words with meaning

“Like an unchecked cancer hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly the ugly as beautiful and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true”.(MKL Jr.)

Somehow along the way towards the nomination for the office of president, the candidates representing the Republican/Tea Party decided that the most important criteria to be used to elect them was to demonstrate just how much hate they could demonstrate. Like cowards they used a misinterpreted representation of the Bible and accused all of their actions as being done for God. They admitted to their being so close to God and even in some circumstances God had spoken to them asking them to run, that any words, deeds or actions they commit, are all done with God’s blessings. And in doing so they described the beautiful as ugly, the ugly as beautiful.

This band of hooligans, pretending to be everything red, white and blue has somehow intertwined their Bible as a form of the Constitution. They confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. They like to pigeonhole, scapegoat, and blame. They like to promote purity as a true sense of Americanism, and they like to avoid any of their own weaknesses buy shouting from the highest soapbox the perceived lameness of anyone they fear.

And for me the saddest or is it the scariest of things to appear throughout this Republican/Tea Party primary are the scores of bigots, racists, homophobes who can’t wait to vote for the man or woman who hates loud and proud. And so many of these haters say they do it for Jesus.

“Hate paralyzes; love releases it. Hatred confuses life: love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life: love illuminates it.” (MLK Jr.)

There are differences in this nation of ours. Just the mere fact that our founding fathers understood the division of church and state, the need for no monarchy, the chance for each man and woman to express themselves with no limitation of speech or belief helped maintain the beauty of fair and equal. Now with the arrival of wealthy corporations/individuals buying the candidates, the fact that a base of people with no need for equal of free and a sense of superiority, and a political landscape which would rather divide then find consensus, it seems the beauty of difference which created this nation are sinful and taboo.

It seems that movement forward toward understanding are paralyzed by hate. It seems that confusion left like traps foil those who want to find harmony. It seems hatred is the resounding force and the louder it is shouted the darker this nation becomes in spirit and sense. It seems, during this Republican/Tea Party primary the only sounds that resonate loud are those of denying rights, destroying freedoms and debunking purpose and replacing it with pitiful lies and innuendo.

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends”. (MLK Jr.).

So often I lament about the loudness of those who hate Gays, Blacks, Poor, Unemployed,Muslims, Women and I grow so frustrated that those with the weakest argument seem to make the most noise. I am constantly writing about the power of the dumb, the religious zealot, those who deny any responsibility for their own failures, the lemming and I wonder where everyone else is, those who do not just shout that their morals and values are better but those who demonstrate morals and values.

I look around and the silence I hear is deafening, where are the really righteous people telling the blasphemous to stand down, shut up? Where are those who understand equal does equate to separate but equal? Where are those who see the harassment, the bullying, the demeaning by groups of insecure people led to the edge of normal by demigods whose only business is to pitch fear and loathing? Where is the outcry to stop this divide and instead replace it with compromise and compassion?

This whole primary period all we hear and sadly all remember are how potent the words of hate have been.

Six years ago I took a walk to the Civic Center in San Francisco and happened upon a park where the words of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech ‘I Have a Dream’ were written in marble in about a dozen large plaques. I thought I knew the speech but until I took the time looking at each word, each sentence, each paragraph I had no idea just how eloquent and relevant these words, this speech really were. I felt Reverend King was actually talking to me, that he knew my circumstance, that somehow he was privy to my private life. How utterly selfish was that, his speech created for me!!

I worry that hate, lies, innuendo, bigotry, and bias are taking precedent and that love, truth, understanding and fair are being sent to the hinterlands never again to b found. I worry the noise of the hater is louder then the sounds of those who love. I worry that we will move so far away from one another that finding the path back home will forever be gone and forgotten.

I appreciate the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and see meaning of those words in this very moment in which we live. I hope it is not too late to love.