Not that long ago when our news was delivered, we could only read it. There was no interacting. Even when print publications went online there were no comments at first and then they had to be approved. Progress now makes it possible to comment immediately upon reading an article. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

People who don’t write for publication may not know that authors usually don’t choose the title for their articles. The editor typically does that and sometimes the headline doesn’t really line up with the article body. The headline is meant to rope the reader in, whereas the content is meant to inform, entertain or whatever. Here’s where the first problem with comments comes in. Sometimes people read the headline and comment without reading the article. You can always tell when this happens and it doesn’t make the commenter look that good. This is kind of a no harm, no foul deal and fun to watch.

This brings me to the more perplexing situation of people tying every news article to some political party. There might be a seemingly innocent article about the number of cats at the local humane society and someone will comment that the governor whispers to cats encouraging them to breed in order to create havoc in the shelters.

When that happens it isn’t long before another person comments that it’s not the governor; in fact, the president has mandated an additive in cat food that makes them sexually excited and the additive is made by Monsanto. The end result is 151 comments on the cats in the shelter article, only nine of which have anything to do with the article.

Facebook is the poster child for these actions. It’s almost like people are dissecting every post or sharing them to see how they can put a political twist on it all.

When this happens and you’re a kind of middle-of-the-road person who questions things, they go for the juggler. You start out at a position of ignorance in the town square for all to throw rocks at. I saw a news article about the upcoming tourism conference and the second comment turned it into a political debate. I didn’t go back so I have no idea how nasty it got.

This is the part that really bothers me: the nastiness. A recent article about an automobile accident mentioned that there were two dogs in the car, one died and one was seriously injured. You don’t read about that very often so it seemed OK to have it as part of the article.

When it was shared on Facebook, someone made a negative comment about dogs and the game was on. There was discussion about whether liberal or conservative dog lovers were better or worse and what the dogs and their owners did based on their political leanings. There didn’t seem to be any interest in whether the other person in the accident owned a cat or dog and what his political leanings were.

Most people seem to be at least a little disappointed in the actions or lack of actions of our political bodies. Augusta is one thing, but Washington, D.C., seems almost hopeless most of the time. Is it any wonder? If people can’t be civil one on one, why should they expect their Maine representatives and Congressional representatives to get along? If a Republican politician is caught cheating, people accuse all Republicans of being cheaters. If a Democrat is exposed in a scandal, other people swear that all Democrats are living scandalous lives.

Pay attention to this part: Those folks are individuals. That’s all. They should be judged by what they did and pay whatever the appropriate price is, but don’t drag everyone else who registered to vote in one party or another into the deal. If you don’t like them, that’s fine. Don’t wish them dead. Vote them out of office.

The only way legislation can get passed in this country is that people with differing viewpoints have to get along. We could start by setting a good example at the most local level. And remember this. We voted those people into office so as H. L. Menckens aid, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

I live on a major highway near a convenience store that sells pizza. Almost daily I pick up pizza slice paper plates that people throw out on my front lawn because they’re just far enough away from the store to not need them anymore.

All the time I’ve lived here I had no idea who was throwing out the plates or that there was any pattern. Several years ago, there was a news article about littering and one of the comments was that all litterers were inconsiderate conservatives who only thought about themselves. I had no idea! Right then and there I started looking suspiciously at my conservative friends and enrolled as an independent. I never said I was proud of my actions.