It always amazes me how some people can take a word with good meaning, such as tolerance, respect, and ethics and turn them into words that will in effect hurt others or do damage to social constructs such as families, the workplace, and our schools.

Recently online I ran into one of those kinds of social media warriors that spew such garbage out into the world regularly, regardless of the way it may make others feel or act. The man was calling out a woman with health issues as a drain on our society in a rude way including comparing her to a sex worker and a low paid bartender. All this stemmed from her asking a simple question about him and how they knew each other in the past, a query that in my opinion was neither rude nor ‘loaded,’ but rather an innocent question to better understand that person and his background.

The reason I’m writing this though is because after I did indeed take the man to task about his behavior, essentially playing cards from his own deck against him, to make him feel as he had made that poor woman feel, he told me something that has haunted me the last few days.

It was, by coincidence, September eleventh and of course, the seventeenth anniversary of the tragic and deadly attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, a day that changed the world and changed the fabric of American society and policy forever.

The man claimed that he would not reply to me that day due to respect for 9/11 and that he would: “deal with me tomorrow.” Now, let it be said that 9/11 was indeed a moving moment in history I of course experienced with the rest of the world that watched in shock and amazing terror as we lost over two-thousand lives that morning, and many more due to the consequences from that attack.

I watched with a heavy heart same as the rest of the world and this country we all live in, condemning those that would care so little for innocent Human life and feeling a shift in what I thought was capable of happening on American soil.

At this point you may be wondering why I am shunning the man for that statement, I mean, it seems very patriotic and righteous at the surface, a man caring enough about events seventeen years prior that he considers it bad form to conduct such a debate on that date.

However, what concerns me in all of these instances, from either side of the political aisle is how the words one says in one moment do not prove out in the actions that are undertaking at other times. It is hard to say you are refusing to argue with someone with respect of a historical event when on other days you are happily bashing people and their viewpoints with a sledgehammer and doing so with glee, wielding the printed word like a weapon and having no regard for who you might cut down.

So please, it’s a huge and vast internet, practice what you preach in all aspects.