Yeah, What She Said

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? - Eleanor Roosevelt

   I grow so weary of the angry, dualistic postings on Facebook. They sound so ugly, so lacking in perspective. One side is right, and that makes might, and apparently some of us don't even want to hear about a different point of view. Maybe someone forgot to broadcast the news: "To Listen Does Not Mean That You Have to Agree, but You Might Learn Something."
   I would like to add that the definition of "Enemy" is not "Someone Who Disagrees With You." 
   It isn't just Facebook, we battle it out day after day, spewing out the most awful name-calling and accusations toward the "other side". I have a friend at church, nicest person you would ever want to meet. One day in the Post Office parking lot, she was verbally assaulted, and required the intervention of a bystander to prevent a possible physical assault, because a man disagreed with her liberal bumper stickers. (I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but it is so shocking to me, I'm repeating it.)
    We are all worried about terrorists, that we can agree upon, but a news analysis I heard the other day really made me stop and think. 
     The ideologist extremists who perpetrate these atrocities want us to be angry at each other. They want us to point a finger at "those people"; argue and accuse about what to do; turn us into the kind of people who are able to view suffering people as our enemy, and turn our guns on each other. Oh, and  to conduct a Presidential campaign of ludicrous and dangerous slander and innuendo by candidates who don't know what they are talking about. It's a sound-bite side-show, and we know who is in the lead by the glaring headlines produced by the provocative questions that generate the equally provocative response.
      Meanwhile, back to the terrorists. We Americans are so distracted by arguing and threatening each other, that we are destroying ourselves from within. We so exhaust ourselves fighting with each other, that we would have little left to battle the real enemies when they show up (if we can even agree who they are). The terrorists are laughing at us: they have a calculated plan to use our divineness against us. 

I am worried about our country. We seem to be getting further and further from a concept of "We the People" and moving toward me and mine. I fear that we are also moving further and further from our own cherished definitions of who we are:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

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I worry about us. I don't have answers with big scope, but I do think we can begin listening to each other. The person with the different perspective is a worthy human being; an American; and desperately seeking for him/herself and his/her family the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I would like to see us, just once in the coming holiday season (ok, more than once is better) to forgo posting another contentious FB posting and seek out someone we know to think/believe differently from us and listen to what they have to say. It's not even necessary to argue back. Thank them for sharing their views; agree to disagree and walk away as brothers and sisters. Yes, it will be more difficult than sitting in our pajamas firing off something or hitting the "share" button on FB, but we all used to be up to handling difficult tasks.

We could try this at our next family holiday gathering. It might prevent someone from stomping away from the table, vowing never to return.

Think about one of my all-time favorite bumper stickers:

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK!