Of interest is that Krugman declined to permit any comments from others. I don’t recall seeing this done before.
Generally, I'm willing to add almost anyone as a Facebook "friend" as long as we have some kind of common connection or our paths crossed at sometime in our lives. I have yet to "unfriend" anyone in the Facebook space, but I have been "unfriended" by 2 former Highlanders I never knew at EH all those years ago. One was a 1961 and the other, a 1965.
Leftist politics was at the root of both events. Apparently neither of my former “friends” had the fortitude to deal with the fact that I am a conservative who is unwilling to sit quietly and accept leftist propaganda as gospel, as Mr. Krugman’s “no comments” decision seems to illustrate. One “friend” took exception to my occasional inclusion of a piece in the blog that reflected my conservative nature. After one (of several) particularly snarky message from him strongly suggesting that I not use “our” Highlander blog for any political content, I felt compelled to remind him that the blog is mine to do with as I wish. Others are welcome to contribute to it or take what they wish from it, or just ignore it. I’m ambivalent about it’s acceptance, although I’m flattered if you like it.
Furthermore, I thought it useful to remind him that I didn’t know him 50-years ago at EH where he was a moderately visible elder Highlander, nor do I know him now.
The other former Facebook friend is apparently an unbridled leftist who kept feeding me a steady flow of so-called “news” stories taken from a collection of leftist websites he frequents. I or anyone was invited to comment on his posts. However, it was quickly evident that neither he, nor his other leftist friends wanted to debate anything rationally. The invective-filled flurry of retorts to pretty much anything I posted clearly illustrated an intolerant far left dogma existed there, rather than a rational debate. However, it was sometimes fun to pitch a bone in just to see the resulting frenzy—they were that predictable. Of course, as most Texas boys can attest, even zapping ants with a magnifying glass out on the walk can only hold one’s interest just so long.
My 1965 Highlander former “friend” pitched one of his stink bombs out on Facebook a couple of days ago and apparently left his computer for the day, leaving 4 of his weakest “activists” behind to carry on the “discussion.” All they could muster was a string of invectives calling me about every nasty thing they could pull from their limited vocabularies. Not once did they address the issue, so intent were they in hurling their silly invectives. I don't think I've encountered such low and childish communication since Jr. Hi. Perhaps, not even there as I was a big kid who the smaller ones generally wouldn't provoke.
Now, for a large part of my professional career I was the principal wordsmith for a medium-size company, charged with communicating with my peers at many of the largest corporations in the world. In that role, I learned to be careful about what I wrote and if I were angry, to put those responses off until tomorrow in order to see if I still felt as strongly about the matter then as I did at the time. More often than not, I didn't, so I saved myself from some potentially embarrassing attention to ill-chosen words. And angry people can sometimes become solid friends later on.
Hope this piece hasn’t rambled too much…there is more to say that I will put into a couple of follow-on posts.
Continued in Part 2
Adios
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