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Feeling Bad For Others

It came to my attention today that someone who I consider and actual friend, who unfriended me on Facebook posted a status that read "Happiness is unfriending a liberal on Facebook."  My initial reaction was to laugh.  Then I got a little annoyed.  After a few hours, I felt sorrow.  How empty is someones life when they achieve satisfaction from something so unimportant.  This is a grown man, with a wife, a kid and a good job, who for some reason felt he had achieved something important by reducing a friendship down to a label and a click of a button.  This is a man, who puts his life on the line every day as a NYC fireman.  How could someone who puts himself in harm's way, despite having a family he's responsible for, find joy in something so meaningless as this?

I stated that I felt bad for him and a friend quickly rushed to his defense and told me he has a house and a pretty wife/  A house and a pretty wife?  Is that what life is for some?  I have seen lots of houses and lots of pretty wives, but that alone has never shown me a person's joy.  I started to think about how petty we've become as a society.  I can't speak for the individual who wrote the comment, but I'd like to think their happiness comes from those special moments with loved ones and not from some act out of frustration.  I realize we all make rash decisions at times, but I'd like to believe it's my intelligence that separates me from doing things as silly as removing a friend from my life for differences of opinion.  I respect his decision in some ways, but it shows the a true lack of sophistication.  I thrive off of debates, because it allows me to show my intelligence.  Right or wrong I have to carefully state my case, using research and skills, sadly my counterparts don't always share.  The "unfriending" took place after a debate.  The status, verified my victory.  Who would mention their defeat days later in such a cowardly fashion?  I know when I lose a debate I look the person in the eye and congratulate them.  Cocky or not, it rarely happens, because I normally refuse to debate things I'm not comfortable speaking about.  My adversaries have no problem spewing things they believe to be true, but refuse to confirm or deny.

So we get back to the original debate.  I'm firm in my beliefs and I feel the overreaction to something as silly as a debate, is further proof of my views. The original argument was over gun control.  Now here's my point.  We call someone a citizen, but then when they commit a crime we call them a criminal.  We say lawful people have guns legally and criminals have them illegally.  Well let's take the entire subject of this blog and combine it.  If one can't trust a friend to discuss a topic, intelligently and rationally without getting so angry they no longer want to be my social media friend, how can I trust them to act rationally with a firearm?  Sounds like a weird analogy, but I'm worried about this one individuals priorities based on a click of a mouse, what would the ramification be if that click was from a gun?

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