I wrote the following on Facebook this afternoon. I cross-post it here for posterity and wider dissemination.

This is my only political Facebook post this election year. There's really only one reason I'm on Facebook--I want to keep up with what's happening in my friends’ lives. I’m amused by the pictures of your children. I think that new haircut was probably a mistake. You visited Mount Rushmore? Great. You skydived completely naked and without a parachute and lived to tell about it? I’m impressed! (But I think the posting the photos is probably a violation of Facebook's terms of use.)

I don’t accept every friend request I get. As of today, I have just 113 friends on Facebook. That makes you part of a group even more exclusive than the House of Representatives, Pro Football Hall of Fame, and people who have slept with Paris Hilton. My friends are generally good-looking, easy-going and somewhat intelligent people.

And some are Democrats.

I kid. A little.

So, this is the point at which I kindly ask you to take your political postings over to Google+. You can create “circles” there and you can put me in your “Neanderthal, closed-minded Rethuglican” circle where you don’t share any of your political postings.

I know you think that clever graphic from Think Progress is just devastating to conservative arguments. It isn’t.

I know you think those tea party types are mean. The proof is that one of them said something mean to a friend of yours. If one person is representative of a movement, fair enough. Then those Occupy types with their rapes, drug overdoses, defecating on cop cars and other assorted illegal activities are yours. Own it.

Yeah, two weeks ago you posted that thing that you later revealed was just to get your friends fired up and talking and hey, it worked. Don’t go complaining a few days later that someone was mean to you and hurt your feelings.

We all have different political views and it’s very unlikely that I’m going to convince you that mine are right in a Facebook posting. It’s even more unlikely that you’re going to convince me that you’re right by posting that very informative graphic from Obama for America.

You can go ahead thinking that I’m evil. I’ll go ahead thinking that you’re an idiot.

We can both have the same smug satisfaction without ever posting anything political to Facebook.

Stick with the Can Haz Cheezburger cat photos.