This article came out recently about internet anger lashing out.
I've had to develop a thick skin over the past several months. Tuesday night I watched Heather Armstrong on Twitter say how within a few hours of the election loss, she started getting hit with hate mail from McCain supporters.
By and large the responses from most the McCain supporters I knew were very nice yesterday. From Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View, my babysitter (who's a Republican)and a variety of online friends, there were many words of "moving on" and accepting the fact that the election was over.
I diligently removed my yard signs from my property and removed my signature from the boards so Obama wasn't in the faces of those who I knew didn't support my candidate.
I haven't changed anything here yet because I haven't had the time. Plus at this point, it's largely a political blog, so I feel I get to have a week or so to get some new art. Some of it may not change at all.
But in the past 48 hours, for some gals who know me just barely and who hate my politics, bridges that were already burned had to be torched one last time to see if they couldn't just get the charred remains to fall into the river.
I often mention a board or two I belong to, and even some of the blogs from those boards.
I have had some people rather angrily assert that I've had very "hateful" blog entries here. I know I'm not perfect, and I've probably said more than one or two things I can regret if I look back over it. I don't pretend to like Pres. George Bush. I get pretty darn vocal about it. But if I ran into the man I would be respectful and shake his hand as I have a number of politicians I've disagreed with.
But it's so interesting to me to be accused of being hateful, when I've tried very hard here to write what comes from my heart, which isn't hate at all, but a hope for the future, and a hope for a new day in American politics when Republicans (who I have repeatedly overshared as to why I don't agree with their general tenets) are not in power.
That's not hate. That's me disagreeing with what's going on in this country right now, and hoping for something different in the future.
I'm sure most of you Republicans who are still reading (both of you) will get that feeling very soon if you haven't already.
And then I was reading my brother's blog today. I'm so thankful that he's blogging about politics and not just his trips (although his pictures are great, his blog was originally set up as a travel tool, not necessarily something for him to share his opinions on.
So in his blog (shamelessly stolen), I read this today:
"So what is the consequence of this? The consequence is that when we discriminate against a whole people, or when we are willing to run each other out of political parties in internecine conflicts, we eventually come to fear that very thing being done to us. It is not that people see actual evidence of an Obama administration doing this to them nor are they imagining it being done to them. No, it is that they have lived it, done, carried it out, and can only imagine what it would feel to be on the end of those same actions. They themselves have provided the concrete model for that which they fear the most."
Oh, how very interesting.
Is the fear of Obama not the issue, so much as the fear that the shoe is now on the other foot? The torch is passed by a vote they want to tear down in order to try to illegitemize it?
I don't name-call in general, but I am sarcastic in an attempt to be witty. I am crass at times.
But as I pointed out on my board today: come to my blog or don't come to my blog. But don't drag me through the mud because you don't like what I say here. I have stopped going to MANY blogs because I don't see the point. I know most people believe what they believe. I don't have to respect it, but I don't fill my days angrily posting to them to try and Don Quixote them into believing that I'm right and they're wrong.
I wonder sometimes how these VERY same people could insist that I shut up, and by example say I should not knock on Sarah Palin, because she is after all, a maverick.
But let's say I'm a maverick. Am I supposed to shut up just because I don't espouse YOUR beliefs? Pardon the self-description here, but if a maverick is someone who does things differently, then I am by definition, also something of a maverick.
The shoe's on one foot, then the other. The reality is, I recognize that those who can't see past this are never going to quite get it:
You've HAD the past 8 years.
It's OUR turn, and Obama is offering you a stake in it by reaching out his hand. That you would slap it back is YOUR problem. I'm sorry if your feelings are hurt, but I cannot and will not apologize for rejoicing in this moment in history.
No comments:
Post a Comment