Hate. Love. Despair. Choices.

The BBQ Pit
1

A dear friend of mine wrote this, and I asked if I could share it. I’m sharing it.

“Choose love, Choose love, Choose love. Everything else is an illusion. Love is all that is real”

I awoke this morning after a night filled with nightmares, a migraine headache and very little actual sleep, to find that we probably lost. All of us have lost --our humanity, dignity, right to choose our own paths and own ways, our identity as free people and freedom fighters. We’ve lost our way as a nation, we’ve lost our hope (for now, at least.) The majority of this nation has chosen to hate – chosen it over love. What began as a Christian nation, based on the teaching of loving our neighbors, those less fortunate and those we think the least of, has become the pinnacle of narcissism, fascism and idiocy in the war monger quest to become not like god, but to become god. To judge one another, persecute one another, fear one another, shoot one another, rape one another, steal freedom from one another and hate one another is the rule of the day. Kill those we fear, judge those we disagree with, rape those we cannot control by other means, steal from all and line our greedy, fattened pockets with the cake of the day, never minding those who hunger and who chose to love over their own interests. We are a nation who Ignores the poor, hates the unique, unabashedly and without pause seeks out power and lust, and grows stronger in the self-righteous denial of the whores we have become. It’s happened this morning and our nation has foiled. It is an insane atrocity of proportions I cannot fully fathom this morning. I hope I can find my way out of this disempowered, disenfranchised malaise. I hope I can rise to the call of love. I pray I can. This morning, I want to join them in hate. I hate them for this.

My 2 year old son awoke this morning with an innocent smile on his face. “I want to paint, mommy,” he exclaimed with his usual enthusiasm for life. We painted together for sometime and then we ate raisin bran. I will play with him this morning and then join the world of mourners and gloaters at my office later today. Will I be able to persuade them from hating? The day will go on and so will I, though I’d rather drop off the earth today and bury my head in the shame I feel I must carry now, though I didn’t and will never condone the man who represents my nation. I grieve for my son. What will be left for him? What burden will he bare because of this current selfish and reckless stance with the rest of the world? Can one woman’s love overcome 51% of popular opinion that hate is the road to freedom and heaven? I doubt myself this morning. But what choice is there? I am a mother. What other choice is there, but to persist in love?

“Choose love, Choose love, Choose love. Everything else is an illusion. Love is all that is real” --Jude

My dear friend greeted me this morning with this statement. I awoke feeling isolated and alone and hopeless and so very sad. My friend reached out across the miles to remind me I am not any of these things. For the moment, I will find some comfort knowing there are others like us. We may be the minority now, but we are not wrong and we are not alone. For now, that’s got to be enough. I choose love (even if I have to chant it and remind myself constantly thoughout the day) I urge you to do the same.

In love, Staci
(Staci Emerson, Ph.D., Hollywood, California)
In sharing this, I’m not claiming to have reached the place she urges. My fear, my despair, my shame, my grief, and my rage are so deep and so broad right now it’s hard to see out. But we are not alone, and we cannot give up, and it starts here.

2

Stoid, my old friend, Doc Staci has engaged in just a wee bit of hyperbole. Things aren’t that bad. In the game of Us vs Them THEY aren’t that bad. We will continue to be a single people divided by some key issues, but the division is far from complete. Sit down with a Republican sometime and talk about something other than politics. You will find that there are many places where your weltanschauung and theirs will intercept. Sure, you’ll find bizarre beliefs that will make you think again that healing is impossible, like how Kirk made a better captain than Picard because he’d rather fight than talk, but you will also find congruities, like how Enterprise sucked the first couple years but it seems to be improving.

Take some time off from politics then get mentally prepared for the next game. You will burn out like Diogenes if you invest so much of yourself in a single battle but you will find that elections keep coming every couple years, whether you are up for them or not.

3

Stoid, aren’t you glad that you aren’t like those haters who have an us-vs-them world view? Aren’t you glad that you are sophisticated enough to know that the world isn’t as simple as good vs evil? Aren’t you glad that you aren’t intolerant of dissenting opinions, that you can listen to those who disagre with you, and argue in good faith with anyone. Thanks for your words of hope and encouragment. This post is exactly the kind of mature comment we’ve all come to expect from you.

4

When I woke up this morning, I thought I’d lost my humanity, too. I kept walking around the bedroom crying, “Where’s my humanity?” and “Have you seen my humanity?” When I went downstairs to get a cup of OJ, I saw it peeking out from under the sofa cushion.

Whew!

5

Damn, you’re lucky. My humanity was playing out in the street and got hit by a minivan. :frowning: Funny, I don’t miss it much…

6

Wow. Sometimes seeing inside the other half of society really scares me.

7

Its always the last place you look for it.

Seriously, I’m not that broken up.

8

So America was founded as a Christian nation?

I didn’t know that - thanks!

Regards,
Shodan

9

drop, I wish I could believe you are right. I pray I can come to that belief, because if I don’t I have no idea how I can go forward. It is beyond my powers of expression to convey how devastated I am by this, and the terrible consequences that seem unavoidable to me.

I want nothing more in life right now that to be wrong, I truly do. But its deja vu…4 years ago I felt nearly as bad as i do right now, and i was pooh-poohed as a hysteric. Somehow I think the 100,000+ people who are dead now wouldn’t argue that I was so very wrong. And I saw it coming before I had proof.

The cascading consequences of what happened yesterday lead somewhere I never would have dreamed my country could go.

I grew up a hard-left- women’s lib-anti-war-peacenik-hippie, I marched with King at the age of 6!..who, unlike my too-hip-for-the-room cynical friends and contemporaries, swelled with pride and love when I heard “God Bless America”. I am a patriot down to my toes. I believed in America as that bright shining beacon of truth and justice, or the closest the world has yet gotten, in spite of the many ways we have failed. I believed that it was only going to get better.

I believed.

My grief is unspeakable.

10

Did I miss the memo on an asteroid barrelling our way? Aren’t we suppossed to be warned beforehand about any upcoming mass extinction events?

11

OJ was hiding under the sofa cushion? Did he have a knife? Wow, a scare like that is sure to put this election crap in perspective. :eek:

12

I doubt the utter destruction that is expected by some.
Really, people.

13

What is it about losing an election that also makes them lose their minds?

14

The notion of her dog barking at the TV for another four years. In that sense, understandable I guess.

15

While I appreciate the sentiment you’re trying to convey, isn’t this just another form of the mentality you’re complaining about? “God, people who separate the world into two groups are stupid. I’m glad I’m not one of them.”

16

I have gone from mild amusement to genuine concern for not only posters on some lefty blogs out there but a few posters here. I mean, Jesus Christ, it’s not like GWB is going to grab a chainsaw and start running up and down the street killing people like Carl Johnson in San Andreas.

There are people out there who have been crying all day. I guess if you worked your ass off at a campaign headquarters 12 hours a day for the past few weeks and put a great deal of effort into your guy, maybe a 2 or 3 minute tear up to think how “great” it would be if he had won and maybe reflect on your work and co-promoter’s efforts. But holy shit, this fetal position wailing and gnashing of teeth is a little out of control, don’t you think?

17

That explains everything about you, Brutus.

18

It is getting better. When you were marching with Dr King only the most cockeyed optimist and flakiest hippie would believe that a Black person could be elected president yet twenty years later Jesse Jackson made a solid run and was the Democrat in the primaries US News and World Report said the nicest things about. And this year there were two Black men running for senate in Illinois to fill a seat vacated by a Black woman six years ago and one of them was such a solid candidate that no Republican in Illinois was willing to go up against him! Well, none that wanted to pay for their own campaigns and hadn’t tried to talk their ex-wives into screwing in a Parisian sex club. (Don’t talk Star Trek with former-candidate Jack Ryan. I’m afraid he may have issues.)

The nice part of me wants to give you a hug and tell you that everything will continue to get better and that you just have to give it time, but another part is aching to point out that vanilla is being the voice of reason by comparison with many of the Democrats on this board today and how embarassing is that? (Sorry, vanilla, dear, but you do know how you can be. :wink: )

19

Yowser. I’m not happy with the result; I’d go as far as to say I’m pretty hacked off, although the SSM ballot initiatives piss me off more. Nonetheless, don’t you think you’re going a wee bit over the top? It’s a president you don’t like. It’ll be four years. Worse things happen at sea. In fact, worse things happen at sea on a happy cruise liner filled with bunnies and kittens, most of them involving poo. Deep breath, go get drunk, and pretend it didn’t happen for a couple of weeks. It works for ex-girlfriends, must work for presidents.

Also, and somewhat tangentially, I would like to note that the “100,000+” figure is a load of cock, based on interviews conducted by a very small number of people (16, I believe), and involving the massive number of 61 verified deaths. The rest is extrapolation, and even the authors give the figure error bounds of between 8,000 and 198,000. It’s bollocks. The more common estimate of about 16,000 is still horrible, so no hyperbole is necessary.

20

Back when I was a kid, there was a man who said, “Some people see things as they are, and ask why. I dream things as they might be, and say why not?”

There was another man who sang, “Imagine all the people, living lives in peace.”

They shot both of them.