My blogging buddy Suze is a proud, dyed-in-the-wool, cast-in-stone liberal. She makes no bones about it either. She wrote a post this week off the writing prompt, “disagree”. She chose to call her post, “Political Disagreement”. Then she launched into a scathing diatribe of the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump. She said she can’t find a single good thing to say about him.
What’s sad about Suze’s liberal, opinionated posts is not her content. She’s entitled to write anything she wants. What’s sad is the condition of the minds and hearts of “friends” who responded to some of her posts. Many of those “friends” have bailed on her, she said. Some have smacked her with a barrage of names we can’t print here before abandoning their “friend”ship with her, Suze said.
In her post, she asked the question, “What ever happened to discussion?” It seems our culture has grown extremely polarized. Folks on either side of any social, cultural, political or spiritual
You can’t justify hateful ridicule
in the name of Christianity
issue become adamantly defensive towards any one or any view that does not agree with theirs. It seems to me many are personally, and sadly, passionate about being right. They will use any means and say anything with any language to justify their opinions or actions at any cost. Rather than discuss differences, these right-o-phobes attack, mercifully and shamefully, those whose opinions or perceptions of reality and truth differ from their own.
Suze and I harbor heart-felt differences. And we’re not afraid to discuss them. Several times we wind up agreeing to disagree. We read each other’s blogs and leave likes and comments. But I would never resort to attacking her, or swearing at her, or calling her evil regardless of her opinions or her beliefs.
Another sad thing: The folks who’ve written some of the meanest, most judgmental, cruelest comments to Suze, she said, seem to have come from folks who call themselves “Christians”. Their pious behavior is the very reason I wrote “No way to treat a gay waitress.” Click here to read that post.
Many of them seem to believe they’re “good” and “better than” others. They’re self-righteous hypocrites and have become just as radically polarized as any other group shouting their beliefs and vitriol in public lately.
Good question, Suze. What ever happened to “Discussion”?
For His Glory 
wonderful post! I wanted to write a thoughtful balanced post on Mr Trump and completely failed to do so. I wanted to have a discussion and instead I wrote a diatribe myself. It happens to the best of us and there really is no defensible position there.
I wrote a similar one on Ms. Clinton. Can’t find much to like about her either. Politics used to be a discussion between opposing groups. It has become in the last several cycles a place where people are intensely cruel and vituperous with each other. It’s sad that in writing about my inability to find a redeeming quality in a candidate that many people support, I failed to let those people know that I don’t hold them accountable for his actions, thoughts or words. I simply wanted to know how they supported him. what did they see that I am incapable of seeing?
It has become such a battleground and I am not sure why. The citizens truly are not polar opposites with no where to meet in the middle, yet they act as if they were. It is disheartening to say the very least. Thanks for the wonderful post Steven.
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The folks who’ve written some of the meanest, most judgmental, cruelest comments to Suze, she said, seem to have come from folks who call themselves “Christians”.
Hearts are so lukewarm to ice cold…It’s hard to comprehend sometimes. Great post!
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