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eibbil_libbieGoing to start this off by saying...I don't care who you voted for. This isn't about that. Doesn't faze me if you voted for Hillary, if you voted for Trump, for Johnson or Stein or freaking Harambe.
You voted. Give yourself a high five for doing the most patriotic thing there is - taking a stand for what you believe, what you want for our country, and what you see is the best path forward.
Or, as I like to call it: preserving your right to bitch for another four years.
That said....
Regardless of the election results last week, it's clear to me that we've lost something in this country. We've lost our ability to be a country.
We're not We the People any longer. We're Us and Them.
I'm in no way a Civil War buff (that's the War of Northern Aggression for my Southern friends), but I have to think that this is what it was like in the USA back then.
Families are getting ripped apart, friendships are being tanked. The level of rhetoric is unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. There's no room for differences of opinion any longer. There's just anger. Lots and lots of anger. And a sense of inherent rightness no matter whether you're Us or Them - a rightness with no room for anything else.
You're in the right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but close to inhuman for daring to have another stand, or a different outlook. Different is bad.
I miss living in a world where you could voice an opinion and have someone ask you why you felt that way, you would discuss it, and maybe both sides would come away from the encounter having learned something new about the other side of the issue.
That couldn't happen now. I saw two of my friends on Facebook attempt to put up a status that called no one out, just put forth a plea for sanity. It didn't work. Within a day there was a rhetoric-filled response with some added name calling for good measure. It saddened me.
When I was in college, two of my best friends and I were on either side of a very controversial issue at the time. We remained friends, and still are to this day. Why? Because we respected that we had different views, we knew we would never change the other's mind, and left it at that. We didn't snipe at each other, we didn't jump on every little thing the other said and devolve into something resembling a high school debate championship. If the subject came up, we'd talk around it, or politely, and quietly, disagree.
It makes me sad that we've lost that civility. We've lost the general sense of goodwill towards our fellow humans. That being right has taken precedence over being respectful.
I can only hope that someday we'll find it again.
You voted. Give yourself a high five for doing the most patriotic thing there is - taking a stand for what you believe, what you want for our country, and what you see is the best path forward.
Or, as I like to call it: preserving your right to bitch for another four years.
That said....
Regardless of the election results last week, it's clear to me that we've lost something in this country. We've lost our ability to be a country.
We're not We the People any longer. We're Us and Them.
I'm in no way a Civil War buff (that's the War of Northern Aggression for my Southern friends), but I have to think that this is what it was like in the USA back then.
Families are getting ripped apart, friendships are being tanked. The level of rhetoric is unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. There's no room for differences of opinion any longer. There's just anger. Lots and lots of anger. And a sense of inherent rightness no matter whether you're Us or Them - a rightness with no room for anything else.
You're in the right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but close to inhuman for daring to have another stand, or a different outlook. Different is bad.
I miss living in a world where you could voice an opinion and have someone ask you why you felt that way, you would discuss it, and maybe both sides would come away from the encounter having learned something new about the other side of the issue.
That couldn't happen now. I saw two of my friends on Facebook attempt to put up a status that called no one out, just put forth a plea for sanity. It didn't work. Within a day there was a rhetoric-filled response with some added name calling for good measure. It saddened me.
When I was in college, two of my best friends and I were on either side of a very controversial issue at the time. We remained friends, and still are to this day. Why? Because we respected that we had different views, we knew we would never change the other's mind, and left it at that. We didn't snipe at each other, we didn't jump on every little thing the other said and devolve into something resembling a high school debate championship. If the subject came up, we'd talk around it, or politely, and quietly, disagree.
It makes me sad that we've lost that civility. We've lost the general sense of goodwill towards our fellow humans. That being right has taken precedence over being respectful.
I can only hope that someday we'll find it again.