I am writing this in my response to the hundreds of responses to the elcection that I have seen via Facebook. As many of you may know, Facebook has a feature called "status" where users basically update the world on their lives. They range anywhere from "So-and-so has a headache" to "So-and-so can't wait to see his/her bf/gf" to "So-and-so is [insert random lyrics here]." Seems pretty frivilous and harmless, right?
However, as of last night, I have seen some pretty hateful things posted on Facebook in regards to the election. I myself am very excited about the outcome of the election (hence my status: "Lauren is sooooooooo happy!!!!!!!!!"). The comments I have seen are racist, ignorant, and unpatriotic.
Now I am all for freedom of speech and expression, but where do we draw the line?
Here are my favorite Facebook statuses (I am leaving out names):
- "[name] is is thanking god he put in his application for handguns before a terrorist became president."
- "[name] is disgusted with what this country is coming too"
- "[name] is really trying to understand how America can be so dumb."
- " [name] is scared of the next four years."
- "[name] is is in shock....This country is in for a rude awakening."
- "[name] is moving to canada.......thanks america....."
- "[name] knows its really cool to hate George Bush and Republicans and all... but get with the fucking program you morons."
- "[ name] wants to know who's moving to canada with me?? haha."
Of course there are positive ones as well, but they are not offensive. There are so many more in addition to those I stated, but I just wanted to highlight a few. There are also a lot of people who want "to move to Canada" rather than stand by their nation. I have three points to make in regards to all of this:
- The Republicans allegedly refered to Obama a socialist. Are all these people who want to "move to Canada" aware that Canada is more of a socialist nation than the USA? They have programs such as universal health care, a national pension plan, national student loan system, and a national energy program. Also, Canada is one of the few nations without legal restrictions on abortions. Abortions are legal for women above the age of 12 and no parental consent is needed. They are also funded on request by Medicare. (Sounds exactly like the place the conservatives want to be, huh?)
- Statesments such as those aforementioned are based on ignornace and hatred, especially the horrific terrorist claim. It is the 21st century. It is sickening that we are still battling these inequalities (and even more so that young adults feel the need to spread this hatred over Facebook.) Express your opinions, but please do educated research beforehand and be respectful.
- I voted for Obama, but even if McCain won, I would not be "leaving the country." What would be the patriotic thing to do? Stand by your nation. Have a little bit of faith. Did I agree with all of McCain's policys? No, I did not. But if he were the President-Elect, I would respect him and hope for the best. The political parties are constantly saying why they are more "American" than the other. Well then, do the American thing and support the USA. Like Obama said last night, he's not a Democrat's president, he is EVERYONE'S president. Have some faith in your country!
I wanted to share this with everyone here because I think it touches on many issues previously discussed on these postings. Like I said, evyerone has a right to express their opinions, but where do we draw the line? Are people really so petty that it comes down to posting offensive "statuses" on Facebook to offend otheres? And this is coming from the younger generations - aren't we supposed to be the generation of change? I may not agree with everyone's political views, and that's fine. But I do expect people to be respectful.
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I've been horrified at some of the stuff people are saying, too. I see as the bright side of it that they have brought their hatred and bigotry out into the light. We know for sure who they are.
Not going to pretend that this assholery doesn't bother me, but I have to say that seeing disgruntled conservatives stealing the "moving to Canada" line amuses me to no end. It's nice to know that they're actually taking their own craziness to heart. Imagine spending a lifetime barking, "If you hate America so much, you can get the fuck out!" at ACLU members and queers, only to turn on CNN one warm November night and see that America may in fact be a place you hate. "Oh, damn. Me? I didn't even think of that. Shit. Well, off I go. To a land of gay marriage, socialized healthcare and bilingual street signs. I'm sure this is the best move for all concerned." Poor confused little dears.
As a contrast, here's what my very Canadian Facebook status feed has to say about November 4th:
[name] celebrates Senator Obama's victory.
[name] is PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
[name] is glad at the outcome....
[name] is glad to have witnessed such a memorable historic event.
[name] is extremely satisfied.
[name] is OBAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[name] is is enjoying all the lame status' people are putting up about obama :D
[name] isn't used to so many Americans agreeing with him!
[name] is sad at the approval of Prop-8 in California....everyone should mourn the loss of human rights advancement.....
[name] YAY for President Barack Hussein Obama but BOOOOO on florida, arkansas, cali, and arizona for not getting it!
[name] is relieved.
[name] is extremely relieved!
Relieved is definitely the word of the day up here. I don't have a single negative comment in my feed.
LOL. In a twisted way, it's really depressing how closely other countries follow American politics. If we didn't suck on such a massive scale, you could all be as happily ignorant of us as we generally are of you.
...So, yeah, sorry about that.
I sort of wish some American conservatives *would* move to Canada. Then they'd see that our crazy leftie ideas haven't destroyed society as we know it.
I'm surprised at how enthusiastic other Canadians have been about Obama... I'll have to see what he does before I decide how I feel about him. Still, McCain/Palin scared the hell out of me and Obama can't possibly be any worse than Bush, so I'm hopeful.
As another Canadian, I don't feel that I (and most of the people I know) follow American politics because they suck. For Canada especially, our country is deeply tied to your country, so your elections matter. Also, I live right on the border and go shopping in the US all the time, know people who cross the border to go to work everyday etc. I think the fact that most of the tv I watch is American also greatly gives me awareness of America. I'm just finishing re-watching the show "The West Wing". It was kind of neat that last night I just re-watched the one where Matt Santos becomes the first Latino president (just one day after the first African-American president was voted in!)
For me personally, what has made me care more about American politics in the last year than ever before, are these blogs I read (like Feministing). Without those blogs, I would have been rooting for Obama, but I probably wouldn't have been aware of the propositions in the various states. Which brings me to my Facebook status:
(miki_mouse) is happy Obama won and that the anti-choice initiatives failed...but sad the anti-gay ones passed...
here in colombia all my mates have the same positive comments - everyone i know is ecstatic obama won
While I think the comments you mentioned are absolutely nasty, we have free speech and I'd like to keep it that way. The first one, however, could definitely be construed as a threat and should probably be reported.
I completely agree - I mean, I come here to express my opinions, so everyone should have the right to. The first one is really bad and I am going to report it (as a few people below suggested as well).
Personally, I'm a liberal queer socialist from California myself, and have been considering moving to Canada because of of Prop 8 passing, as well as Amendment 2, Prop 102, Act 1, Initiative 424, and Amendment 46. I would be packing up and leaving right now should McCain had won.
Personally, I have no respect for John McCain and Sarah Palin and would have none if he had been elected president, because he has proved, over and over and over again, that he doesn't consider me a person with equal rights. Is it really patriotic to 'stand by my nation and have a little faith' when my country just invalidated my marriage?
It sounds like to me you speak from a place of privilege when you list off your issues with people wanting to leave the US and that you state that staying patriotic. Personally, should McCain had won, I would have everything to loose under his presidency. As it is, I am already a second-class citizen in my own state and the rest of the country. How is suffering through that patriotic? Your dismissal of anyone wanting to leave is infuriating to me because I feel like you've completely ignored the hatred and inequality that just got passed into law.
However, you make an excellent point about Facebook messages/status settings with regards to hate speech. That first status is really threatening and I would consider reporting it. It's kind of hilarious that conservatives are eyeing Canada as a place to defect to -- it's got its issues, but it is no Republican Mecca.
There is also Massachussetts, of course; they haven't gone back on their word to let anyone marry yet.
The first of the comments you mentioned is nasty, and could possibly be construed as a threat. The rest are just republicans expressing how they feel. There's nothing rude, ignorant, or unpatriotic about them.
Please don't start using "unpatriotic" to describe anyone who doesn't agree with Obama and says so. Remember when the republicans said that about everyone who didn't support Bush? It was dumb then, and it's dumb now.
Have you considered simply making these people not your friends? I had a couple of facebook friends (mostly folks I knew from HS) posting ignorant garbage in the days leading up to the election, so I got rid of them. I hated the way seeing those comments made me feel, and losing a superficial connection with someone I knew from HS (and whose values, attitude, and senses of humor are completely different from my own) isn't that big of a deal.
Someone asked my boyfriend as he went to vote if he "wanted to stop marxism in our time." I told him he should have said he was more interested in stopping stupidity right now
I whole heartedly agree. I woke up this morning and went online to check the local election results and logged on to both facebook and myspace. I had several people including family members posting unintelligent statuses. My person favorites were...
'We're all doomed'
and
'I'm praying for all of the soldiers and unborn babies who are going to be killed due to Obama's presidency.'
Oh yeah, because it's Obama who wants to stay in Iraq forever. *eyeroll*
I guess I'm lucky, 99% of my friends statuses have been positively euphoric. The only sarcastic one ("I voted for YOUR MOM!") is from my friend who somehow didn't know who to vote for and judging by her response, I'd say she voted for McCain. Now that I'm looking at the Status Updates, suddenly a huge chunk of them are missing. The earliest ones are from 3 hours ago and then more than 14 hours ago. Maybe the system got overwhelmed or too many people complained.
Where would a conservative fed up with the country move? It reminds me of an episode of American Dad where the staunch conservative father gets transferred and the entire family moves to Saudi Arabia. The father ends up loving the patriarchal culture so much that he revokes his US citizenship.
Yeah. I too take fault with calling out the "moving to Canada" line. Is that really that bad of a thing? Those Americans who have the mobility to move to a country that they feel better suits them should!
And, this may be a little different, but I am an undergrad student right now. I was strongly thinking about going to graduate school in France if McCain got elected, which would probably mean I'd live there for a long while.
I've been following status updates with interest as well. The vast majority of my friends' statuses were positive, but there was the occasional "is wondering why Americans are stupid" (from an American) and "is looking forward to the redistribution of wealth. Not." Mine was initially like many of the others ("Jayme is SO HAPPY!!!!") but I changed it to "Jayme thought McCan conceded graciously and wishes some of his supporters would do the same" because, well, it's true. I've seen some McCain supporters accept his defeat with dignity and grace, as I thought McCain did during his speech; I'm certainly not saying I wouldn't be crushed if Obama had lost, but I wouldn't be spewing hate in my Facebook status like in the examples I've seen on here and among my "friends."
I have to laugh at the people saying they're moving to Canada because they dislike Obama. Canada is pretty liberal. A Canadian conservative would never be considered conservative here in the U.S.
Funny, I haven't seen any negative comments on my Facebook feed, even though some of my friends and family are very conservative. I guess I'm only "friends" with the people who have some respect, and those are the only feeds I look at.
While I'm all for freedom of speech, I think that there is a point at which it becomes more than just offensive, like yelling "FIRE!!" in a crowded movie theater. Rant on your blog all you want, that's fine. But it's not necessary to shove that stuff in our faces via status feed.
If these are your "friends" posting this offensive stuff, I would amend that quickly so you don't have to be subjected to their bitterness anymore.
"Did I agree with all of McCain's policys? No, I did not. But if he were the President-Elect, I would respect him and hope for the best. "
I respected McCain before he became a candiate. He was a man who stood for something. I didn't agree with all of his stances then either but I did agree with some like being anti-torture. As a candidate, he was not the same man. But when I saw his concession speech, I saw the man I once respected. It led me to believe he didn't really change. He followed bad advice from campaign workers so he could appeal to hate mongerers like Ann Coulter.
Yeah, it made sense for liberals to talk about moving to Canada after Bush won, because Canada is much more liberal than the US. But... conservatives?
Folks, let me explain something to you. If you want to live in a country that has conservative values like yours, where the people are white, you have to move to Ireland or Poland (highly Catholic with anti-abortion policies on the books), give up living in a world superpower, and put up with whatever socialist philosophies they have. If you want to live someplace that capitalism runs rampant, learn Spanish and move to Mexico. If you want to live somewhere that they have a strong military, I think possibly Russia is your only other choice. They're not communist anymore, so maybe you'd like them.
Liberals can move anywhere that the people share our values, because we're not afraid of people who don't speak our language and because everywhere else in the world that has America's technology and standard of living has *much* more liberal values than America.
Conservatives... have nowhere to go. They don't have the option of "America, love it or leave it", because there are no other capitalistic, highly religious technologically advanced military superpowers on the planet, and odds are if there was one, it wouldn't be populated by white people and/or the language wouldn't be English.
So sorry, conservatives, you're all stuck. Sorry you have to live through America becoming a competent world player again, sorry you have to endure our economy recovering from the Bush years, sorry you have to put up with our Constitutional rights being restored. And I really am sorry. Because I *wish* you would all move to Mexico and let *my* country get into the 21st century without you. Hell, your love affair with guns might *help* if you're women in Juarez -- I get the distinct impression women in Mexico could use some American conservative "shoot the bad guys first, ask questions later" philosophies, given that the police seem totally uninterested in protecting women from being murdered in Juarez.
I just want to add this:
I realize I wrote a very objective post, and I myself executed the freedom of expression in a way same may not agree with.
If I were going to write this elsewhere, perhaps a University newspaper, I would definitely include "statuses" from both sides and I would make it much less biased.
Thanks to everyone for all the feedback!
I think you mean subjective.
You executed your freedom of expression while suggesting that other people executing their freedom of expression was somehow unpatriotic. Self-awareness plz?
I'm probably being unnecessarily bitchy, but between this post and the other post about statuses (which at least had more that one example that was actually offensive) and the post about how we should just say fuck it to the republicans and not even TRY to work together, I'm getting worried.
Come on, people. Take the fucking high road.
As a Canadian and damn proud of it, I feel I can safely say:
Thanks for thinking of us, but no thanks, you guys. We don't need anyone unwilling to support the wishes of their fellow humans and the rights of those same humans in Canada. We're good with our social support systems and open-minded citizens.
I saw that one of my facebook friends joined the "Impeach Obama" facebook group. I clicked to see what one could possibly think you could impeach someone just elected to the residency for.
Here's the description:
"This group is for all the retarded bigots of America that haven't even graduated from the Civil War yet.
Qualifications for this group
-FRATTY
-DAVE's number ONE fan
-From the South, where we are badass
-Has gone "hunting" all the time
-Complete Bigotry.
-IQ less than 40
-4th grade graduation credentials
-tendency to forget what you were doing
-inbred children and/or parents
-blindly voting with mommy and daddy because they told you it was the right decision
-maverickness
Essentially, if you are an ignorant idiot, you belong here!
HAVE FUN!"
I laughed my ass off.