A Circle of Hate

** WARNING/DISCLAIMER/LEGAL SHIT**
 This post IS controversial  – it is MY blog – and MY opinion – you are under NO obligation to read it.  You are welcome to your own dissenting opinion however – ANY verbal keyboard hero bashing will result in mutes/blocks/deletes/ass whoopins.

I tend to keep my mouth shut – especially in social media – when it comes to certain political views – not because I don’t think my opinions aren’t worth standing up for – but because I choose to be tolerant of the fact that my friends have opinions different from mine.  I may not agree with them – but they have a right to their opinion.

I am, conservative – I used to say Republican until Donald Trump became a part of that picture – so I’ll just stick with conservative.  My faith teaches me that some things – some ways of life are right – and others are wrong.  However, my faith also teaches me to lead with love – to not judge – to show mercy, forgiveness, tolerance and love in all that I do and say.  Do I always succeed at that? Hell no, I’m human and from time to time, my backwoods, country, redneck, southern momma mouth opens before I can think first and all hell breaks loose.

I am blessed to have an incredibly special friend who has agreed to let me call him out by name for this post because we share a very unique and fairly incredible relationship.  John Harrison and I are so different in our political views it’s like the difference in a Yankee’s and Southerner’s ideas of sweet tea or grits and gravy.  (No offense to y’all Northern folks – we know ya’ll don’t know better :P)  John posts a LOT to Facebook – he uses it as an open forum to share his opinion and raise awareness for the issues he feels are important to him which is smart – he can reach a large amount of people in a short amount of time.  Admittedly, a good portion of the time, I skim past his posts because 1) in the right mood, it’s difficult for me to keep my mouth shut (or fingers still as the case may be) and not start crap on his wall (which by the way – is just rude – it’s his wall – his opinion he’s entitled to that) and 2) a lot of the time I want to thump him in the head.

That being said – what makes our relationship so very special is that despite the fact we are polar opposites on most political subjects – in the times I simply cannot stop myself from replying to one of his posts – regardless of who else is involved in the replies and being an ass of unworldly proportions – John and I always – and i mean ALWAYS – find our way to keeping our discussion civil (although a bit heated a few times) agree to disagree and remember that at the end of it all – our friendship is more important than a keyboard battle.

To me, that shows his tolerance and acceptance that my opinions are different from his – it doesn’t necessarily make me a bad person (a person with bad moments perhaps) it just makes my opinions different than his.  y’all read that last part again.  Go ahead – read it again.  Neither of us are bad, or at fault for the horrible things that happen in this world because our OPINIONS are different.

Now that I’ve laid all the ground work for you…let’s move on to what I’ve been keeping my mouth shut about lately… y’all buckle up and settle in.

Let’s talk about this whole “Stop the Hate” thing going around.  It comes rearing its ugly head after anything not so great happens in our nation. Our ENTIRE country is so quick to point a finger to who and what they think is to blame that it makes the speed of light look slow.  People blame it on racism – whether it’s skin color or sexual orientation – they blame it on gun control (or lack thereof), they blame it on underprivileged households raising less that stellar human beings – they blame it on welfare – or lack of welfare – they blame it on the economy, the minimum wage – there’s a list of people and things to blame longer than the Man’s Guide to Understanding Women.

Everyone throws up their hands and screams STOP THE HATE!…and yet…as I silently sit back and watch the posts, the tweets, the interviews – it is those same people who continue to perpetuate the same hate they so desperately want to stop.  A giant cirlce of hate that seems to have no end at all.  I read the posts after the recent tragedy in Orlando from members of the LGBT community “We don’t want your thoughts and prayers – you weren’t there for us before – don’t be there for us now”…. after a young child dies after an alligator attack and the official cause of death was listed as drowning “Only really the Gator didn’t eat him is because he was white and unseasoned”  How does that help stop the hate?  How do comments and posts like that help at ALL?

At what point in our society – did we stop taking responsibility for our own actions (note, I said actions, not opinions) and blaming everybody else?  Why do we have to lump every single black person (or white person or hispanic person or gay person or transgender person take your pick on skin color/ethnicity/sexual orientation) into one big group and decide they ALL suck?  If you buy a bag of apples from the store and a couple of them are rotten – you don’t decide EVERY SINGLE APPLE you EVER encounter for the rest of your life is rotten…. so why do we do that with people???

You want to blame someone for the Orlando Massacre?  How about we try pointing the finger at a society who in general – raises its children to think they are entitled because they simply showed up at the game of Life.  How about we go back to “it takes a village to raise a child” and start holding people accountable  – REGARDLESS of race/ethnicity/sexual orientation.  How about instead of trying so hard to keep from hurting someone’s feelings because they don’t get their way because they’re white/black/hispanic/chinese/gay/trans/a pink unicorn – we go back to standing up for what’s right and wrong based on the constitution that governs us and if it hurts someone’s feelings – they can learn to live with a little butthurt or find someplace else to live?

Want to post your outrage/disgust/anger on social media or a public forum?  Good for you!  You throw it out there for the world to see – you don’t get to get pissed when people disagree!  You are allowed to say “Nope, you can’t be a dick in asserting your opinion on my page/tweet/feed” – but you know what else?  YOU SHOULDN’T BE A DICK WHEN GIVING YOUR OPINION EITHER.  Want to bitch about all the haters? Good for you!  DON’T stoop to their level and be the exact same kind of hater right back at them.

We are not white/black/hispanic/straight/gay/trans/pink unicorns – we are HUMAN BEINGS – those that live in this country (legally) are AMERICANS – FFS people – get over yourselves.  I mean REALLY – get OVER yourselves.  We are ALL special – we are ALL important – we ALL have value – we are ALL worthy – quit lumping people into categories because they don’t look/behave/sound/say/sing/sign things JUST THE WAY YOU WANT IT. You want people to show tolerance for your opinion/lifestyle – try showing the same to them.  You want to stop the hate?  Stop spewing it in the same breath you beg for it to stop.

There will always be evil in this world – Eve made sure of that when she bit into the apple (and I hope it gave her indigestion and fire ass too).  Every horrible thing that happens cannot be blamed on white/black/pick your color/ethnicity/sexual orientation.  Horrible things happen because human beings make evil choices.  We’ll never be able to stop that – just the same as I can’t change my choice to be straight or someone else’s choice to be gay or the same way I can’t change being a white female or someone else can’t change being a black man.  What we CAN do – is worth together – to put more love and tolerance in the world than people with bad choices – by leading by example – by showing love and tolerance instead of simply demanding it from everyone else.

Faith. Love. Tolerance. Compassion.  Try them sometime – they’re awesome habits to get into.  If all else fails – try some duct tape – that fixes bout everything but stupid.