I’ve been thinking about the subject of this essay for a while now. As you who follow me know, I post my essays on Facebook and LinkedIn on both my Author Adair Sanders sites as well as my personal Facebook page. I am very frank about my opinions – I don’t apologize for them, nor do I expect everyone to agree with them. I welcome discussion, conversation, and debate. Life would be incredibly boring if we all thought the same things about the world. Some of my essays are fun, some are serious, and I generally try not to make any of them political. Opinion-based, yes, but aggressively political, no.
Sadly, over the past 12-18 months I have noticed an increasingly ugly rupture in civility both online and in person. And, it appears, the root of this incivility is based solely on political differences and the hatred of one person. The days when people who voted differently from one another but could still enjoy a friendship with each other seems to have vanished.
I follow Michael Smith, a thoughtful and excellent conservative writer on Facebook and Substack. I don’t always agree with the opinions he expresses, but I appreciate his professionalism and his unsparing dissection of events as he perceives them. As a result of merely expressing his opinion, he and his family became the target of a hate-filled person merely because that person’s politics differed from his.
And thus, the subject of today’s essay came once again to the surface of my consciousness, and I decided to write about it.
For several years I was one of a small group of women in recovery who met once a month to share our lives with each other. We talked about pain. We talked about joy. We talked about our dreams, our regrets – about life on life’s terms, helping each other, listening to each other, being soul-opening friends to each other. Of the group, I knew I was the only person who would be deemed “a conservative”. I never thought my conservative leanings were an issue. We weren’t there to talk politics.
How wrong was I.
The day after Trump won his second term, I had already planned to have coffee with one of the women in the group. When we sat down at our local coffee shop the woman told me how unhappy she was with the results of the election. I told her that I felt just the opposite. From the look that came across her face I could tell that she was stunned and shocked by my statement. Our coffee visit concluded shortly thereafter.
I had barely returned home when I received a text from this woman, telling me it would be better if I did not come to the next meeting because everyone else would be processing and grieving the results of the election and my presence would make everyone uncomfortable. In other words, I was no longer welcome because my politics were different. I never went back.
When I see the hatred that has overtaken a large segment of our country I am both saddened and worried. We are so polarized. In some instances, we have allowed ideology to replace common sense.
Have we so totally lost our way? I hope not, but I fear we have. And if that is so, then we are lost.