Suckers!

 

Last year I wrote a post about Hate. Since then, I have seen the situation get worse. Our two political parties, I will call them A and B for my purposes, have found the secret weapon to keep us divided. And people are piling on! The secret weapon is hate. 

I'm reminded of Dr. Seus' Butter Battle Book, a Cold War parable. In it, you see the signs of hate manifesting. While our differences are less trivial than how we butter our bread, the techniques are the same. We pick a side. It doesn't matter which one. We call the other side our enemy. We must defeat them!

The A party wants to ban books. The B party wants children to read whatever they want. These narratives are designed to divide. The likely reality is that no sane parent wants their child to read whatever they want. How do we best go about ensuring that our children read books that are age appropriate? Banning them from schools and libraries is one way.

What people believe and what our political leaders tell us they believe are not the same. You will not know this unless you talk with people with different beliefs. Our leaders don't want you to do that. The starker they can make our differences, the more hate they will foment. 

We generally don't talk with people we hate. We do talk with people who have differing viewpoints. If political leaders keep us from talking with one another, they control the narrative. That's just what they want! Meanwhile, life is not getting better for most of us. They're not doing anything about it, and as long as we don't talk with each other, we're not helping either.

We lose -- they win! Suckers!