I avidly and sincerely plan to lose some social media Friend’s and acquaintances this month: I expect that perhaps 30 or 40 of my current 944 Facebook ‘Friend’s and maybe another 50 or so on X (‘Twitter’), Instagram, Threads, and other social media platforms, will ‘Unfriend’ or ‘Block’ me Most of these people will be upset by me or, at best, feel alienated. Some of these are people who I have known since my childhood.

I don’t mind political differences and discussions about contentious issues. I grew up with a father who was a Boston Democrat and a mother who was from a Connecticut Republican family. Each of their votes cancelled out the other’s. Moreover, they owned and operated a 140-year-old daily newspaper whose editorial pages [had] to take stands on issues of public controversies. And a fundamental factor was that anything their daily newspaper printed had to be verifiably true lest someone sue them for libel and, if such a lawsuit were successful, my parents lose their business and livelihood. That legal requirement to be truthful is a factor that the average person doesn’t face when expressing his opinion about controversial issues. But it shaped me.

Why in the world would I endeavor to lose friends, angering or alienating anyone?

So, why should I endeavor to lose any social media ‘Friend’ or follower?

Because people who intentionally or knowingly lie recklessly or evilly erode their communities, be it a physical or an online community. In other words, I have a fundamental problem with three categories of deceivers:

• Racists.
• People who knowingly lie or circulate others’ lies as if truth.
• Reckless fools who don’t care whether what they say is true or false.

Why do I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who are racists? I’ve no difficulty answering that. Racists are liars because they condemn entire races or religions or nationalities, despite knowing what anyone who has walked more than a thousand paces beyond their crib learns: that there are good people, as well as bad people, among every race, religion, or nation and that the good significantly, often extraordinarily, outnumber the bad. A particularly evil dynamic of racism, in person or online, is that the most prolific racists are otherwise affable, rather than irascible, people. That’s because irascible or cranky people make few friends, yet affable racists tend to make many more friends (particularly at times when they aren’t being racist) than irascible racists do.

Why do I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who knowingly lie or knowingly circulate others lies? Because such deceivers pillage and ruin society. They lie for either personal gain, prestige, or political power. I, however, live in a nation that reveres ‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln and how ‘George Washington could never tell a lie.’ For more than a quarter of a millennium, teachers, priests, pastors, rabbis, imans, and judges have taught Americans that a lie is a sin, calumny, deception, or crime; that liars are untrustworthy; and that liars and lies divisively undermine and destroy communities.

That’s also why I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who recklessly don’t care whether what they say is true or false. Their recklessness fertilizes the liars’ lies, cause the gullible to start thinking that there is no way to know the true, and that perhaps truth doesn’t exist. Indeed, a common evasive by liars is they ask, “Well, how do you know what I say isn’t true? Who really knows? I think that it’s what you say that isn’t true!”

However, truthful people know that the previous four thousand years of civilizations have given us two major methods and means to establish what is truth and what is a lie.

The judicial system is one such method. It can be flawed:  a guilty person sometimes goes free or an innocent person gets convicted). Estimates of such errors range from one to five percent of cases. It’s thus a method with an approximate 95 to 99 percent accuracy rate, not unlike the estimated accuracy of medical cancer diagnosis. If with such an accuracy rate you were diagnosed to have cancer, would you seek medical treatment? Or would you recklessly believe or claim that you didn’t have cancer? Most mature, rational people would seek treatment, realizing that doing so is the safest course of action.

The other means to establish the truth is known as scientific method.  If repeated experimentation always leads to results confirming a premise or claim, and no experiment produces contrary results, then that premise or claim is considered true. In both the judicial and the scientific methods, verifiable evidence and verifiable testimonies are crucial. If all the evidence and testimonies support a claim and no evidence/testimonies dispute it, then the claim is considered true. Civil courts require that the preponderance of evidence/testimonies to back the claim; criminal courts require that the evidence and testimonies back the claim beyond a reasonable doubt. And authentic scientific method requires that the information backing the claim not only be verifiable but reproducible by everyone else who tests its. This is how science, medicine, engineering, and the judiciary work. It is how the modern world was built.

So, starting this month, I’m no longer ignoring or in any way countenancing racists or liars. Better to expose and crush the vermin, even if they are social media ‘Friend’s or acquaintances. Particularly if they are social media ‘Friend’s or acquaintances.

For instances:

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, a convicted felon awaiting sentencing, has for the past four years claimed that he that he was ousted from office due to rampant voting fraud and that he ‘won’ the 2020 election. Yet, during the four years since that election, Republicans and many others have searched the approximately 3,300 U.S. voting districts for any notable evidence of voting fraud. No such evidence has been found. More than 50 federal and state lawsuits filed by Trump supporters have been thrown out due to lack of any evidence being produced by in those courts’ jurisdiction. Trump’s own campaign staff has testified under oath that they told him within a week of the election that he had conclusively lost. Even William Barr, Trump’s own U.S. Attorney General, stated under oath that Trump’s claim was “Bullshit!’ Yet the convicted felon Trump continues to repeat his thoroughly debunked ‘Big Lie’. He is a liar. I’ve perhaps dozens of my social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who nonetheless either still believe against all evidence and all those courts that Trump’s lies are the truth. They believe that their espousal of Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ is their opinion. Yet their untruth is a lie, a deceit; not an opinion at all. They are liars.

Second, Climate Change deniers. More than 99 percent of professional climatologists state that human-caused pollution is worsening the world’s climate. Sure, Fox News can search for, cherry-pick, and interview the single percent of experts who disagree with that. However, that 99 percent of experts is a more convincing number than even that which this nation’s judicial system can produce. Moreover, those 99 percent of experts have verified their conclusion to a ‘Five Sigma’ level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that they are wrong. The one percent of climatologists can verify their dissent at all. So, anyone who is a climate change denier is most likely either a sophomoric, woefully gullible, or else deceitful.

Third, what should I do with a ‘Friend’ who knowingly and willfully repeats a known lie as if it were truth? A few years ago, I had a gullible ‘Friend’ posted something political on Facebook that I knew factually was untrue. In a comment to his post, I showed him the link to the evidence debunking what he posted. “Thanks!”, he replied, “I didn’t know that.” However, yet another ‘Friend’ then commented, “Well, if it isn’t true, it should be!”. And the next day that other friend third ‘Friend’ posted the falsehood on his own Facebook timeline as if he didn’t know it was false. His action told me volumes about his lack of ethics and morale character!

Finally, what if that other ‘Friend’ also posts something blatantly racist, something condemning an entire race or religion? Racism isn’t an opinion; it is an expression of hate. Why should you or I have a ‘Friend’ who posts racist content? Does you having known him since childhood excuse his conduct? Of course, not. What if you just met him for the first time now that he posted something racist; would you ‘Friend’ him. Probably not unless you are someone who countenances racism. Why have ‘Friend’s and acquaintances on social media who lies, spread other’s lies, or post racism?

You shouldn’t.  I no longer will.

[Photo above of Irving Tressler’s 1937 book ‘How to lose friends and alienate people’, a spoof of Dale Carnegie’s 1927 book, ‘How to win friends and influence people’.]