DECEMBER 8, 2021 – I have a story of our times. I also have a confession of sorts: I’m a FB user, though not in any addictive sort of way. I post pics of our six-year-old granddaughter, who, in her grandparents’ world, is a cutie pie. For those posts, I receive lots of “likes” and “loves.” I also follow what actual friends are up to and have to see and say. Several post smart, thoughtful, enriching, and highly original content. And as noted in previous blog posts, I go for the aviation and boating videos that wind up in my feed. Oh yeah; almost forgot! I post the link to my daily blog installment.
I try hard to avoid political posts.
Yesterday I made an exception. An algorithm has inundated me recently with course offerings and donation solicitations by Hillsdale College. Thanks to my late parents’ having landed years ago on the Hillsdale mailing list (see its monthly Imprimis publication), I’ve long been acquainted with the hard-right, Michigan college. Much is revealed about Hillsdale’s market demographics by the DVD format of available courses.
The focus of those courses is early American history. They push what I—inescapably a dishonest, subversive, Marxist, socialist, communist because I voted for Biden—would describe as an intellectually rigid, cherry-picked approach to American history, conforming to what mostly old, white, rural, Christian, militant nationalists favor: goods, services, entertainment . . . and “education” wrapped in the American flag.
The lead sentence to one lengthy solicitation began, “Recently, the far-Left has continued to push a dishonest and dangerous narrative about our nation’s history and founding documents.” This ad drew hundreds of comments, which got the best of me. Many were critical (how did those people get on the list?). Many, unsurprisingly, were Hillsdale cheerleaders. I took on one of them. To the woman’s credit, she replied with a civil but parroting tongue, and one wholly free of analysis. She quickly ran out of gas.
Another hard-right supporter jumped in, however—a retired lawyer from Texas. He was game for a multi-post exchange before distilling things this way: “We see the world differently. I see bright lines. You see bleary lines.” I told him he was spot-on. (I’d told him earlier that when I put my reading of history and life experience into the blender of analysis, I see a swatch of the color wheel, not a single, primary color.)
Meanwhile, a gray-haired Marine veteran leaped into the fray. He was angry, bursting with vitriol, and saw only criminality in anyone who’d voted for a Democrat. I wrote hard and fast to get out of his gunsights before he could do any actual damage. I didn’t convince him of anything except that I was hellbent on destroying America, and he said so.
After these attempts at engagement, I had to disentangle. My next stop was the kitchen, where I poured myself a tall glass of water. I then watched a fascinating documentary on fungi. All’s now right with my world.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
