April 9, 2022
And a good spring morning to all! Deuce and I were up early this morning, awoken, I'm guessing, by the rain. Or more precisely, the sump pump starting to work because of all the rain. We can hear the pump if the house is quiet. I don't mind because it assures me the basement is staying dry. Managing the basement is one of the annoying things about country living, but there's nothing like owning your own house and property and being your own boss of it.
But homeownership isn't what's on my mind this morning. Because my focus and energy is on getting all my ducks in a row to retire, writing prose has been put on the back burner. I decided that instead of worrying about that, I'd do some promo through social media, primarily the Facebook groups.
Well.......... ... ...
I've never made a concerted effort to promo an entire series before, but I'm working on the Men of Marionville. That's twelve stories. Yesterday, I was at my job office just hanging out while my replacement did all the work, so I opened my laptop and posted some promo. Facebook shut me down, locking me out of my account.
I was not pleased.
Admittedly, it didn't take much to click my way through the unlock process and be up and running again. Did it annoy the fuck out of me? Yep.
I understand the need for the various social media platforms to be on the watch for nefarious activities, but now I wonder if someone somewhere clicked a little button to try to censor my post about a book. And that's one of the things I just don't get about people.
There's an old joke about how you can tell the difference between a Republican and a Democrat simply by watching television. Let's say there's a new TV show that is designed to be offensive. A Democrat will go to war to stop it from being aired believing no one should see it, but a Republican will allow First Amendment rights and so just change the channel.
(Remember Tipper Gore and her crusade to ban some songs over their lyrics? Google it. I rest my case.)
The point of that is some people are willing to allow others to live and let live, and some are not. Some people are willing to allow your point of view to be heard. They'll just change the channel and listen to something else while others will do everything in their power to silence you.
My books are hardly subversive. I write about people falling in love and embarking on a journey together. I don't voice my opinions anywhere but here at Between the Keys, and I keep my political leanings to a minimum. I'm not all "this way" or "that way" as I think each issue needs to be considered on its own.
I'm disturbed by the new little downvote button Twitter has. If you don't like what a person is posting you can vote them down and eventually, the algorithm will bury their voice. Just remember they can do that to you. Why not just change the channel for a little while?
Censorship is not healthy. Twisting, and yes, masking the truth is dangerous. Lies are being told every day and only by being able to listen to multiple sources are we common folk able to ferret them out and learn what is true. Censorship is proof positive there is an agenda at work, and anyone or anything that embraces it is suspect.
As a society of free people, and still free thinkers, we need to protect the right of everyone to voice an opinion, even if we do not agree. The rabble-rousers are winning in their efforts to set We The People at odds with each other. The less each and every one of us is allowed to hear all the voices of all sides, the more those censoring us win.
Which, of course, means we're all losing. Think about where we could end up before you press that dislike or downvote button. Just change the channel instead.
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KC Kendricks
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