People Are Fucking Crazy

People are fucking crazy, and they need to cut the shit. Here’s an example from today:

A woman named Beth opened a bakery here in Quincy, MA named Ginger Betty’s Bakery a little over twenty years ago. She makes great cookies, cakes and other goodies, and unlike most small businesses, she’s still doing well after all that time.

It took a lot of work to get off the ground, as I saw first-hand due to my little brother and sister-in-law being two of her first employees. The shop would be open crazy early in the morning (as bakeries are), and when I’d be coming home from grad school often close to midnight, I’d see my brother and sister-in-law still working away, decorating gingerbread men and women for customers to pick up the next day.

On top of all this hard work over decades, Beth and her team has done so much good for our community. She regularly donates her time and money to make baked goods for charities, raising money to help the homeless, to help single moms raising families alone, to help elderly citizens pay their heating bills, and countless other causes. She’s also done a ton of volunteer work (and been generous with her time and money) for military families who have been pretty hard hit going on the last seventeen years.

I think we can all agree that Beth is an exceptional person, and that Ginger Betty’s has been amazing for our community.

So when it was in the news this week that Ginger Betty’s had been selected as an outstanding American business, and invited to visit the White House to be honored for her hard work, Beth should’ve been celebrated by all Quincy citizens. And for the most part, she was.

But then the Trump haters lost their minds.

My social media feeds were tainted with ugly posts from Trump haters demanding that people boycott the bakery. They stated that in simply visiting the White House to be acknowledged by the President of the United States, she was supporting horrible things, like racism, child abuse, and other disgusting allegations.

When I pointed out that this was an incredible honor, and something that small business owners (who more often than not fail) could really use to help grow their businesses, I was met with insanity. I was lectured that accepting *anything* from the president was equivalent to supporting him, and supporting the disgusting claims they made about him.

When I pointed out that that means that every member of the military who receives a medal, commendation, or honor would then be supporting Trump, because he’s their Commander-in-Chief; that any mother who pays for food for her children using welfare/TANF would be supporting Trump because a republican-controlled Congress (most of whom actively support(ed) and campaign(ed) for Trump control that budget money alongside Trump; any parent who sends a child to public school, and any person who receives a federal loan or grant for college, ALL support Trump by this definition. That made them go bat crazy.

One former work colleague defriended me before I had a chance to point out that, in his state of Florida, a full third of the state’s budget comes from federal aid. That means that this guy, all high and mighty, supports Trump simply by driving to work, as all of his roads and highways are paid at least in part with federal money.

So people, if you’ve lost your mind, take a break from the news and social media for a while, and come down from the ledge. People should not be sabotaging their lives and businesses because you don’t like who is president.

The thing that I found most ironic, and sad, about these people posting? What little time they spend concerned about Trump and what he’s doing, they spend on social media dictating what other people should do. So instead of volunteering to help elderly people winterize their homes, or working a food pantry to help that mom feed her children, or running a coat drive to ensure homeless people can be warm this winter – they choose instead to organize online boycotts of local businesses who do these wonderful things in what little spare time they don’t have.

Enough of this nonsense. Cut it out.