This Is How War Begins

Thanks Charles Eisenstein for this post below.

What I most relate to is that what is at stake here, is less about a particular candidate, and more about how we humans respond to  runaway polarization. Sure, the candidate elected will influence a good chunk of the future. Maybe dangerously so. Maybe a fifty year setback of one sort or another. But I’m enough of a systems person to take with a grain of salt the hyperbole of promises masqueraded as common sense. Let’s face it, regardless of outcome, the first 100 days are more likely to be filled with either legal, vitriolic posturing or watch-your-back defensiveness and self-preservation, than good-hearted, collaborative, and inspired leadership. The troops have been and are rallying with promises to investigate more of this and more of that rendering a good chunk of our politicians simply taking up space. The system creates this — turns otherwise pretty good folk into rather frightening creatures.

It’s just cleanup time for most of us. The cleanup is less about celebratory debris from a ticker tape parade. It’s more about grabbing a broom and sweeping up some of the waste left behind of a deep spiral of collective immaturity. Our jobs, all of us, will be less about marveling over our respective candidates, should our favorites win, or decrying injustice should our favorites lose. Our jobs are to return to kindness with those in front of us. Have a cup of tea together. Help push a car out of the snow. Offer a random act of kindness, then another. What’s at stake is restoring visibility of human goodness. Keep it simple.

 

“Their stupidity is amusing.”
“Stopping Trump is essential. Anyone who says otherwise is either foolish or blinded by privilege.”
“People should get hated for voting for Johnson because he is a moron.”
“Are Trump supporters too dumb to know they’re dumb?”
“Hillbots have complete inability to do anything except parrot their hero Shillary’s endless lies”
“Anyone who votes for Killary has already been drugged and taken the stupid pill.”
“They will never change.”
“Disgusting, twisted human beings.”

Anyone who reads Facebook or pretty much any political website is sure to see comments like these that dehumanize not only the opposing candidate, but the candidate’s supporters too. This polarization and vitriol, unprecedented in my lifetime, has me more concerned than the prospect of an evil candidate winning. It is as if what is really going on here is a preparation for civil war.