The truth is out there – but can we recognise it?
Farmers besieged by vegans, media stars sent hate mail, and people being accused of unacceptable actions sent death threats.
Who would want to be Donald Trump, apart from him? He must be the target of thousands of people's hate. Who'd be his bodyguards either? They are also in the line of fire. Collateral damage, it's called in the military, and the innocent victims of such actions have to live with the after-effects whether they "deserve" it or not.
I love my Facebook page, if only because I can see what my family is doing, and friends as far away as New Zealand, and we all benefit from seeing each other. But as we are always being told, bad people are trying to crash into it, and change our lives in ways we don't understand. That scares me, but it doesn't stop me.
I would be very scared if I was a livestock farmer just now, being targeted by some aggressive vegans who have taken it upon themselves to go from inviting people to take up their lifestyles to more threatening tactics against farmers and butchers unless they stop production.
The extreme elements have published a map of all livestock farmers in England and Wales and are encouraging their followers to threaten and pressurise farmers and their families to turn to vegetable growing.
Anyone who appears in the press and social media now can be targeted and defamed by all and sundry with very little redress, and the truth can be lost in translation. Pressure groups like Peta the animal rights movement, the Huffington Post and the Vegan Society can distort things in the interests of grabbing the readers' interest. And like Chinese Whispers, once things have been said, or written, then repeated, maybe slightly differently, the original facts are lost.
Maybe I'm hovering around the subject of Brexit. We thought we knew the truth about it when we voted, but clearly we didn't. Like so many things "out there" what might have been true then has been lost forever in the media and political doublespeak.
The truth is out there, but recognising it is the difficult thing sometimes.
Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer living near Ellesmere
