To Tweet or Not to Tweet
As a writer, Twitter feels like the best form of therapy for the PTSD of these past three plus years.
I’ve been a member of Twitter since 2009, but to say I was not an active member would be an understatement. I think in the 11 years I’ve been a member I might have written 50 tweets in total and that’s a generous estimate. I didn’t understand the constant need to be commenting on events as they unfolded. Actually the whole idea of it made me anxious. Then there were the stories about Twitter being as vicious as a middle school cafeteria that only added to its lack of appeal for me. I guess the nail in the coffin for me and my lack of interest and outright rejection of it was sealed in 2016 when we elected the Twitter-in-Chief, who has built in time in his daily schedule for TV watching and tweeting called Executive Time.
Before you read any further, I will forewarn that this particular story will be political in a way that is unusual for me since I tend to be quiet in my politics, so if you do not want to continue reading I completely understand.
Anyway, having a President whose every tweet was breaking news has made for an “interesting” Presidency, if not more than a little exhausting for the country. My ignorance about Twitter changed in the last month, which we could blame on the pandemic and the quarantine or the resulting Covid-brain, a real condition where our normal ability for concentration has deteriorated to such levels that all we can manage is binge-watching Scandinavian police shows or scrolling through social media platforms, the scrolling passing for reading. I think most of us now know those grandiose plans to learn a new language or to read our way through the entire cannon of 19th Century British Literature is just that, grandiose and delusional. Full disclosure, since 2016 and the election of #BunkerBaby, I have been obsessed with Steve Schmidt, a Republican political strategist, who had run John McCain’s presidential campaign. For some reason listening to Republicans expressing dismay, outrage and outright antipathy about this President has been more reassuring than any of those same emotions and sentiments expressed by liberals. Perhaps you could call it Stockholm Syndrome or something, but whatever it was I’ve become a fan of Schmidt, Nicole Wallace, Rick Wilson, and George Conway. When I found out that a number of the people I liked had formed a Super PAC called the Lincoln Project, well, it was the first time where I felt a sense of hope for our future. To keep up with the Lincoln Project’s brilliant ads, I wound my way on to Twitter.
That’s when the whole world changed, or rather I had dropped down into Twittersphere. I discovered what everyone already knew, that Twitter was the middle school cafeteria where you could taunt your enemies without fear of getting into a physical fight out in the school yard. I could read threads of comments written by people whose antipathy for this President had turned them into modern day Shakespeares. The mixture of passive-aggressive outrage expressed in 280 characters read like mean-spirited Haikus or mean-spirited sonnets. Before I knew what had happened, my passive reading and delighting in the meanness expressed about #TrumpTraitor turned into my own acting out of my own passive-aggressive outrage. As a writer I found the creative opportunity for expression of my anger, outrage, and general meanness in a pithy 280 characters incredibly appealing. The validation from strangers, who liked my comments or tweets, became intoxicating. I found myself going on Twitter as soon as I woke up, which I rationalized as a way of keeping up to date with the news that changed at whiplash pace. The more I wrote and commented on Twitter the more it felt like the best form of therapy for the PTSD of these past three plus years. When Donald Trump Jr. went on a Twitter rant about Joe Biden being addled and too old, I had to respond accordingly, “Oh dear, I get irony is not a family trait since irony requires a certain level of intellectual rigor, but even for you, not the brightest bulb, this is rich. Shall we run clips of your dad barely able to read?”. When the official White House tweeted about how the President reformed our criminal justice system, did so much for Historically Black Colleges, and more for underserved communities…” I couldn’t let that go without a response, “Did happy hour start already before you sent out this official tweet full of, I don’t know what, delusions? Oh, I get it. Y’all are eating edibles every day at 5:00 PM. Well done, morons,”. I know I am eons away from the linguistic mastery of some of the others who have been on Twitter for a long time. I believe the sarcasm and snark is our collective response to the peril we all feel our country is currently experiencing and facing. With each news story the greater the urgency palpable all throughout the Twitter threads. Having gotten my BA in International Politics from the George Washington University, I have been more than a little alarmed at the systematic or chaotic undoing of 40 plus years of foreign policies that have helped keep the world generally peaceful.
Do I think Twitter will continue to be my place of refuge after November? I guess that question can’t be answered until the outcome of this election that Republicans Against Trump have said over and over again is the most consequential of our lifetime. All I know is I am going to do more than simply sending Tweets from now till election day. I will volunteer and do all I can to help our country from being written in history books as the super power that became a banana republic because of a man with too much Executive Time. With that said, I’ve already told my family if the election turns out tragically different, I will be leaving the country for good, leaving so fast you will be able to see skid marks in my rapid departure.
