The System Continues to Work, Like It or Not.

Yesterday in these here United States of America a lot of people voted in a new President.

Mostly due to a lack of experience combined with his crass and vulgar nature, he was not my first choice... or my tenth for that matter.  Of course, neither was his primary opponent but I felt much better about her especially with her level of experience and her grace.  There was a lot of very negative reporting about both of them as best as I could tell, but their public personas became the best guide for me.

I did not vote for our new President, but I have quite a few intelligent friends whom I respect greatly who did.  I have to have faith in their judgment.  I have to believe in what they saw in him that they did not see in her.  I have to accept this outcome as I am no revolutionary and I believe in our system.  I pray that our allies stay allies and that he can bring about positive changes that do not cause damage on a grand national and international scale over the next four years.

In the wide wide world of social networking the majority of the folks I respect have shown compassion in his victory and they have expressed a hope to move on together.

Unfortunately, in that same world of social networking (and the Internet in general) I have seen some terrible posts and awful levels of gloating from those with the mindset that makes me fear our new leader.  In a somewhat paraphrased "Lieutenant Kijé-esque" composite I can only tell by these awful comments that by all accounts it should now be perfectly legal to run up to any Handicapped Mexican Muslim Woman and firmly grab her by the "Melania" in an effort to throw her back over our newly constructed wall, because, Jesus.  I have seen some seriously deplorable comments out there and all I can say is "That's not how this works.... That's not how any of this works."

I seriously hope faith in our fellow man will outweigh the hate of our fellow man.

No no, it's me, not you. I mean, yeah, you did something, and I'm upset, but it's really just me... until it's you.

I keep trying to write but I fear that since last summer I've simply moved on to a bitchy and at times negative place what with all the anger and violence and politics in the news.  Today I started typing my status update on my personal Facebook page and realized that I was really just venting too much.  So, I've opted to just put it out here:

This is a problem as old as time but, with all the news and social networking posts I see quite often as of late, it's been on my mind a lot.

Why is it that when someone wrongs us, or we're just in a bad mood, it is easier to pick out something different about the target of our frustration (whether or not they are truly a part of our internal dilemma) rather than just address our frustration or accept their action? Is it because their difference is our obvious problem?

"Oh you spoke your mind and I disagree? It's because you're SOME OTHER RACE/ RELIGION/ NATIONALITY than me you jerk!"

"Oh you have a better job/ life than I do? Oh it's obviously because you're PRETTY/ A DEVIANT/ SOME OTHER RACE/ RELIGION/ NATIONALITY than me you jerk!"

"Oh you think your life is important, well, I don't feel adequate in my own life so you must think you're better than me because of ANY REASON I CAN THINK OF you jerk!!!"

And there are simply so many more complaints that I see in a similar vein...

Well, it's childish and it's disappointing and it's making me worry about the world we are providing for our kids. I think we all need to work on this to be more accepting of each other and stop assuming that someones actions or opinions are a direct assault on us! It just seems to be escalating to an environment of intolerance and hate causing some of the more extreme among us to commit a truly direct assault on us.

We've got enough to worry about in our lives we don't need to make it worse by harming others with our judgments.

Anyway, I just couldn't take it anymore and felt I needed to vent when that middle aged balding woman eating an egg mcmuffin, that she obviously didn't need, while driving her beat up old rusty minivan cut me off in traffic this morning because she obviously had to be in front of me more than I needed to be safe, the jerk!!!

I might be grumpy today and I did say WE ALL need to work on this.