Election 2018

[pbrower2a]

(10-27-2018, 09:59 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-27-2018, 02:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The approach of no division and listening can only be applied to a relatively few people on the other side who are willing to listen, as I said before. That may be enough, at least as long as some degree of democracy still exists.

Well, a hater just murdered a bunch of people at prayer, following on the heels of another hater going after a bunch of blues.  Pardon if I am against hate and those who preach hate.  

They are still acting like lone nuts.  They are not forming groups or looking to escape cleanly to repeat their acts.  They are not gathering a following of those who applaud, unlike the old spirals of violence of the Industrial Age.

But I still believe we are going to have to unify rather than hate and ridicule.

Granted, it is easy to ridicule people like you and Galen.  You just look so ridiculous to those who buy into the stereotypes.

The next President will have the obligation to teach us some lessons about the minimal civic duty of getting along with people who don't look like us, pray like us, talk like us, or have sex like us. Political violence is the bane of democracy. The Golden Rule still applies, whatever our ideology. Sometimes we will need to defend the old decencies as necessary tradition.

Maybe those people are lone nuts for the simple reason that they could never tell us some of the mad deeds that they intend to do. So if I am a bartender and somebody who has had too many blurts out that someone ought to shoot the President, do I call the Secret Service on him? Yup!

As the would-be multiple bomber in Florida and the butcher of a Pittsburgh synagogue demonstrate, one lone nut can do huge damage to the fabric of our society. One bomb or one machine gun can kill several people at once.