One reply, clearly upset by gis photos showing angry bird-flipping Trump-ers with four-letter wording on their signs, ended this way: My appeal from the very beginning of this post still stands. Can we please ask you to remember that we are fellow human beings, fellow Americans, and we are not evil, and not your enemy? Can we please just stop with the raging vitriolic hatred?
Not going to make excuses for my fellow Republicans – they are deep into ideological bloom(*) but after the slow rise of “safe zones” and “trigger warnings” and the like on many college campuses, and the bleed-over into public discourse? Datapoint, FORTY years ago, member of a small church (Lutheran, no less) and sitting on the church council, when one council member said to another something along the lines of, “He’s actually a good guy, once you get past his politics.” (conservative) This was on the Left Coast, but still, forty years ago! The casual, provincial bias of the left-good/right-wretched mentality. And the fellow was himself fairly bright, educated, and sympathtetic in all other regards.
Fast forward four decades, and who on earth is going to fail to realize that there will be a counter reaction? It turns out that conservatives have safe spaces and trigger warnings too. I won’t talk down and suggest that the left deal with it, but there it is.
(*)Ideological bloom: compare ideas to sunlight, then turn your camera to take a picture of the sky, centered on the sun. Your picture is monochrome, all whited-out. When ideas have been inflamed to a sun-like intensity, which by this point IS the case with many on the right, DJT has a lock on followers who buy into every single stupid thing he says.
I can’t wait for the impeachment to play out; but the left’s own wee dose of ideological bloom has been growing apace. Bernie and Elizabeth, anyone?
Oh, and Another Thing 