the truth will set you free

So I'm on this board.  It's a local non-profit that is in chaos and severe financial distress.  I've been on the board a relatively short time, but just long enough to watch the  slow train wreck begun years ago complete itself.  All hell broke loose earlier this fall resulting in a division of board and "founding artistic director."  The truth and the facts have been spun, twisted, distorted, and ignored by people I don't know - or care to know - and the result has been personal attacks on board members, letters to the editor and name-calling.  As a board member with legal obligations I have silently born the brunt of the organized attack, although at times reading the Facebook posts of people with herd mentality and a willingness to suspend common sense have made me a bit grumpy.

But the point isn't that good people have been maligned by willful ignorance of truth, the point is that tonight my husband decided he needed to "defend my name" by sending a message to the ringleader of the wackos.  Although I appreciate my husband's indignation and his anger at someone calling me a "Philistine" and a "puppet" and sneaky,  I really feel it's not necessary for him to challenge someone to a duel on my behalf.   Unfortunately he had already sent the message when I got home and instructed him to never, ever, ever get involved with trying to educate crazy people with no ethics or manners.  More unfortunately, he had sent the message not by email, but by logging into my facebook account, so only was the message posted on the jerk's wall, it was posted under my name!!  Thank goodness I could delete it.

There are several lessons to be learned from all of this.  The first is that people who know nothing about Facebook, and don't wish to know about Facebook should never log on to their wife's account and try to send a message.  Never ever.  The second is that even when you are righteous and on the side of honesty and justice, one should not enter into debate with idiots.  Or, as Mark Twain is reported to have quipped, "Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."  The people "discussing" on Facebook and commenting on letters to the editor are generally not concerned with accuracy or honesty.  'Tis much better in my book to not descend into those conversations; "Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute"   (Josh Billings).

So now my husband's feelings are hurt because I was grouchy about his need to reprimand a jerk.  I'm irritated because I feel like these crazies take any interaction as validation for their "cause" and I'm afraid that somehow my husband's sweet intentions will be misconstrued and cause me and others more grief.

Call me Pollyanna, but I believe that what goes around comes around.  People who put bad out into the world, dishonesty or negativity or arrogance, ultimately get it back.  I will take the high road and arrive at my destination confident in my travels.

There are two final thoughts that I take with me tonight -   "Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage"  (Pubilius Syrus) and “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it" (Oscar Wilde).  Onward and upward my friends, onward and upward.