Before Tennessee U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander retired from the Senate, I visited with him in his Washington office. When I asked him what he thought was driving much of the country’s political anger, he held up a cellphone, the weapon of choice for many modern-day duelists.
Keyboard conflicts occur every day across the United States. A not-infrequent outcome is that for political reasons, people cast away into outer cyberdarkness friends and even relatives: they are “unfriended.” Unfriending represents an aspect of an ever-developing public policy issue of Americans isolating themselves into hives of like-minded others who have no tolerance for anyone who falls outside their political ideology.
Facebook has 240 million U.S. users, and its “unfriending” option is the sword most often used to cut away offending friends. Says Facebook Help: “Scroll down to your friends list and tap See All Friends. Tap Friends to the right of the profile that you want to unfriend. Tap Unfriend.” And, bam! That person is gone. There are times it’s justifiable over such things as vulgarity, obscenity or threats. But often it’s to ensure nonconforming viewpoints aren’t seen or heard.
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The animosity goes both ways
In October 2020, NPR explored the subject of political divides, which included the act of unfriending, in “’Dude, I’m Done’: When Politics Tears Families And Friendships Apart.” It reported: “Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, said political polarization is more intense now than at any point in modern history. Nearly 80% of Americans now have ‘just a few’ or no friends at all across the aisle, according to Pew. And the animosity goes both ways.”
