Accusations or racism considered

I have an awkward relationship with social media. On one hand, it helps me stay in contact with friends and family from different parts of the world, and from other times of my life. At the same time, I am convinced that social media doesn’t always bring out the best of us. Even when the cloak of anonymity is absent, we seem more willing to engage in conversations about religion, money, politics and all those other things that are not to be discussed in polite company. I have put myself in “time out” on more than one occasion.

This week, I was dragged into a discussion about race. Racism is a tough topic. Not only is it the lowest of human instincts, but it’s also one of the most hurtful accusations we can hurl at each other. From where I sit, it appears that there has been an uptick in casual accusations of racism, and friends, they are being targeted at many of us. A left-leaning friend of mine from the east coast tried to she-splain to me what she believes is an inseparable relationship between Second Amendment advocacy and white supremacy. It’s no accident that the subject arose amid fears of a pro-gun rally being held in the former capital of the confederacy on Martin Luther King’s birthday. There was a great deal of anxiety in Richmond in anticipation of that event, but as we now know, the demonstration was attended by 22,000 people and was peaceful.

My friend was, nonetheless, quite convinced that gun advocates were racists, and racists were gun advocates. As evidence, she cited the mentally ill person who penned a hate-filled, manifesto before killing 22 people at an El Paso Walmart in August of last year, as well as the writings of ultra-liberal thought leaders who support that theory.

It’s always difficult for me to address those posts. If nothing else, the social media space is filled with non-solution oriented criticisms and I certainly don’t want to add to the cacophony. Sometimes, though, it’s very hard to walk away. When the accusations are patently false and libelous, it’s hard to keep scrolling.

This isn’t the first time that I have been caught up in one of those exchanges. Just a few weeks earlier, there were a number of unfortunate attacks against traditional Jewish communities, mostly in Brooklyn, but throughout New York and New Jersey. A buddy of mine from Maryland was under the impression that the tensions were attributable to the current political environment, citing rhetoric about illegal immigrants, trade wars with Asian partners and the criticism of the governance of some third-world nations.

I shouldn’t take these things personally but is there anything meaner, lower, more despicable than calling someone a racist? Politics 101 teaches us that we should define our adversaries early and often, and the far-left has done their homework. If Rachel Maddow were your sole source of information, you would be certain that anyone even slightly to the right of center was a racist, homophobe and a letch. In 2008, Mr. Obama characterized people in “a lot of towns in the Midwest” as being bitter. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” During the 2016 Presidential race, Hillary Clinton referred supporters of her opponent as “a basket of deplorables” characterized by “racist, sexist, homophobic, Xenophobic, Islamaphobic” views.

But let me ask you, my Southwest Nebraska friends. Must one be a racist to want borders that don’t leak like a sieve? Is there any logical, conceivable link between gun ownership and racism?

Do you even know any organized racist groups in our area? I have lived here for twenty-five years now, and I’m not aware of any. I know a few folks who may not be the most worldly people, but I don’t know of anyone I would call a racist.

The truth is that it isn’t all behind us just yet. We still have room for improvement, but we aren’t guilty of a fraction of what we are accused of by the far left. Folks, we are being defined, and not in a nice way. Let’s be sure that we don’t do anything to feed the stereotype. In the meantime, I need to learn how to leave those discussions alone and walk away.

On a lighter note, I ran across something this week that I wish I had included in my article on climate change. As a reminder that mother nature has a mind of her own, and that all things natural are subject to subject fluctuation, a recent study has found that our presumed normal body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is outdated.

The former figure was established by a German Doctor Carl Wunderlich in 1851 when he surveyed 2,500 patients. His results were confirmed when Stanford researchers studied similar data from Civil War soldiers.

Newer studies have found that temperature to have dropped over the past 150 years to 97.9 degrees. Researchers attribute the drop to an increase in overall health, and less inflammation, but emphasize that normal body temperature is a range that varies throughout the day, rather than a fixed number.

I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere.