Submitted by Anonymous on
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Othering is a hateful, revenge driven disgust for people whose political views differ from your own. Those "others" have it all wrong - they are stupid and the ideals and policies they believe in will destroy America. Those "others" need to be punished and silenced, better yet erased. What happened to hate the politics, not the person?
Why do people persist in and embrace hate? Why is it so easy? Well, let's face it, it is a tasty little morsel that keeps people craving more of the adrenaline rush espoused in the false feeling or power over another human being. Power. Ultimately that's what it's all about.
How bad is it?
Our nation is divided. The center ground has fallen out of our discourse. Americans now often live in areas with people who have similar politics. They watch the same television shows or go to the same online sources for news or for entertainment, constantly reinforcing their own views. But if each side is guided by its own set of facts, how can our nation find common ground? Certainly, we must listen to each other’s points of view but we must also realize what is true and what is false. If it’s true, for example, that sea waters are rising because of climate change, it doesn’t matter if someone believes climate change doesn’t exist — his coastal home will be washed away just the same.*
There might seem to be plenty of reason to hate right now. We see the other side of the political battle trying to steal the election, crush our side and the values we hold dear, ruin the country and our cherished institutions — destroy our way of life. It seems very clear that “they” hate us. How can we not hate “them ... if you ask conservatives, they’ll tell you the liberals are the real haters. The left, it seems is fueled by hate, forever scrounging for dubious moral outrages it can latch onto and leverage to demonize conservatives and gain power. The Christians who make up the country’s religious majority ought to know better than to hate. The world’s other major religions and wisdom traditions teach against hate. And all who profess humane values, religious or not, should be guided by humanism's vision of a world of mutual care and concern where differences are resolved cooperatively, without violence. There is no role for hate in a world like that. For liberals, dropping hate it does not require them to tolerate racism, attacks on democracy, or other forms of injustice and wrongdoing for the sake of “getting along.” It does not mean foregoing the prosecution of those who break laws if the evidence warrants, even ifthey currently occupy the highest position in the land.** - Tom Krattenmaker
Rejecting hate does not require anyone of any political perference to abandon their core values ... we just need to realize that. Some will be slow to the process but they can catch on if some braver hearts start setting examples. The current status does not need to be the new normal.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies,” Lincoln concluded his speech. “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” - Abraham Lincoln
"Other" ARE "Us"
Exerpts:
*https://altamontenterprise.com/09132018/hate-politics-not-people
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