Sucked in to the Internet

Friday was our day to take care of the oldest granddaughter, The Bird, ten months old.  She is a city girl and accustomed to watching the sights, sounds, sirens, and special people who traverse the city streets,  as she rolls in her stroller from her neighborhood to downtown.

Since I am already sure that the iconoclastic blood of her grandfather runs through her veins I took her down to partake of the folks who were putting on the demonstration, the folks of "Occupy Boston." We read the signs, nodded in appreciation as the folks played the drums, and sought out indications of agreement form passers-by.  In general I felt sympathetic.

After we returned The Bird to her parents and went home I began to poke around on the Internet to see what kind of attention the demonstrators were receiving and what who was reacting in what ways.  I read articles on about four sites, and read the comments, which always seem to bring out the worst in people.  That was my downfall.

The comments on the Fox News site were confusing to me.  I knew somehow those folks would be against the demonstrators, but I couldn't see how they would frame it since in many ways it seemed like the same issues that the Tea Party people were also trying to highlight.  But somehow the Tea Party people were Patriots, while the Occupy people were hippie-Communists, trying to destroy America.

That where I made my mistake and decided to put in a post in support of the Occupy people and asking for some kind of clarification of their anger.  Pretty rapidly I received four responses from people who seemed to be right there, waiting to respond.  Two of the responses were just quick and nasty.  I was called dirty, immature, and a Mamma's boy who expected to have everything handed to him.  One was positive, thanking me for being supportive.  The last one was a long message telling me that if I ever had real experience in the world, and not just from what my college professor told me, then I would know that America is only for those who help themselves.  There is not a right to expect that corporations or the government should do anything for you expect to allow you to do whatever you want, unless you hurt somebody.

That one kind of intrigued me, so when I sat down again, about seven hours later, and really just to see what button I would push, I responded by telling the person that I have run a successful business for thirty years and I have learned that  what is necessary for success is strong and dependable infrastructure provided by a good government, and that no business, and no person really, can survive in this complex society on his own, cooperation and interdependence is necessary for success, especially on a large scale, for a whole society.

In less than five minutes I received a long rambling answer telling me that it is written the Constitution that government should not do much of anything, and that people who expected more were trying to undermine the Exceptionalism of America and bring the greatest country on earth to its knees.  He ended with this : 

"Nothing you have said changes those impressions one bit.  Just because you have run a business doesn't mean you aren't an anti-American leftist.  It just means you have no appreciation for the gift of being an American and therefore don't deserve our consideration of your ludicrous, ill-conceived opinions."

I am posting this here not to show that there are great divides and a total lack of communication across them, as much as to show that there are many, many people, mostly older, angry men, who are on their computers twenty hours a day, defending their world from the likes of me.

Just as I am sure that my granddaughter will absorb many of my values without realizing that it is a choice, I am sure that this person comes from a very different place, literally and figuratively than I do.  The sub-culture he hangs around in, whether real or virtual, is very supportive of his beliefs, and it is only due to these advances in technology that we have the opportunity to irritate each other.

I think, in the long run, that may prove helpful to our society.  If it doesn't cause another Civil War, it could be preventing one.