I often turn to Facebook when life isn’t irritating enough. All it takes is a quick scroll down my timeline and I’ll find something to energize my misanthropy.

An old friend from college had put up a new spin on WWJD with the letters evidently standing for “Whom Would Jesus Deport.” It was a meme stating that heaven has both a wall and strict entrance requirements while hell is welcoming of everybody.

It’s a specious argument even if you a)believe in heaven and hell, and b)believe it should be a model for our immigration policy. The first part I’m not going to touch. Faith, by its nature, is impervious to debate. However, the anti-immigration folks might not want to follow this celestial example too close. Otherwise, they’d have to allow anyone into America who accepted Uncle Sam as their personal savior.

I doubt my friend who posted the meme was being serious. He’s a conservative Republican so he probably has a stricter view on immigration than I have. However, he is not a Christian so I doubt he puts much stock in this decidedly Christian view of the afterlife. My guess is that he thought it would be fun to shoot a hornet’s nest with a slingshot and watch the ensuing chaos from a safe distance.

If that was his intent, he succeeded admirably. An evangelical chimed in with hell being a place you choose by not accepting Christ. Another person of a differing faith replied that the evangelical was being hateful and hurtful. I took the bait as well, asserting my atheism as we atheists are so fond of doing. Not to be outdone, those with a firm grasp of the obvious were quick to point out that the USA has separation of church and state.

Then it got ugly. And stupid. One guy, a friend of the meme poster, objected to the idea of this separation, going so far as to call it “a lie perpetuated by those who want to destroy America.” He might have even written it in all caps.

That was some serious American Taliban shit right there. As an enlightened San Francisco liberal, my gut reaction was to sneer and feel superior to this benighted troglodyte. He deserved no better, but it made me feel a little dirty. Contempt against those you disagree with is easy. It’s a little too easy and often the go-to reaction for most. Liberals are smart and conservatives are idiots. See how simple that is?

If only it were, or failing that, if only I were better at making myself believe it were so. My conservative friend who posted the meme, likely for mischievous fun, is anything but stupid. We agree on next to nothing, but I don’t dismiss his opinions out of hand. For example, he is opposed to the legalization of recreational cannabis because stoned drivers are a goddamn menace. I favor legalization even though I don’t like to smoke the stuff. However, I can see his point as I once drove off the road on my moped while high as a kite. My overall position has not changed, but I’d be amenable to measures to discourage people from smoking a bowl and getting behind the wheel.

So maybe he’s the exception, a lone thinking conservative standing head and shoulders above the knuckle draggers. Liberals, on the other hand, are thinking individuals and we care more. Face it. We’re just better.

Fortunately, I have a friend who keeps me from falling for that line of thinking. That isn’t his intention, but he does it all the same. Not long ago, he posted a meme that claimed to quote the US Constitution. It said:

Article II Section 4: If the president is impeached for treason, the vice president and all civil officers shall be removed.

I was skeptical for a couple of reasons. First, it just didn’t sound right. When Clinton was impeached, there was no mention of Gore losing his job as well if the president was convicted. I went and looked it up. Sure enough, Article II Section 4 said:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

In other words, people in any of these positions can be removed from office if impeached and convicted of the aforementioned crimes. That’s a very different thing from a total purge of the executive branch.

Also, my friend has posted untrue things in the past. One particularly egregious example was the how Daisy, the 9/11 Wonder Dog. Daisy led people to safety after planes hit the twin towers. She went back in and led more people to safety. She kept going back in and ended up saving close to a thousand lives. Thank you, Daisy. Good Girl!

“What a wonderful story!” he added as a caption when sharing this unlikely tale of canine heroism.

I let that one go. It was bullshit, but it was harmless bullshit. Misquoting the constitution like this is different. Neither my credulous friend nor I want Pence taking over if Trump gets booted. The difference is that I’m not going to buy into some wishful-thinking lie to avoid that possibility.

So I pointed out his error in a comment to the meme he shared. I was nice. I did not use the R-word even though I felt it in my heart. “Please check your facts” I wrote along with a Snopes link.

“Oops, my bad,” or words to that effect would have been a reasonable response. Instead, his reply was that his interpretation of the words was valid, even if that meant changing the words themselves.

Alternative facts, it seems, are alive and well on both sides of the aisle.