In church on Sunday, one of our prayers
asked God for help that in the midst of this divisive election season that we might
refrain from demonizing the other side.
I was so struck by this!
Demonization of everyone not like “us”
is everywhere. Clinton v. Trump v. Third Parties v. DNC and on and on, and the
candidates are leading the charge to the bottom. Oddly
enough, after Hillary’s now infamous “basket of deplorables” comment, I came
across a recent interview of Bill Clinton online where he was not demonizing Trump
supporters. He was talking about looking
at the life circumstances of many of the people in the demographics that contain the strongest Trump
supporters. He was talking with Trevor
Noah about looking at where these people were coming from. I am no fan of many of the policies
championed and enacted by Bill Clinton, but at least he offered some lip service to the need to look at things from the other side’s
perspective.
So much of the anger underlying this
demonization online is misdirected anger. I would summarize my recent Facebook reads in the statement,“Dubya was the fault
of all you Nader loving contrarians!” I would ask, where is the anger at the Supreme Court for stopping the count or for the State of
Florida who purged 181,157 voters purged from the rolls in the lead up to the 2000
election? Where is the outrage over the
butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County where it is estimated that they took
around 2,800 votes from Gore and gave them to Pat Buchanan (Palm Beach Post.) Looking at 2016, where is the concern over our
voting process itself? Look at what
happened in NY, Brooklyn, Arizona and California. Where is the concern, the outrage over the probability that our democracy could be hacked in a million different ways, that our voting system is not
secure? There is so much that is wrong with our country that deserves our
energy, attention and outrage!
Creating hard feelings isn’t going to
help us on Nov. 9. No matter which candidate
moves into the White House next, it is going to be a tough road for most of us. If we have alienated each
other, if we have broken the ties of friendship, if we have lost the ability to
listen, if we continue to blame each other rather than acknowledging and
looking honestly at the powerful forces that have set the stage what is for so
many of us a horrible choice, then we will not be able to work together for a better world in the face of what is to come.
