LEFT, RIGHT, WHY SO UPTIGHT?

Where do you go when you see your nation falling apart?

Picture two buildings, side by side, same height; one falls to the left, one falls to the right.  This is my nation.

In the next few days, I’ll be trying to do my part to bring the two sides together.  I’ll do that by attempting to provide perspective for the opposing sides.  I am a firm believer that if you do not understand your opponent, you have no chance of reconciling with them.  What saddens me most about my nation isn’t our economic condition.  Rather, it’s the Left and the Right, constantly at each others throat.

Being in the middle, I have an interesting perspective to offer, and from experience, I can tell you that there are great people, many of them, on both sides.  If you were to engage in a Righty forum as a Lefty, you wouldn’t come away with the same opinion.  Same goes for a Righty engaging in a Lefty forum.  You’d be attacked, ridiculed, and appalled at the casual way each side dehumanizes the other.  What we have here is a whole bunch of people all shouting out their talking points, and no is listening.

Scratch that last.  Someone is listening, but it’s not who you think, it’s not even who you would want to listen.

I’m listening.  So are millions of other Independents.  We are becoming convinced day after day that our call to eliminate political parties in America is the only true hope this nation has.  From experience, we can tell each side that they prove our belief with their attacks on their opponents, and their dehumanization of each other.

Listen, if you want to prove you are compasssionate people, the very last thing that will convince us of this is you calling your opponent a wingnut, or a nazi.  You probably shouldn’t need to hear that, yet somehow you do.  It’s unexplainable to me how the compassionate Right or the compassionate Left would have need of an independent to tell them how cruel they each sound.

If you want to convince people of your compassion, start by being compassionate.  If you want to bring change to this nation, stop playing the same, tired, old, stupid games that your opponent plays.

Some won’t take this post very seriously.  Even more sadly, some will think this post is entirely about the other side.  That’s because when your dogma makes you blind, you have no use for a mirror.

Let me spell it out for you.  If you call yourself a republican or a republican supporter, this is about you.  If you call yourself a democrat, or a democrat supporter, this is about you.  It’s about your unwillingness to see your opponent in anything except the worst possible light.  It’s about you crying out “injustice!”, and then turning around and dehumanizing your opponent.  We all do it.  I have done it, and am ashamed of the times I have.  But when sides are taken, and we stand across a great divide pointing our fingers at each other, someone has to call a timeout.  This is a timeout.

We have a new President being innaugurated in two weeks.  His name is Barack Obama.  The righties say he’s too liberal, and most hate him without even being ashamed of hating a man they have never had a cup of coffee with.  The lefties are proud, but I don’t know how proud I’d be of a man who hasn’t used the word “democrat” to describe himself for nearly a year.  Let me help you understand him.  He is no longer a democrat.  He may be so in name, but be assured that he is not a democrat at heart.  He’s an American, and it is my belief that we finally have a President who will put the nation, and the good of all people, ahead of his party.

If that somehow pisses you off, question your own patriotism.  Anyone who puts his party and his beliefs ahead of his own nation is no patriot.  Not unless someone changed the meaning of the word in the last two hundred and thirty two years.