I have friends who are liberal and I have friends who are conservative and I have friends who are a little of both.  My friends know my position, I think.  I have and my family members have voted for candidates from multiple parties in Canada. I have voted NDP, Liberal, and Conservative, depending on the scale of the election and the issues supported by the party. I have chosen to support the ousting of a female party leader when it appeared that she placed her personal interests over those of the people she represented.

The divide is deep in the United States and in some respects, there are deep political divides in Canada as well.  I’ve watched over the past year as friends have posted deeply divided political commentaries on Facebook.  I haven’t defriended anyone, despite at times wanting to do so.  It hurts to see a man who treated me with respect by holding my hand in public, walking on the street side of a sidewalk and opening the door for me say to a woman “go home and look pretty,” just because he doesn’t support her right to actively oppose a man who has demeaned women publically.  Many of my liberal friends will think that it’s backward of me to support that view of respecting women.  I think we can retain some old practices of decorum without supporting the “old-fashioned” (misogynist) values that put those practices in place.

Here’s the thing:  I don’t see these commentaries and re-posts changing anyone’s mind on either side.  I agree that politicians from both sides need to be held accountable and I am happy to see that being played out in the media, but to me, Facebook is about retaining old friendships.  If we were sitting at Thanksgiving dinner together, you would each be retrospect about how your message was delivered or we would be discussing things that we all value equally.  By doing so, we would be finding common ground, not deepening an already cavernous gap.

I respect your right to repost articles and fight the battles you feel need to be fought, but I’d just like to see more about your children’s baseball game or marriage, the book you just published, the new job you took on, or your travels.  I’m willing to share with you the sad moments in your lives, like the loss of a loved one or an illness, or if you are potentially in a dangerous situation.  I want to hear about your lives because I am so far away and because I feel it deepens the bond we already share.

I’m not going to say I didn’t get a good chuckle out of the Beaverton article that said Palestine had declared Texas a state of Mexico and I thought the National Geographic video of the dying polar bear was heartbreaking, because who doesn’t like polar bears?