Delicious Irony

I do not suffer two-faced people nor those who demonstrate double-standards very well. Two weeks ago, two somewhat bitter (read that, hard-left) women in our neighborhood were vociferously and publicly exchanging complaints on Facebook that their originally-planned long beach weekends were cut short due to their respective spouses/friends having to be back home in time to report for work at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) early on Monday, July 25, but only long enough to learn that they would be furloughed and sent right back home because Congress failed to enact legislation by July 23 that would keep the agency funded and operating past that date.

Now, this is an inconvenient and frustrating situation -- not just for the piffling reason that long beach weekends get cut short for some, but more to the point, because others who live paycheck to paycheck don't have one coming in because of Congress' ineptitude. And it's especially maddening for the Senate and the House to leave thousands of workers twisting in the wind because they can't put aside partisan bickering to pass an FAA funding bill prior to their recess.

My sympathies for the neighborhood ladies whining on Facebook faded rather quickly, however, when it became increasingly clear that their assumptions held that the FAA shutdown was due primarily to the stubbornness and inaction of Congressional members residing only on a certain side of the political aisle. (A tired meme which Andrew Stiles, of the National Review Online, has shot down by cleanly debunking several of the "It's the GOP's fault!" myths that have been dutifully trotted out by the statist media in recent weeks regarding this FAA shutdown business.)

The most galling part of it all? One of these women had the temerity to lecture me several years ago when, following President Obama's election, I began to openly share on Facebook some of my conservative viewpoints, beliefs and jokes, including observations of extant political and ideological double-standards. She threatened to unfriend me on Facebook, bluntly telling me that she "didn't need all of the hate and negativity in her life," and implied that Facebook wasn't the place for that kind of political discourse.

While I didn't apologize for my beliefs at the time, I did apologize for offending this woman -- and, whether consciously or unconsciously, I have refrained in the years since from talking either politics OR religion on Facebook, opting instead to treat it like one big cocktail party (which is good advice). She has mostly done the same, but has nonetheless been unable to completely refrain from weighing in with the occasional cheap political shot on her other Facebook friends' statuses and pages.

I am well aware that I have a plank in my own eye; heck, there are times when I can't see at all around the multiple planks stuck in my orbs. I suppose I should offer to remove the speck of sawdust from the eye of the neighborhood woman I described above -- except that she and I are no longer friends on Facebook.