Trolls Gonna Troll

 

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide
what kind of difference you want to make.

~Jane Goodall

I recently listened in on a live-streamed discussion with four Central Mass people who are working in the area of addiction, from the perspectives of law and justice, health and medical, treatment and reintegration, homelessness and mental health. During the program, one person repeatedly yelled in the comments that no one on the panel really cared, because the answer was to close the border to the flow of illicit drugs.

While I have a certain amount of sympathy for this person, who may have lost someone close to them because of drugs, I also had to note that only one out of the four people in the discussion had any position of power whatsoever that could have influenced the border.  The rest were people like us at Stone Soup Kitchen, who do what they can within their own sphere of influence.  I found it annoying that they were not hearing anything said by anyone on the panel for what it was worth, rather than through their lens of "all things can be solved by closing the border."  

If only it were that simple.  Imagine if all of us just stopped doing what we're doing, because what we're doing isn't helping to close the border.  

One of the most ignorant comments posted during the program, probably came from a troll, but I was disheartened to see some signs of agreement with it:

Stop glamorizing and victimizing junkies. Many times addiction is an attention 

seeking mechanism and you are an enabler. Start calling it what it is.

Dear sir or madam, I pray that you never have to go through the experience of having someone close to you caught up in addiction.  Believe me, none of us who have lived through this pain are glamorizing anything.