In 19 days, I will have been living on this earth for 73 years.
I wasn’t alive for chattel slavery and I wasn’t around for the Holocaust. But I don’t think there was ever a time in my life when there was as much deep-down hatred, such irrational hatred, among Americans as we have now.
For all the anger I felt from time to time for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush as presidents, I don’t think I ever wished for them to die and I certainly never wished that anyone would kill them.
To be fair to the three Republican presidents, none of them promoted violence.
Of course all three of them look like Mount Rushmore types when you compare them to modern-day Republicans, and it’s showing in the way modern types go out of their way to incite violence against folks they can use to make points with their own mouth-breathers.
The latest shooting at a Colorado Springs nightclub for GLBTQ+ people in which five were killed and many more wounded brought interesting responses from two of the more outrageous Republicans in Congress. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado representative, clled the shootings “awful” and said the victims were in her praters. That didn’t go over real well.
At least she tried. Georgia’s Klan Mom, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, used the incident to go after President Biden.
Greene absolutely wasn’t going to say anything that could be construed as sympathetic, merciful or even less than hateful toward those people. I couldn’t swear to it, but the closest “safe place” for people in MTG’s district who are GLBTQ+ is probably Atlanta. Which of course is not in her district.
Are there really so many people whose only thoughts. whose only goals for this country are to hurt other people?
How many Republicans are there who if you told them they could push a button and the Democrats they hate or fear the most would vanish from the earth would push that button without hesitation?
More than a few, I would guess.
If I were offered that same choice … to remove Trump or any other Republican?
I wish I could guarantee I wouldn’t do it, but I guarantee if I did it, I would feel guilty for the rest of my life.
Hate is damned contagious.
And the way we look at life and death ought to be consistent. I believe I can honestly say the only circumstance under which I would consciously take a life would be in self-defense or to prevent someone from killing someone I love.
By that same token, I don’t believe in capital punishment under any circumstance. I don’t believe in assisted suicide or euthanasia, and on the question of abortion, I would support it in very few exceptional circumstances. That said, as someone who believes very strongly that God gives us free will, I believe it must come down to an individual decision.
As the saying goes, Man (man or woman) proposes, God disposes.
I’m always amazed by the fact that so many people refuse to accept one of the most basic principles of living in this world — live and let live.
The sad part of it is that when we allow that to happen, we leave ourselves with nothing to be happy about.
Ask somebody what they love about America.
Too often, all they’ll be able to tell you what they used to love and what they now hate.