Political Civility

~ I have intentionally avoided politics in my thoughtful blog, but with respect to the real reasons we celebrate Independence Day tomorrow, I offer this essay. I hope that, no matter what your political views, you will have the courage to read it all the way through. ~

 I was dealing with the potentially-fatal illness of my favorite pet, barely keeping my head above churning emotional waters as I prepared for the possibility of releasing her to her final journey, when a series of hate-filled e-mails sent me into an emotional tailspin. The e-mails had nothing whatever to do with pets or illness or any other life-altering, sad situations. They were political.

And while facing the loss of my favorite cat hadn’t forced tears from my eyes, the e-mails made me weep.

The first contained a graphic that proclaimed:

“We hated Obama like you hate Trump. Except we hated Obama because he hated America. You hate Trump because YOU hate America”.

Dismayed and affronted, I nevertheless replied to the e-mail mildly, saying just that I found this untrue, and very offensive, and asking not be sent anything like it again.

Yet less than 24 hours later, I received another e-mail, this time referencing those whose political views were similar to mine, alluding to us by name-calling and bullying. We were, it seems, “Libtards”. We were “Wingnuts”.

I’d long since dealt with and dismissed being derided as a “Snowflake”. Despite knowing it was not meant as a compliment, I accepted the appellation proudly. Snowflakes are some of the most incredible creations of Nature: intricately formed, astoundingly beautiful and infinitely individual; wrought into beauty from water, without which life itself cannot exist. Joined together, snowflakes are capable of creating massive, unstoppable forces for change, such as blizzards and avalanches.

But, hitting me at an already-low point in my life, the abusive invective of these latest e-mails was not something I could shrug off or transliterate into a positive. Instead, they wounded me at the very wellspring of my heart.

I have been heard to make sour jokes about politicians whom I do not like, but I do not, under any circumstances, speak  ridicule, insults or derision to another person regarding their political choices. I firmly insist on behaving respectfully about their opinions, even when I just as firmly disagree with them. Politically, I consider myself to be an Independent middle-of-the-roader, slightly left-leaning, but always open to civil discourse and the possibility of changing my mind.

I voted for President Barack Obama, and, while I certainly did not approve of everything he did, I thought him to be both dignified and definitely far and away from being the worst President we had ever seen to that time (after all, I’d  lived through Nixon).

And I did not vote for President Trump. Like our late, greatly lamented former First Lady, Barbara Bush, I’d been reading about Donald Trump–the unscrupulous, unethical businessman; the serial adulterer; the scoundrel who did not sacrifice home, career and family to go to Canada for his convictions, but relied on a medical falsehood to evade the Vietnam draft–reading this and more since the mid-1980s. I’d made up my mind about the man at that time, and nothing I heard him say, nothing I saw him do, during his campaign, gave me cause to alter my opinion. Had I been persuaded in that direction, reading the 2016 article, “I Sold Trump $100,000 Worth of Pianos. Then He Stiffed Me”¹ would have sealed my opinion of the man forever.

But nothing, NOTHING, in my judgement about now-President Trump, nor former President Obama, signals that I do not love my country! In fact, my opinions represent exactly what is best about the United States of America: the right to personal convictions. Liberty. Freedom of expression. The right to choose one’s leaders, and to criticize those leaders without fear of retribution or reprisal. The right to see matters from differing perspectives. The right—the requirement—to stand up for one’s beliefs. The requirement to be respectful of those who believe differently.

But now derision and ridicule, vicious mockery, name-calling, bullying, harassment and persecution of others for their beliefs have become the standard, the norm; have taken the place of civil discourse and reasonable debate.  I find that shocking and heartbreaking. That is not what I have always understood America, or Americans—the concept, nor the reality—to be.

And so, receiving such harassment by e-mail, and already in a saddened state of mind, I wept.

I will never claim that those who stand with President Trump are in some way un-American.  I will not stand before them calling them wingtards or nutjobs or even deplorables. They are simply individuals who hold a different viewpoint, one with which I resolutely, unshakably disagree; one which I do not even understand. But that I do not agree with their choice of leader makes me in no way un-American or vile or deplorable, either. On the contrary, it makes me a true American: one who is unafraid to speak up for her convictions; who accesses her right to freedom of expression, to liberty.

I, an American woman, do not deserve to be made to weep, to be derided and insulted, for my political opinions, least of all through the faceless, cowardly medium of an internet communication.

My right to view and work for and love this wonderful country of ours in the way that I see best is my personal pursuit of happiness. And I would have it unshadowed by those who demean America by deriding the liberties bestowed by the Constitution upon its citizens.

¹https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/28/i-sold-trump-100000-worth-of-pianos-then-he-stiffed-me/?utm_term=.6ab2e9c42d4d