Rage on the Internets

I would like to think of myself as a normally calm and collected person, but this simply is not really the case. Thankfully I have come to shed my childhood temper tantrums, but I still get rage, a deep and blinding anger. Thankfully, I try to surround myself with positive and like-minded people to avoid rage-invoking exposures. Things I read online, however, really bring me closer than comfort to some of the people with opinions that trigger my anger. This leads to my unnecessary dwelling and unexplainable preoccupation over some racist asshole's comment on the Facebook group, [I am for] Making Drug Tests required to Get Welfare.

At this time, I will not go into the myriad of things wrong with this group. If your values align with my own, I don't need to. My problem is that I dwell on the fact that this group exists, and that people I am "friends" with are members of this group. I get so angry about this that I can't even get into an intelligible conversation or argument with anyone who believes this way because I can't craft an argument without getting emotional or belligerent (or both). And if I were to present a beautiful argument, wouldn't they just wait for their turn to present their counter-points, thus not listening to what I had to say anyway? That is probably what I would do.

Today, I was reading Sungold's post: Charging Hard against Dodge's Dude-ism. (To summarize, a feminist counter-commercial was produced as a response to Dodge's misogynist Charger commercial). I went to check out comments it was getting on youtube, expecting some "hell yeah" and "about time!"s. Instead...well take a look for yourself. As much as several hours after reading those comments and fuming over them for the first time, I was standing in line at Chipotle when I started thinking about the comments, the people who wrote the comments, and the unspeakable violent acts I wanted to perform at their expense. My face flushed up and my heart started racing. It was a Friday afternoon, I had no class, and I should have otherwise been enjoying myself thinking of my long weekend ahead. Instead, I was fuming and clouding my mind with negative thoughts because I read the words of people whose personal beliefs deviate a great deal from my own. And for what? It is not worth stressing myself out to this extent just because I am looking things of interest up on my free time.

I watch FoxNews, I get into arguments with my parents about Cash for Clunkers and homosexuality in the Bible. It is like I go out looking to pick fights. But I really don't excel at making eloquent arguments, no matter how strong my convictions. Maybe when I finally learn how to do that, I will stop spending my down time raising my blood pressure dwelling upon it.