Political posts have always been rampant on Facebook. COVID-19 seems to have amped their frequency for certain people. Uncertainty and an uptick of free time leads to prolific reposting of memes, it seems. Consequently, liberal friends have upped their sharing of their political memes. And, conservative friends are firing off their social media post buttons as if they’re operating a machine gun.
Generally, these posts convey a combative, angry tone more than seek to engender reconsideration or debate. They seem to say, “look at these peoples’ hypocrisy” and “wow, what dumbasses, check out this stupidity,” among other attacks. Some of my friends only post messages meant to diminish the intellect or forthrightness of another group of people. Tribalism, at its core, I watch these people sail their ships further from each other, all while shooting arrows at the other’s figurative vessels. And, what strikes me are not their barbs but rather their commonalities. In that, both groups behave so similarly, and both seem so blinded to their pushing their angle as if harbingers of the universe’s sole purpose.
I suppose it makes sense that people would turn to this behavior. Like many species, we’re aggressive, and we appear to suffer from a need to feel important, correct, and validated, and thus it’s not surprising that during unpredictable times that feel perilous that some of our baser instincts would manifest. With the first post on the Internet, surely the first troll followed, and thus reasonable people over time will find themselves perpetuating drumbeats toward conflict, even if only in the form of a meme. With more time at home, people can manifest their fear and frustration through simplistic graphics.
Here are some examples, and for this post I’m going to focus on the conservative posts. One person posted a graphic that shows colonial men gathered with one man, presumably meant to be Patrick Henry given his appearance and words, standing with raised fist to declare: “Give me liberty or give me death!! Unless there’s a virus with a 99% recovery rate. In which case, strip me of my freedoms, my job, my constitutional rights and put me under house arrest.” I won’t pick apart the various claims in this text, and I recognize that it’s somewhat meant as exaggerated satire, but I most note the irony of using a slave holder as your figurehead to convey a statement focused on ideals of freedom. Furthermore, states provide most of the restrictions being imposed. Patrick Henry did not support the Constitution, pushing for states to have more power, and the police power and power to protect the general welfare of citizens (which includes responding to disease) is a state power. If you want protection from the state, and if the state courts fail you, your recourse is to gain the federal government’s support. The 10th Amendment retains certain rights to the states; during this crisis, the federal government is respecting the boundaries of this provision (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”).
Another odd series of posts has to do with minimizing the perceived import of this coronavirus’s danger. An ongoing narrative insists that hospitals fabricate causes of death to secure more funding, since additional federal funds go to COVID-19-related deaths. Thus, the number of people dead from the disease must be magnified. These posts, as far as I’ve seen, fail to indicate what sort of inflation to attribute to the death toll due to this perverse incentive to overstate COVID’s contribution. Though, the intent seems to be that you should discount all accounts since surely some inaccuracies have resulted. These posts never mention that the number of people dying this year is higher than prior yearly averages (I believe this is accounting for population increases, but I could be mistaken).
Similarly, I had been seeing posts highlighting that the US’s per capita death rate for COVID-19 is much lower than many other countries. What these posts seek to accomplish mystifies me. For, the posters seem to share this content to convey that we don’t need to social distance, failing to recognize the possibility that any good news related to fewer deaths is related directly to benefits accrued by social distancing. Similarly, the per capita ratio could change over time, and I believe that it has done so given that I haven’t seen more of these posts as the death numbers have continued to increase (and that’s with social distancing practices being followed). Further, being seventh or whatever place we were on a list of highest per-capita deaths isn’t what I’d label as a hallmark of success. Being seventh of states in the nation for preventable deaths, worst educational systems, or any other undesirable metric isn’t something to celebrate, and on the world state we’re talking of a count well beyond 50 in scope. And, if we’re focused on countries by largest GDP then we’re still looking rough when it comes to COIVD-related deaths.
In terms of progressive posts, I’ve noticed that they often point to the most ludicrous of voices from the right and then equate these words and activities as if representative of all conservatives. “Woke culture” continues to be a thing in that if you’re a white man who has “woke” then it’s really hard to broadcast your perspectives without perpetuating the very thing that you believe yourself to be woke from. You can support non-white, non-male groups by striving to not be an ass and by recognizing their perspectives, perpetuating their messages for them reeks of newfangled imperialism. Also, and this isn’t always true, many woke people end up displaying hypocrisies, and then that undercuts the positive messages because failings even if only tangentially related to the progressive idea prompt people to dismiss all related ideas from the questionable source. This, here, is anecdotal but I recall one guy repeating his claims of being woke yet then sexualizing a server while at a restaurant, in front of coworkers, which was rather awkward and creepy.
Across all of the political spectrum, people fail to post when atrocities occur that conflict with their usual stances. Sometimes, something terrible is just that, and that if the facts were different it might have helped your political slant doesn’t mean that you should ignore this topic. If you’re outraged by wrongdoing or the like, then why not broadcast all such instances of malfeasance. Like the level of interest in Biden’s alleged sexual assault is disturbing. Also, that anger regarding Ahmaud Aubrey’s murder seems to be largely a leftish concern is disappointing.