TERRY MOSHER
I believe the foundation of society is a four letter word – L-O-V-E. Look at it this way, if love was the dominating factor in our lives, would there be reason to squabble, to fight, to destroy, to kill?
No.
Unfortunately, to have love as the main foundation in everything we do appears to be impossible in an imperfect world where emotions run rampant and from one end of the scale to the other.
Until the Creator returns to this Earth and creates as promised Heaven on Earth (2 Peter 3:13) we have to live with what we have and try to muck through it as best as possible without harming others or ourselves.
What alarms me is the divisiveness I see around me right now. I am shocked at the hate that surrounds this political season. The hate I have witnessed nearly drips with blood coming out of the mouths and eyes of the haters.
I accidently arrived some weeks ago on a Facebook page of someone I don’t know – and don’t want to know – and the hair that I still have on my head stood at attention as if struck by a lightning bolt as I read the comments. The hatred that spewed forth from the words on the page was unprecedented. I had never experienced such hated.
The hatred was directed at Hillary Clinton. Nobody deserves such hate directed toward them. Nobody. It’s frightening to be witnessed to such hate. Hate is the opposite of love. Its darkness compared to the light of love. Without love, society crumples into dust.
Then Sunday I was witnessed again to such hate. I can’t divulge where this occurred to protect the hater, but this person spewed such hate and once again it was directed at Clinton. As this person spoke, it looked like Satan was coming out of the person’s eyes. I had to turn away, and then I had to leave because it was so upsetting to me and I feared what I would have done or said if I stayed longer.
I think I can sense people’s feelings, but this one caught me my surprise because the conversation started out peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, it turned and the hate starting coming.
This brings back for me a memory from long ago. It was in the 1960s and I was back in my hometown in New York State for a brief summer vacation and walked into my old beer garden haunt and took a seat at the bar. I ordered a beer and I had just gotten it and had yet to take a sip when a man came in the side door and took a seat two bar stools down from me.
I never saw this man’s face, but all of a sudden this feeling of evil swept over me. It was overwhelming. I had never experienced this before or since. It was coming from this man and I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t stay. I left my beer, cold and untouched, got up and went out the side door. As soon as I got outside the evil feeling left me.
That was the last time I went into that place. It is gone now and is an empty lot. But the memory of that evil will never leave me, and I never thought I would experience anything like it again, but I was wrong.
The evil that came from that person on Sunday and the evil that I experienced on that Facebook page are close to the evil I felt that day back in the 1960s. I don’t mean to imply that these people are evil, but the hatred that comes from them is darkness and that is not good for me or for society.
I’m not a Clinton fan. I was a Bernie Sanders delegate to the state legislative caucus. I am not a pure Democrat either. I prefer to be neutral when it comes to the two parties. My aim is to support and vote for the person who best shows me that they are invested in peace and justice and liberty for all. I know that is a generalized comment, but there are things that are just and there are things that are not just that help us all as a society to move closer to the perfection that the Creator implies in 2 Peter 3:13.
What has happened in his presidential campaign is one candidate is feeding into the anger that resides in our society and is pouring gasoline on it with hateful comments that is divisive and destructive. This candidate is inciting the mob and doing it on purpose, pushing some of us into being haters with a systemic and calculated attack on all the perceived enemies – blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, even women – that has caused, in this candidates words, a weaken America.
It’s the standard way of the bully on the playground, who takes charge by casting others as enemies and inciting those eager to have revenge. They get behind the bully and that creates a mob that is all powerful.
This bully candidate coupled with the Christian conservative extreme far right fringe have created this narrative that Clinton is at least a crook and at most a criminal. It t has fueled hatred of the like that I have never seen, except from the unidentified man who walked in that beer garden that day long ago.
This hatred scares me. Because it’s probably not going to go away no matter what happens in the November election. Haters are not going to turn off their hate even if their candidate wins. And if their candidate loses, that candidate is likely to challenge the results by urging his hater supporters to come to the rescue. So we could be in for some tough times.
All of this comes from the real fact that Clinton is her own worst enemy in a lot of ways. There is the gilded lifestyle she and husband Bill are perceived to lead. Bill, of course, is a cat of a different color all of his own.
The Clintons are true capitalists that have come out of Arkansas to rise to national political power. Along the way they have held hands with big money and once Bill left the White House the Clinton’s started the Clinton Global Initiative as a way to bring world leaders together to solve global problems. You can Goggle all of this, but the CGI is a non-profit foundation that attracts large investors all over the world as it combats various problems.
The rub is that the Clintons have not been careful about separating their interests in government from the business of the foundation. There is a perception that they – especially Hillary when she was Secretary of State – were soliciting money from world leaders to the foundation as a means of currying political favor, which is clearly a conflict of interest.
The perception of possible wrong doing – if a conflict of interest can be perceived as wrong doing – clouds the good that the foundation does. This has given the haters a clear path to hate Clinton even more because she is seen as a person who can’t be trusted to work solely for the interest of the United States when it comes to personal gain, even if that gain is building the foundation into a global problem solver.
Of course, there is still the matter of her giving speeches to Wall Street for up to $250,000 per speech. That is easy for the haters to hate when they are struggling and living from paycheck to paycheck
Also, her speeches can be stilted and over scripted, leading some – especially the haters – to see her as a phony who will say anything to get elected, but once in office may do just the opposite or nothing at all.
The problem I have is, first, hating, as I have mentioned, leaves no room for love. Second, as much as Clinton gives out the impression that she is entitled to whatever she wants, she really is a thousand times better than the alternative in his election.
Donald Trump, as Bernie Sanders might say, is hugely horrible, and is a psychological liar – a psycho – who is the most entitled elitist that has ever run for the highest office in his land. He’s all about making money, money and more money. He already has tripled the rent to his campaign that supposedly is using some of his office space in the Trump Tower, and charges the campaign for the use of his private jet.
Trump has cheated his whole life. He is not smart. He is, in fact, very dumb with no attention span. He also is a man who has built a fake empire on the backs of the very illegals he says he would deport and done it with the help of the mafia, foreign money (probably mostly Russian) and by refusing to pay all the money owed to the small contractors he has used (boy, wouldn’t you like to see his tax returns about now?).
He also has been accused of rape, one by a person that at the time was 13. He has bought off several others that have likewise accused him, and he has silenced his first and second wives with confidential agreements in the divorce settlements.
Trump does not go by rules and laws – he has been involved with at least 3,500 lawsuits _ and I would expect him to continue to flaunt the laws of our land.
His enemies – perceived or otherwise – should expect to be met if he is elected with the full force of the laws available to him that he wants to use, including the security force (National Guard) that is available to the president…
The other laws he will ignore. The United States Constitution, the justice system and the legislative branch probably will be crushed and we will have our first dictator.
But the haters continue to hate on Clinton. They are not reasonable people. They are blinded by the easy speak of a man who is a showman, a carnival barker, inciting the masses to come in and see the freak show.
I don’t think the haters will ever change their mind because they can’t see the forest from the trees. A reasonable person, I contend, would look at both candidates, do their research and then when fully informed, would come to the same conclusion that I have.
Faced with the threat of a Trump president will not cause me to retreat. As FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And I don’t fear this psycho. I fear for our country. He will destroy it. But I will not cringe. I will continue to speak out about the dangers he presents.
Love is the real answer. The haters will continue hating, but my hope and prayer is that love will win out.
Alright, I’m outta here. There is a Mariners’ game coming up and I need to relax a bit before I have a stroke while thinking about the danger we face this election cycle. Try to relax also.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.