more than five years, I think, I've ever really totally gotten into it. Never leared ow to make a fancy post with all sorts of colors and decorations, and so foth. I have strictly limited my time spent on Facebook to probably less than an hour a day, and although my "friends" list has swollen into the thousands what with the addition of former students who found me, still, I'm not really a Facebook guy. I rarely use mesenger, for instance. I get far more messages than I really want to receive, mostly from young women or people pretending to be young attractive women, women looking for that one perfect relationship, or maybe, just maybe, easy money. They seem to think I was born yesterday, which is some ways I wish I had been, but in others, not so much. Many of the messages are from my fellow screeching left wing liberal types, who are absolutely convinced they not only can educate me in some way, but seem to be on a holy crusade to do it. Often, without even bothering to read the message, I take a quick glance at it, then quickly typeIN "thanks", or merely hit the thumbs up button, to say thanks, or express agreement with the message, which nearly always suits my ideology. Recently I received a message about the street demosntrations in Iran protesting the suppression of women, and I punched the thumbs up button, to indicate my agreement, approval, and thanks to the messanger. Shortly thereafter I got another message from the original messnager, saying: "Why did you give a thumbs up to a woman being persecuted for protesting her head garment in public"? Oops...my bad. I tried to explain that my thumbs up was a thank you for giving me the information, and in no way signals my approval or support of either the actions of those harming the protesting women, nor my approval of Iranian government suppression. I still don't know whether my explanation was read and understoond: I didn't stay around along enough to find out. But now, curiosity is getting the better of me. Maybe I can summon the courage to log back onto Facebook....The "bottom line" for me is that I fully support and root for the women's protest movement in Iran to fullly succeed, even to the point of overthrowing the repressive government of religious fanatics and to replace it with a secular democracy with equal rights for all citizens, including women and minorities. Hell, I wish that for our beloved United States of America...Long live secular liberal democracy, and the people around the world who believe in it. In the United States, it is becmoning incrasingly evident that America's right wing conservative movement does not embrace secular democracy, and must therefore be defeated, as we say, in the arena of ideals, as well as at the ballot box.