If you take politics seriously, you know it’s not about having opinions but about understanding–which is required to be part of making the world a suitable place for human beings to live in. Glib, winging it, or uncritically accepting views that get the most likes on social media don’t work for you.

Unfortunately, if you adopt a habit of going with the flow or think you’re a political savant who just feels your way to understanding, you will get lost when things get complicated. You don’t have to be an intellectual whiz or know the entire history of the world to understand. You have to learn to listen & read carefully, plow your way through confusion, look at what the different points of view are & who the people are saying it. Who do they represent?

Language matters: is it hateful, aggressive, insulting? Method matters: is it based on unsubstantiated claims & prejudices, conspiracy & speculations? Or is there substance to the analyses?

All that is to say that when I see FB friends applauding what’s going on in Aleppo or mocking the suffering or talking the “head-chopping” talk, you’re out of here. So don’t then message me & say I got you all wrong, you don’t know if Assad is the lesser of two evils but you are against war, that in fact you don’t understand what’s going on in Syria. Not understanding is something I get; taking a public position in favor of bombing civilians & forcibly relocating them when you don’t understand what it’s all about is something deplorable.

Unfriending you for war-mongering doesn’t make me censorious. It makes me judicious. I have pending friend requests from almost 200 people, many of them because we agree about Syria & want to collaborate. That’s the way social media works.

Enough with the messages denouncing me for deleting you. The tongue-lashings roll like water off a duck’s ass. If the problem is ignorance, smarten up before you hop on the Assadist bandwagon to perdition.