M50 part II plus "Now I get it"

Another chapter got added to the long and worthless battle of "I've been invalidated" this weekend.  To recap, we start with yet another attempt at trying to reason with a liberal whom I saw as a friend about his Tweeting of how our current President is a Nazi and he'll soon set up concentration camps.  But this time, in disputing him, I also somehow "invalidated" him by disagreeing.  I had thought, until now, that his concept of invalidation was because gee whiz, I wasn't as smart as him ("I am well-regarded in intellectual circles..."), which most people might look at and say, "Who's invalidating who?"



************************************

At this point I'd like to say, I hoped I took the high road-

...like the song Hope The High Road by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, which took this year's #40 position.  But alas...

...as Chicano Batman said in their #31 hit, Friendship Is A Small Boat In A Storm.


**************************************

So after e-mails trying to explain my side and calm things down were basically ignored, save for a lovely meme that re-iterated the accusations against me, I finally just cut the social media ties with him on Twitter and stopped following his blog, because eventually I was going to say something we would both find hurtful, and I didn't want to do that.  Then...

***********************************************

...no, we didn't have Cops Come, as the song at #37 by Northern Faces would say, but a woman "entered" the battle...

...and it wasn't a Girl With A Blue Guitar, like the one Cotton Mather sang about in their #38 hit.


******************************************

What did happen was, he had his wife "follow" me on Twitter, never really posting or even entering my feed.  Just watching, I guess, to see what I would do next.  So I left it sit for a while, waiting to see if a further contact would come- it did not- and so I saved us all a lot of problems and blocked her as well.

Or so I thought.

**********************************************


Diverging just a bit, I should mention that we had 3 songs in the fifty that carried over points from last year, two of which were last posts' Day I Left Home and PTP, which received minor points from 2016, but there was one major hit that had major points on both sides...

...The Shacks with the El Michels Affair and Strange Boy, which got the #9 slot in 2016 and gets the #39 slot for 2017! (BTW, I just realized that I'm typing this on NYE to post NYD, so I better be careful with my "this years" and "last years", because soon- for me- it will be next year!)  Anyway, so what did our "Strange Boy" do next?


*******************************************

Well, first, he had the Missus follow me on Google+, which is a place I am connected to because of all the Google-ly things I do but rarely go there.  Then he posted a little snippet on G+ himself.

Friends do not abandon you just because of a disagreement in opinions on political perspectives.
Eh, +CW Martin Chris Martin?

This despite an e-mail I sent him not long ago explaining how I missed when we actually acted like friends, and wished him the best.  Because I really do, but I can't and won't put up with the constant "poor me" when I disagree with him and accuses me of abandonment, along with being stupid and "invalidating".  I see as I grabbed his quote that he has issued yet another post accusing me of being the fake friend.  Good on ya, hopefully one day you'll get that mirror fixed.

But the point of bringing all this up is, I think I now understand how I invalidated him- and how I daily invalidate all the trolls on either side of the aisle out there.


*****************************************

Yep, I've got Your Type- the song by Alvvays, at #33 on the year's countdown.    And I hope I will no longer be riding in the same old...

...Chariot, which Beach House landed at #34.  But I do have a theory...


************************************

You see, I think that there are a ton of people out there who, at various levels, use politics as an outlet for the hatred that is inside them.  It doesn't even have to be directed at the people or causes they troll,  it's just the bone they chew to let it out.  And that is the sad thing about politics, and I suspect it is the way you always have had politics.  A small group in the middle actively trying to use the system to make a better life for EVERYONE- and surrounded on one side by people using it for various levels of hate-expression therapy, and on the other by those that actually hold the power- or think they do, or are hanging on to them like remoras for scraps- and whose only need for politics is to maintain their position of power.

So I guess that explains a lot.  I invalidated him when I exposed his hate for what it was, rather than the politics he perceived it to be.  I'm not saying he is a hateful person- I think a lot of such people don't even realize they are doing it.  I have seen it in myself and have been trying to eliminate it.  Which is why I cut ties in the first place- it was just a constant egging on of the parts of myself I am trying to get rid of, the parts that would just love to get rid of frustration and pain and anger by taking it out on him or any other comer.  I don't want that anymore, so I cut the ties.  For that, I am a "fake friend".


*****************************************

Yes, just like the one the Orwells sang about at #32, I was becoming a Black Francis- and I put a stop to it.

...and you might think that, like POWERS, that would make me want to Dance (#35) to the Beat Of My Drum (#36).  But...

**************************************************

But no, it just makes me sad.  I "invalidated" him by refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the hate he was directing (for this, I could point out a recent post of his- in fact, the reason why I went to the trouble of unfollowing him- where he called all republicans "racist, xenophobic" and something that equated to being Nazis with enough wiggle room to claim it isn't what he REALLY said.)    He spied me out out of bewilderment, because now he no longer had me responding to his hate-therapy. and thus, that meant I "abandoned the friendship" he was no longer showing anyway.


So let me put this to rest with one last thing.  I am still here.  I still pray for you, I still worry about you.  I never thought of you as invalid, but your opinions are poisoned with hate, or else you would have taken the opportunity to debate on policy any of the many times I opened that door.  They are beneath a thinking man like yourself, and I called you on it.  And if I had left the door open, the arguments would have escalated and left us both as less of a person.  I tried to get us back to a personal level and you IGNORED it, except for your cute little meme and your self-martyring statement that I posted above.  If you have any desire to do anything from here, you know my e-mail.  I am willing to be your friend.  I am not willing to be your therapeutic device.