CLIFF DUNN

This week, I took the arguably drastic step of “de-friending” some people on Facebook who I felt had taken the whole “post whatever is on your mind” thing a bit too far. (I have seen some doozies, believe me, including someone who, moments before I forever “blocked” them, had posted an image of their most recent—I am not making this up—bowel movement.)

I’m all in favor of free speech and free expression, which is convenient, since I’m a writer by trade and my boyfriend is a talented sketch artist, but there’s a time and a place for everything, including bowel movements. This isn’t to say that I don’t support your “right” to broadcast your bodily functions, just not while my laptop is open to that page (the reason I likewise support Facebook’s right to remove particularly egregious violators).

In the case of this past week, it was the irresponsible use of free speech that caused me—with sincere regret—to “block” these individuals, at least until the Cessation of Hostilities (in this case, November 7, the day after the general election).

The angry political rhetoric of this year’s Silly Season (so-called because apparently there is nothing too ridiculous, unfathomable, or out-of-bounds about any given candidate or cause that some— uh, fellow citizen wouldn’t give credence to: Obama is a Muslim. Obama is a foreigner. Obama is a communist. (Or, as Hank Williams, Jr. so eloquently put it, “We’ve got a Muslim for a President who hates cowboys, hates cowgirls, hates fishing, hates farming, loves gays, and we hate him!”)

“Collectively, these hatemongers form a global industry of outrage, working feverishly to give and take offense, frequently over religion, and to ignite the combustible mix of ignorance and suspicion that exists,” said an article in Time last week. Interestingly, the writer was speaking about the powder keg of the Middle East, in an analysis of the causes of the rioting that led to the death in Libya of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. But he could just as easily been referring to the loutish and loud who are every bit as hateful as the extremists they are decrying.

Honestly, I am a patriot who loves my country and who believes— without the flurry and flourish of rattling sabers or beating breasts— that America is an exceptional country, because of its people and the principles and values for which we at least think we believe we stand. But I would—I’m serious—be challenged as to whom I would call a greater enemy to American values: Rush Limbaugh, or some ignorant teenager learning how to hate the U.S. in a Muslim madrasa. Neither of these types shares anything of my own personal feelings for my country or countrymen, and each (I am pretty certain) thinks in his own way that the world would be a better place without me.

A friend recently referred to the members of the Occupy Wall Street movement as “traitors.” I find this sort of anachronistic speech amusing in my own paternalistic way—until I realize this is the same rhetoric that was voiced against Jews in some of the most “enlightened” places in the world, including Paris, Vienna, London, and Washington, D.C., through the modern era. How can a free citizen in a nation of laws that protects the right of assembly and the right of expression be considered a “traitor?”

I take comfort that this kind of dangerous rhetoric has been preached and practiced in the Republic since its inception, with Jeffersonians accusing Washington (the actual George, in this case) of being pro-English and anti- American, and Hamiltonians and Adamsites in turn calling Jeffersonians the worst name they could think of: “Democrats” (the word had a different context in early-19th Century, post-French Revolution America, although Rush, Sean Hannity, and Company are having just as much fun with it).

My dislike of Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and the Bloviating Class (which doesn’t translate to a disdain for commentator Bill O’Reilly, incidentally, because he dislikes the hypocrisy against Obama as much as I do) often takes the form of imagining them as my “opponents” in some of the mindless video games my boyfriend and I sometimes play while we’re cooking (“Bloons Tower Defense,” anyone?), watching them explode in a whirl of hot air—and hotter gas—when my game avatar “pops” a balloon opponent.

A part of me thinks it’s not in some of the mindless video games my boyfriend and I sometimes play while we’re cooking (“Bloons Tower
Defense,” anyone?), watching them explode in a whirl of hot air—and hotter gas—when my game avatar “pops” a balloon opponent. A part of me thinks it’s not very “patriotic” of me to imagine my fellow countrymen in such straits, but another part recognizes that in today’s political climate, it  is very “American.”