Harvesting Hate

Autumn, the time when nights grow longer and days grow colder. Rusty leaves fall from the trees and litter the ground with a patchwork of colors. It's the time of the year that we harvest what's been sown two seasons prior, and a culmination of all our work, accomplishments, and gratitude are acknowledged with a feast of thankfulness. It's a time when we should be rejoicing in the spoils of our endeavors, and warming up for the grand winter celebrations that usually bring happiness and good tidings shared with each other.

However, this year saw a presidential election, that will undoubtedly go down in history as the most hate fueled competition that our country has seen since pre-civil war era contentions. With the help of social media, we have a 24/7 information super highway, that is designed to bring each individual their own algorithmically curated news channel that delivers nothing but like-minded receive-and-repeat information that gets the most engagement. With the help of our handy portable communication devices, this information horn is on full blast and on all the time, reaching and affecting every aspect of society, leaving people well indoctrinated by their echo chambers; and suspicious if not out right critical of each others beliefs. Attention and engagement means profits for media purveyors, and the type of attention and engagement that has garnered the most profit, has been outrage and hate, and because of this paradigm we have all been fed a hefty personalized diet of information intended to purposefully outrage us, whether we allow that to turn into hateful rhetoric and actions is a different story. A story I have recently had the misfortune of being a character in.

Earlier this week I created a professional page on Facebook. As a retired veteran that swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, I believe my best efforts at upholding this oath, will be to operate a social media page where I intend to educate the public about the Constitution. Right out of the gate, Facebook put up a roadblock, they determined that posts containing "The Constitution" are political and rejected them, so my page about the Constitution was missing the Constitution. for now. I'm rewriting and reconfiguring the posts and articles to slip through the AI watchdogs; there's also a story about why the Constitution is political, when it shouldn't be in there somewhere, but I digress. Not to fret, I also posts articles that are examples of our constitutional rights and privileges, so I still had some content. I currently have articles about: Why I stand for the flag, but why it must not be a requirement for everyone; First Amendment protections that media influencers, (Joe Rogan highlighted in the article) are protected under, but how money dictates what is said and who hears it (so it's believed as 'The Truth' by recipients), and finally a post and a short poem about "Diversity" using colors and light as metaphors for segregation and inclusion; and it was this post that was a winner for the wrong reasons.

My post about diversity and why it's a natural imperative to the health and survival of organisms and societies, was launched into the Meta-verse and what rebounded was about 98% hatred. The week hasn't concluded yet, and this post has received almost 900 interactions, of my site's just over 1500 engagements. Diversity and being in favor of it, triggers right-wingers something fierce. It's as if I planted a seed of diversity into the soil, and with the social media climate set to 'engagement abundance', knowing mathematically outrage being the most bountiful, I daily opened my page to a harvest of hate. For the first three days I attempted to engage with them intellectually, but with many just being drive-by trolls, there wasn't much reciprocation. The men that did respond to my retorts, and I say men because of the hundreds of haters only 2 were women, maintained their hateful positions and rhetoric, seemingly trying to goad me into an exchange of vitriol. Understanding being quick to anger is a sign of a lack of intellect, I did not oblige their taunts. After 3 days I had to turn off the notifications because it wasn't worth the engagement.

Fortunately, I'm not adverse to conflict nor do I back down to bullies. After a 25 year career in the Navy that put me through combat, rescue, and humanitarian relief missions, I have been through and managed a great deal of adversity, giving me the confidence and ability to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. The problem for me is, I want my site to do well and be engaging to Republicans and Democrats alike, but the most engagement so far has been through hateful exchanges, and I don't want to encourage or perpetuate the hate. I was hoping, and maybe naively, that educating the public about the Constitution and the men who created it would be a bridge that spanned the ever-growing sociopolitical divide we are experiencing. It was a hope, that I would be able to reach a diverse audience and by example sow democracy, but unfortunately in these times if seems like all there is to harvest is hate.

In the time it took me to write this short article, the diversity post received over 20 hate fueled messages and emojis. There are less than 20 positive and intelligent engagements on this post, and that is probably the number of people who have read the attached poem. During a time of year when we usually have happiness filling our hearts and minds, the MAGA movement has fueled us to replace that feeling with hate for the people and things we don't understand because they are different. With the election results set to take effect in two months resulting in a social climate awash with anxiety and fear, because the new normal could very well see political tolerance if not outright encouragement of the hate to continue against the minorities contributing to the diversity of the United States. Leaving the outlook of sowing democracy extremely bleak.

Hooyah America!