It pains me deeply to see the very core and fabric of who people are twisted and used as weapons against them. I stand back and watch in amazement as people that I know do not intentionally wish to cause anyone true harm become like a once beloved pet bitten by a rabid skunk tragically becoming something dangerous and deadly, foaming at the mouth with the throes of poison that has invaded mind and spirit.
It is so difficult for me to accept that these “good people” are so deafened by the rhetoric of divisiveness that they cannot recognize that it is they who will lose the most. What they fear most, what they want to fight against with flailing arms and wild punches, is not that non-existent enemy that a bevy of shrewd, soulless front men are trying to convince them want to rob them of the rights we all hold most dear. Surely, I keep thinking, they cannot and will not fall for those snake oil tricks again. Yet, I see far too many being drawn in and pulled under, and I know that the only thing they’ll be offered when they are desperately trying to make their way back to shore will be a double-edged sword.
How is it even remotely possible that one who speaks of faith, who has deep abiding faith in a loving God, could ever be deluded by merchants of hate regardless of what those opportunistic merchants label it? Whatever happened to discernment, to the discerning spirit that we all have if we will pause and listen? It hasn’t changed – it doesn’t lie – it will not compromise. It is still there prodding and tugging at heart strings that want to ignore it and the truth is it will not rest. That is the piper that must ultimately be paid.
Though you may exercise a will that is yours to chose because it feels good to strike out, feels good to malign, feels good to hear someone making snappy, rhetorical punch lines – the kind of punch lines you wish you had thought of on the playground as a kid, or perhaps even now in the lunchroom or even the boardroom at work – dark, ugly, cutting words, words that minimize and castrate, belittle and disparage – words that your inner most being knows are not valid or true or justified…words that in the long run will cost you what you can never pay and not just you – but your children and your children’s children, too.
We don’t always know what’s right, but somehow we do always know what’s wrong. Take a minute to examine the choices you are making and your reasons for making them in this election. If your reasons are wrong and you know it – to thine ownself be true and do what’s right. There is still time.
