I had a lot of extra time this week. It was band festival and, as I always do each year, I was there to record it for the bands.

And while they were playing and I was recording, I had a lot of time to just sit and basically do nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. I took a book to read and when it was too dark to read, I took a nice lazy stroll through social media.

And what I saw literally shocked me.

Yes, there were the regular plethora of posts showing what people had for breakfast, the awards their kids won for coming in 13th in the school spelling Bee, and somebody selling their old lawnmower. But there was something else.

Lots of hate.

I have always known that social media was just a reflection of our society. It’s not in and of itself evil or virtuous. It’s what we are.

And what I saw really saddened me.

Probably one third of the posts on my page were slanderous screeds. From both sides of the political spectrum and all walks of life.

The liberals were calling Elon and by association, every conservative, Satan incarnate.

The conservatives were blathering on about anyone one just slightly left of Hubert Hoover was the Antichrist and should be deported back to wherever they came from.

Like New Jersey.

I was dazzled by the absolute meanness and cruelty people could exhibit towards one another. Especially if they could somehow stay anonymous.

So I decided to embark on the Great Purge.

As I scrolled through the ‘book’ and encountered somebody calling another person or group a Cotton-headed Ninnymuggins, or some more colorful insult, I clicked on the little dots beside their name and then clicked on Block.

I must have done this 200 times over the last three days. Maybe even more.

And after the Great Purge, I can truthfully report that nothing has changed. In the place of the mean-spirited pages I blocked, two more seemed to emerge from the mud.

Apparently, the people at the ‘book’ saw what I was doing and thought, ‘well, let’s turn up the heat a little.’

I saw pages like the Lesbian Croquet Players for World Peace complain about the misogyny of croquet mallets. And the Right Wing Wingdings blather on about how gender neutral pronouns were ruining Scrabble.

The wave of scorn, derision and just downright meanness was overwhelming. It’s like I had been locked away in a prison cell with Elizabeth Warren and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

So I purged some more.

I blocked the Communist Tetherball Association. And then the Free-love Nudist Mountain Climbing League.

And that only seemed to entice more angry, shrieking people who had an ax to grind with their neighbors.

I guess I should not be surprised. As I said, social media is just a reflection of who we are as a society.

And apparently who we are is a bunch of irritable jerks who could use a good nap.

I thought about writing ‘in my day,’ and realized that it would sound rather sanctimonious.

If back in the 70s there had been a way for people to take on a handle like The Superfluous Super Society of Left-handed Whittlers and use that platform to slander the guy down the street who dares to rage against the accumulation of sawdust in his yard, they would have been all over it.

I don’t expect people to suddenly wake up to the absolute meanness of this world simply by reading this, but I would like to think that maybe we might try to act like we’re all part of the same country- or at least the same species.

I know our Founding Fathers didn’t all get along. I’m sure John Adams raged about how Benjamin Franklin wore his panty hose too tight. Or Thomas Jefferson would have a little too much to drink at the Christmas party and would blabber on and on about how Raymond Burr’s sideburns look like two anemic chipmunks.

But somehow, they managed to cobble together a bunch of different people who didn’t see eye to eye into the ‘United’ States of America.

Maybe we should change the name of the our country to the States of America and leave United out of it. Because we are anything but united.

I guess the conservative farmer has forgotten that his tractor was designed by a liberal engineer.

And the liberal engineer has forgotten that there would be no avocado toast for breakfast if it wasn’t for that conservative farmer.

Or the poor, underpaid guy who picks those avocados and might speak a different language.

So, I’ll keep on blocking posts from the Mothers Against Mirthful Merry-Go-Rounds. And the memes created by the Modern Society of Enlightened Toenail Artists.

And I’ll try to stop calling my neighbor a Lazy Scobberlotcher.

Even though he is one.