Cleansing Facebook And My Life

I grew up in a toxic environment.

Of course, I didn’t know it was toxic. As a child you accept your life as normal.

My mother, who didn’t know any better, fed us an unhealthy diet heavy on red meat, fried foods, pizza wheels, Hostess Cupcakes, Pop Tarts, Froot Loops and Swanson TV dinners. She was a product of her time.

My father, a retired Colonel in the US Army also fed us on a steady diet of racism, both in his politics and in his jokes. He was also a product of his time.

Having grown up in that environment, I accepted both as normal. That was the way the world was, or at least the only world that I knew. It is the world that Donald Trump, both in his eating habits and his endless stream of comments and tweets still inhabits. It is the world that his millions of followers can easily relate to. To them, it seems normal. It seems like comfort food.

It isn’t.

When I met Lisa, my wife, I still ate terribly. On one of our first dates, I took her to Roy Rogers. We were driving up from Annapolis, Maryland, and we stopped there for a “real treat.” Fried chicken and curly fries accompanied by a coke.

Growing up in England, she had never been exposed to this kind of food. It must have seemed exotic.

Slowly, over time, she weaned me of my toxic diet. Out went the red meat, the fat, the carbs, the deep fried, the fast food to be replaced with fresh vegetables (something I had never encountered as a child), grains, fresh fruit, fish, green tea — a complete Mediterranean diet.

I dropped 20 pounds, I started running 5 miles a day. I gave up on deserts, sugar, pretty much anything unhealthy. I have never felt better.

Having cleaned up my life, food-wise at least, last week, I decided to Detox my Facebook life.

I spend a great deal of time on Facebook (much to the annoyance of Lisa). I long ago reached the requisite 5,000 friends. Not a few of them were right wing Trumpistas, posting their rage, anger and endless streams of racism. They reminded me a great deal of my father. Maybe that’s why I tolerated them.

I had rationalized that they were entitled to express their opinions. I rationalized that perhaps I could, over time, convince them to see the error of their ways.

Last week, I decided to remove them from my newsfeed and from my life, much as I removed toxic foods from my diet.

When I cut out the toxic foods, I immediately felt better.

When I started to cut out the toxic comments, ironically, I also immediately began to feel better as well.

As my friend Mark Bittman, the food critic will tell you, many fast foods are poisons. So are the toxic politics of hate, racism and anger.

Cut out the junk food and you will feel immeasurably better.

Cut out the junk politics and you will also feel immeasurably better.

I did it.

I would like the TV news organizations to do it as well.

Junk food is addictive and deadly.

So is junk politics.