I’m making a list. Are you?

“Don’t block or unfriend these deplorables. Instead, save their posts. Save them to remember who they are so that when this is all over…”

Hello all,

The time has come to silently take names.

These are terrible times. Times that should bring out the best in us. And bring us together.

If you are like me, you are staying home—maintaining social distance. You are cherishing the time with family, staying in touch with friends that are also trying to be safe, and tracking the horrible data on growing numbers of sick and dead in the U.S. and across the globe.

If you are like me, your heart goes out to the sick and their families. And you are grateful beyond words to the healthcare workers, grocery personnel, and all those folks in essential roles that are risking their health daily for the rest of us.

If you are like me, you are trying to be responsible and stay informed. And these days, that would include social media.

This is normal behavior.

If you are like me, you are probably also seeing a great deal of abnormal behavior on social media—the cretins who try to turn every bit news into a political moment, on the right and on the left; the human sludge that refuses to recognize that we are all in the same life raft.

While our leaders on both sides of the aisle have shown that they can work together when it’s critical, there are folks out there that have drunk so much Kool-aid that they can’t see past the hatred that they’ve spent years cultivating in their souls.

This crisis has made it clear that there are deplorables on both ends of the spectrum. You don’t have to look hard to find them. They gleefully self-identify on social media. To the deplorables on the left, everything Trump says is evil and everything he does is incompetent. To the deplorables on the right, everything Pelosi proposes is wrong or politically motivated.

I have seen these deplorables cheering when members of the opposing political party test positive for the virus. I’ve seen them sarcastically proud of the fact that the U.S. is now “number one” in the world for Covid19 cases.

Disgusting.

It’s pointless to respond to the deplorables’ posts. More times than I can count, I’ve drafted and deleted before posting replies. I learned early on that any reply only generates more illogical hate-riven vitriol.

I propose taking a different approach.

Don’t block or unfriend these deplorables.

I am not.

Instead, save their posts. Save them to remember who they are so that, when this is all over, we can silently and methodically destroy them.

When this is all over, don’t give a job to anyone who posts that they are out and about when the rest of us are in lockdown. When this is over, don’t do business with anyone who can’t put humanity before politics and continues to post politically-skewed myopic garbage when we are trying to unite as a country and a world.

Save their posts and make a list. I am. And you would do well not to be on mine.

Be good, watch out for one another, and stay safe.

JK