Are you caught in the Facebook Trap?

Catholic writer Elizabeth Scalie nails it in this piece: Idols Come in Many Forms; Facebook Feeds Them

...the insidious trap I discuss in my First Things piece — the trap so many of us at one time or another find ourselves struggling to get out of, where we are caught up in the whirlwind of politics (so much of which is illusory) and into thinking that we must, we must, we must, keep breathlessly posting on Facebook; that the nation’s fate depends upon us not stopping to consider (or to pray, or to even think) but simply remaining in the spin of the storm, until we lose sight of everything, including the humanity of others, or the damage we may be causing that was never our willful intent.

This is scary because I've felt it...I've seen it...and her advice is critical for our bodily health and our souls (comes just in time for a lot of us):

...some of us are simply nourishing our ideologies—holding them close to the heart and feeding them on our stores of distrust and bitterness—and allowing them to steal all of our instincts to charity, to squeeze out mercy. You can see it on social media, most especially on Facebook where respectable, even admirable, people are beginning to lose perspective and attack each other over news stories, and sometimes over simple questions, reasonably asked. Where angry banning won’t do, full-scale attacks are launched in the form of threads full of red-meat, wherein “friends” are invited to feed, so the hatred may grow.

And it is all done in service to a sad illusion that somehow, if we do not post every story that makes us angry or proves our point, if we do not constantly attempt to fix the erroneous thinking of others, this election will fall out of our control. [Emphasis mine.] We must be aggressive unto hysteria in our righteousness, or the other side will win.