Referring to "ignorance" as a cause isn't the same as name-calling a person an "ignoramus." Sea did the former, and I agree. I also thought she expressed a lot of empathy for voters, how'd you miss it?
I think savoring anger isn't a good thing.
I am ignorant about a whole lot of things. And lucky, because I was born into the opportunity for an high-quality education. That should not be but IS an elite privilege--a class accident. I can never take it for granted. It was not earned...every child deserves great teachers in safe, well-funded schools. Because like health care, equal education should be a human right, not a privilege (yet evolved according to where power lived, thus becoming privilege). That education, in an environment where I could study and learn (in a well-nourished body that had plenty of wholesome food and easy access to health care) can lead to a peaceful home full of books, music and hopefully kindness. It's hard to create strong families and cultural awareness if one's never been exposed to them. But there are different kinds of knowledge. The knowledge I lack--many pragmatic strengths, huge areas of thought I wasn't drawn to--I'll never gain completely. I had the enormous gift of liberal arts. Just learning to think.
I don't know if I'm a lazy thinker. Probably I am. Or maybe a simple thinker is a fairer term. If fact + compassion guide a policy, I'm likely to favor it. If fact - compassion seem at play, I likely won't. I'm also drawn to common sense and when I connect the dots about what causes or has laid the groundwork for suffering, my awareness rises. Anyway, one thing I learned is that what we all have in common is much larger than what divides us. I'd rather focus on what we have in common.
Where I live, I experience people newly since the election. I wear a pretty BLM pin on my coat that I got at church; it's a simple thing. I've had small encounters in town that I would not have had otherwise, that have touched me. One young man who works in parking at the Medical Center asked me about it and when I promptly gave it to him he reacted with such emotion. A lady in the grocery beside me suddenly opened up and shared with me her sweet-potato recipe. A checker's face lit up when she saw it. And so on. Every day. Simple as this is, their reactions underscore for me how painful it has been for so many people to be guarded, careful, wary every day...because the assumption was their lives did not matter. Not as much. (Even as a child I saw evidence every day that their fear was reality based.)
I just realize, wearing my pin, that it is a tiny way for me to say, I see you. I have seen your unequal opportunities and struggles and suffering and mistreatment here, in my lovely town, my whole life. I understand your pain not firsthand, but because I feel it. And in this time, I'm going to say so.
I am Hops, hear me squeak roar.
Rambling on, I've never understood the absurdity of taking offense at the statement that Black Lives Matter (as though it states, Only Black Lives Matter, which it does not)...and the lack of empathy for WHY black parents live in terror for their children, a very specific terror most white parents can skip over...that absurd reaction saddens me. BLM is a positive message, and was a flash of brilliance, imo. Likewise, reading books about white privilege is a revelation I'm grateful for. It's so logical and even denial makes sense, too, when you understand how fearful everyone is of the Other.
Anyway, I realize in writing this ramble that I am just telling stories about people, and it all intersects. What you experience as "reasoned debate" to me just feels hostile and makes me sad. That's an emotional construct--I'm a poet partly because of it...and I can't help it, I'm wired that way. I've always been sensitive this way, no matter which political side I have been on. I've never, ever enjoyed passionate arguments that tear others down. Whether I think an argument is "correct" or not. I like light but recoil from fire. (There was hellfire-and-brimstone in my childhood, too.)
I know if we ever met in person I'd hug you and be happy to see you, Mud. Maybe we could volunteer together for some effort that makes sense to both of us.
I hope it happens. Countries do split, and wars happen, dictators rise and civilizations collapse. That's history. If love's going to win it needs to win everywhere.
Hops
