Your fucking stupid if you think that.
Obama is the worst piece of shit for a president we ever had.
Damit you are retarded. (sic)
Russell Carter

It’s ugly. But I had just written about stepping into the unknown so when this site came up on my FB feed I decided to step in. I could have anticipated what I would find there. But now it is known. It’s a site with a huge number of followers. It’s a site filled with meme after meme of nasty comments about President Obama and liberals. And of course comments for each meme posted. The most recent meme was about Obama being the worst president ever.

I decided to offer my perspective that actually I think he’s one of the best presidents in American history. Not surprising that my comment attracted many responses, including the one above from Mr. Carter. OK. I couldn’t resist. So I called on my best active listening skills to acknowledge that he sounds pretty angry, offering prayers that he could move beyond anger. I acknowledged that we hold different opinions and suggested that in America this is fundamental to who we are, adding that discourse is essential and suggesting that respectful discourse is most productive. That garnered the following response.

Not in America today.
If you don’t want to be PC, GLBTQ lover,
and enbrace illegal aliens as legal then today you are wrong.
Come January 20 we will have a new leader who will,
God willing, take us back to being a world leader
and not a wolrd follower. (sic)
Jack Hutchinson

When I deleted any link to this site, FB offered their apologies if I had had a bad experience. Wasn’t really a bad experience. It was ugly, but it was insightful. And I was able to delete the site. Many of our brothers and sisters are experiencing this anger and hatred first hand and they have no delete button. 

The nasty comments are not a challenge. Didn’t at all knock me off center. But what is challenging is stepping back and looking at the similarities between this site and the memes that cascade through my FB feed. Oh, it’s easy to identify the differences. The memes I see on a daily basis are absent the intense anger and expletives. They are generally focused on the ideals of love, joy, peace, light, and enthusiastic abundant life. But there are others. Memes that call out personally and individually the actions of a cast of characters from politicians to pharmaceutical companies. Of course I agree with what is said because what is said agrees with my values and world view. A world view I don’t plan on changing any time soon.

And that is the real challenge. For I have to assume that those on this POTUS (yes, premature, but they are counting down the days) site are not likely to change their world view any time soon either. So where does this leave us? A permanent and perpetual stand off?

Many of us are looking for bridges. Without compromising our core values, we are looking for ways to move beyond these differences to find some common ground to stand on as we create our future – hopefully together. Bernie Sanders is doing a brilliant job at this. When we build these bridges I understand not everyone will walk across – likely not many from the POTUS site. But for those who will I hope we can do so with the expletives deleted. On both sides. On all sides.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com