The election is finally over. Thank the Maker!
But that hasn’t kept one side from gloating and the other side from crying big ol’ crocodile tears. And, truthfully, no matter how this election would’ve ended, I don’t believe the noise from it will be over for months. But I digress. Today I wanted to make an observation and call it done.
Apparently, there is no longer any room for someone in the middle. There is no room for compromise. Working with the other side to try to move forward is no longer accepted.
It seems that now everything that does not completely agree with you is extreme. If someone’s thinking is anything to the right of yours, then they are a filthy fascist. If their thinking is anywhere to the left of yours, then they are a brain-damaged liberal. There can be no common ground unless they think exactly the same way that you do.
Growing up, you could disagree and still be friends. These days, it seems you must draw a line in the sand about everything, and, if someone isn’t standing on your side of that line, then they must be cut off.
And we wonder why society is the complete dumpster fire that it is.
I blame a lot of this on the rise of social media, which, from today forward, I am calling anti-social media. I know it’s not the only thing to blame, but it certainly brings out the worst in people.
As an example, I was scrolling the big R this morning, and, for some reason, clicked on a political thread. There was a LOT of hate in that thread. It was mostly one side spewing venom at a single poster who may or may not have been from the other side. They never said anything that gave away their ideology. They merely dared to ask if political comments could be curbed now that the election was over. One quote stood out that sort of encapsulated all of the hate being slung. Paraphrasing, it said, “no stopping, no rest, and no peace until <the other side> no longer have a voice in this country.” And admit it. You can hear that comment coming from either side.
No compromise, right?
The older I get the more I am convinced that the world isn’t as black and white as preachers and politicians want us to think. Don’t get me wrong, right is right and wrong is wrong, but there is a LOT more grey than I would’ve admitted in my younger, more idealistic days. And, in those grey areas, when you’re dealing with over 330 million people, compromise is an absolute necessity if you want to avoid the morass that our political landscape has become.