Warning: Mad Liberal Woman's Political Rant

I pick red today, because that's what I'm seeing!  RED!  Just came off of Facebook where an old childhood acquaintance shared a page called "I can share anything I want about Barack Obama's Picture".  Then there were 3 before/after makeover pictures with the 3rd showing the rear end of a horse as the before, and Our current PRESIDENT's picture as the after.

REALLY!!??? Then it hit me.  Yea, of course.  In social media, where the majority of your audience is nameless and faceless, or you know the rest and perhaps assume their politics are the same, I suppose you can say anything you want about, well....anything.  But there's a price.  I felt the same about George W.  But I was very careful about what I said around the people I loved and respected who supported George W.  It is much easier to insult people that you don't know isn't it?  It is good to have places to vent and safely verbalize our frustrations and anger.  But to insult, generalize and categorize to an unknown, faceless audience with a diversity of opinions and thoughts, completely blocks a give and take conversation, particularly any kind of purposeful political discourse.  It is only when we can get past our anger and our fears, that we will be able to HEAR what others are saying, find our commonalities and move forward, as people, neighbors and a nation.  

Yes, we DO have freedom of speech.  But that does NOT mean we can say anything we want without expecting response and repercussions.  When we insult, we can expect anger as a response.  If we demonize whole groups of people as liberal or conservative or pink-hiny'd fascists; we render the individuals in those groups as nameless and faceless, and see only our differences.  Then we don't care about their responses, because we already hold them in the greatest disdain.  Our purpose then becomes to find more and more proof that they are idiots, digging the hole deeper and deeper, so that we don't have to hear what they say, see or acknowledge them.  There!  We were right all along..they're ALL ass hats.

Is this the nation we want to be?  Like school yard children yelling at each other from different sides of the playground, fighting over who gets the swings, the slides, the soccerballs, the tetherballs.  Believe me, there ARE enough toys to share.  But if one group corners all the toys, then one group has to go without.  Is that our purpose in life?  To get all the toys at the expense of others?  I can only play with one ball at a time (all puns intended).  How many balls do you need to be happy?

I would like to think that as a nation, we have gone beyond school yard chants and slanders.  Maybe the brits have it right with all the yelling and booing and name calling expended in the House and Parliament.  Here, we splash it on billboards and Facebook, Twitter.  Yes, we can comment, but is that a real conversation/discussion?  Because it seems to me that it leaves out the most important component of REAL conversation.  LISTENING, HEARING, EMPATHIZING.

When I get really frustrated, I try to remember that we were the first Democracy.  We were created from whole cloth from the hearts and souls of men who had only experienced rule by the church, by the crown, and by might.  They imagined something better.  Something where every voice can speak, where everyone has an equal right to live and breathe, think and work for something better.  They were very limited at first in sharing these "equal rights", originally encompassing only white, landed, males.  But as mankind has advanced, this new concept of equality has been expanded to more and more human beings of all types/genders/backgrounds, etc. who live and breathe.  Even after 200 years, I don't think we're all the way there yet.  We're still an experiment.  We're still evolving.  As the concept of humanity involves, so does our self-government.  Our entire history as a nation, has swung like a pendulum.  Time and again, different factions of our population have used their might and their money to try to seize control of the laws, and legislation to give themselves the advantage.  Look at the Railroad Barons, the Coal extractors, different individuals who have created economic dynasties by exploiting the natural and human resources of this country.

But we have always believed that we are the country where "the little people/the average man" can rise.  I wonder sometimes if this is a story we tell ourselves to make us feel better as a nation, and not the reality.  I know that currently this is not true.  A child born to his "economic class" in the U.S. has a much higher chance of ending life in that same class than his counterpart in many other "democratic" countries.  But as I said, the pendulum swings.  We have the means to make the myth, the dream come true. We are a nation that has produced Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, the Kennedy's, Malcolm X, Hilary Clinton, Madeline Albright.  

If we lift every voice, hear every voice, we will find our way.  If we stick our fingers in our ears, and yell insults loudly like spoiled children, we will wander and we may find it hard to find our way back.

Peace,
Kismet