The OCD Diaries

November 12, 2020February 26, 2021

Election 2020: The Damage Was Worse Than My Original Report

Update 2/26/21: After writing this, events took a dark turn. The endless attempts to litigate and derail the election — culminating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — made my usual, seasonal bout of depression much more pronounced.

I woke up every morning the first three weeks of January with my guts in knots. My anxiety shot up and off the charts.

I was a slave to every news report, reversing the progress I had made in recent years of not letting world events cripple my ability to function. I grew obsessed over things I couldn’t control. My anger was like lava racing down the side of a volcano, incinerating everything in its path. I saw villains everywhere. In other words, I was a mess.

I’ve turned the corner using the coping tools I have accumulated in recent years: medication, meditation and yoga, taking mental shore leave as needed, daily walks and clean eating, and plenty of prayer.

I’m not a special case. A lot of us have been walking barefoot on the razor’s edge during the pandemic and political unrest.

I’ve long-believed our Democracy is broken, so I’m surprised current events have had this level of impact on me. Maybe it’s because, in this case, I’ve wanted to be proven wrong.

All of this has made it hard for me to express myself in writing. My brain had been all over the place, which doesn’t help the process. But I’m almost ready to resume.

Here’s to better days ahead.

***

Original post:

Election 2020: The Worst Didn’t Happen

I’m writing this exactly a week after the 2020 election. While there’s still much to make people anxious, no matter who they voted for, my hope for humanity is rallying.

Mood Music:

Uncertainty still abounds. There will be recounts and court cases disputing the results in several key states. Despite Biden’s more than 4 million lead, the final popular vote shows how divided Americans remain. Many of us continue to hold our breath, firm in the belief that this isn’t truly over.

But those developments will work themselves out in time. For now, here’s what gives me hope that the vast majority of Americans remain hopeful in the greater good as opposed to drowning in cynicism:

The widespread unrest at the polls that many feared never materialized. Election Day was fairly peaceful.
Though more protests are likely as voting-related cases work through the courts and recounts happen, this week has been mostly peaceful.
So far, the courts, many of them with a conservative tilt, are demanding cold, hard proof of fraud. Simply claiming fraud hasn’t worked so far. Evidence and data seem to matter, after all.
On Election Day and in the week since, the mood in my Facebook feed has been even-keeled. I haven’t seen the obnoxious gloating I expected among those on the left, nor have I seen much yelling and screaming from the right. In fact, a lot of friends on both sides have wished for America to move forward, whoever wins — and wished each other the best.

As a centrist, I like divided government because that prevents extreme laws from getting enacted. It looks like that’s what we’ll get here, with a blue White House and red Congress, though two Senate runoff elections could change that.

Every Friday afternoon I end the workweek with a Zoom Happy Hour for cybersecurity folks. Those who show up — friends I consider a lot smarter than me — include people who lean left and right. Some voted for Biden and at least a couple supported Trump.

We don’t harp at each other over ideology, and last Friday was no different. Last week’s discussion was about the latest developments in cybersecurity, as well as developments in science and technology, which we often geek out about.

Towards the end, one conservative friend noted that whatever happens, for all the ideological gyrations this country has seen so far this century, America has been on a steady trajectory forward. As he put it, we now live in a country where it’s expected that women and minorities can reach high office.

Not too long ago, that wasn’t the case.

Humanity evolves and won’t be stopped. So take a breath. Be vigilant and prepared for what may come. But don’t lose hope in your fellow humans.

Never lose hope.

July 23, 2020July 21, 2020

Memes That Divide Us

In my recent post, “The Corrosion of Public Discourse,” I started with examples of how the American conversation has grown rotten. To recap, people:

Share memes without checking to see if they are based on truth or misinformation
Talk past each other rather than to each other
Slice, dice and distort data points to fit their viewpoint
Talk down to other people and confuse this as an act of virtue

A day after I published that, one of my Facebook connections posted a meme that exemplified those points:

Table with the title, Vote Wisely in 2020. The left column lists 20 items Democrats are supposed to be for, many of them false or exaggerated. The right column lists 20 items Republicans are supposed to be for, many of them false or exaggerated.

To me, it’s just another meme that plays fast and loose with the truth and paints huge parts of the population with the same brush. All the standard tropes are present. In this case we have a conservative saying they’re a beacon of virtue, a champion of freedom and the rule of law. Everyone else is shit.

I know just as many Republicans as I do Democrats. Some people genuinely try to solve serious problems with an exchange of ideas, but neither group neatly fits the columns assigned to them. Both groups have faults and virtues.

America has often been at its best when people on both sides compromise for the greater good. I personally prefer that to “us vs. them” memes like the one above.

And so, a suggestion:

If you’re going to make your point with a meme, fine. I do it all the time.

But before sharing, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to examine whether it truly aligns with reality, or if it’s merely painting huge groups of diverse people with the same sloppy brush.

I’ll try to do that, too.

July 21, 2020July 21, 2020

We Can Be Friends — Just Not on Facebook

Early on in my social media experience, I was often paranoid about being unfriended on Facebook. I worried endlessly about what I did to offend.

I eventually stopped caring and even took delight when someone deleted me. In my mind, it meant I had successfully gotten on the nerves of someone who deserved it.

Amid political divisiveness that has turned social media into a sewer, my thinking about online friendships — especially on Facebook — has evolved. In the process, I’ve gone on an unfriending spree of my own.

Mood Music:

I often see people announcing that they’re trimming their friends lists as if those they delete are unworthy subjects, unfit to be in their kingdom. Yet I did that very thing last week:

Facebook post from Bill Brenner: One thing I’ve always valued about social media is the ability for people to have a healthy exchange of ideas and find common ground. It’s increasingly difficult to find that on Facebook. People share memes without checking to see if they are based on truth or misinformation. They talk past each other instead of to each other. Data points are distorted to fit a viewpoint. People talk down to other people and confuse the action as one of virtue. Those I speak of exist on the left and right sides of the political spectrum. I’ve begun deleting a lot of people from my friends list. I don’t have time to roll around in the dirt. Peace to you all.

Since then, the pace of my unfriending has picked up. Mostly, I’ve removed those who push conspiracy theories and see public health measures in a pandemic as an assault on liberty, which I don’t buy. I try to be the voice of reason, the guy seeking the middle ground. But when it comes to what I see as thick-headed individuals contributing to the disastrous COVID-19 surge playing out across the south and western U.S. — threatening the rest of us with further death, lockdowns and economic pain — I can’t play along any more. You can’t achieve common ground with people who aren’t willing to meet you halfway and maybe admit when they’re wrong. Since I’ve admitted when I’m wrong many times, it’s not too much to ask.

Right or wrong, that’s how I feel. I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. But by unfriending those who contribute to it, I preserve my sanity.

There’s a lesson here. Regarding those people I thought were being self-important by announcing that they were unfriending people? I was probably being overly judgmental. On further reflection, they were probably doing what they had to do and the announcement serves as a warning (or relief?) to the rest of their followers.

Some of the people I removed are long-time friends and family. If you’re among them, I haven’t necessarily lost affection for you. I just can’t keep looking at what you’re pushing. I know others have concluded the same about me, and I respect that.

If you believe the opposite of what I believe, you’re likely finding my posts to be too much. If that’s the case, for the sake of your own sanity, you should unfriend me.

Friendships can and should endure. Just not always on Facebook, where relationships are not always the same as in the offline world.