The ugliness of politics...

There is something that is not new to politics this year, but there is something that I have noticed this year more than any other.  Ugliness...

This year has been the ugliest year that I can ever remember involving politics and quite frankly it is pretty disgusting.  I'm not talking about ugliness as far as appearance goes, but I am referring to the ugliness that is shown by one person to another when a complete lack of care or concern is shown towards another human being.  Being ugly is when you only care about what you want and disregard another person simply because they have a differing opinion.

Some examples of ugliness that I have seen this year are:

Less than a month ago when my wife and I went to the Fall Festival in our town (which is one of my favorite things in the world, by the way) and I decided to wear a shirt that supports a friend of ours who is running for the County Board of Education.  The Board of Education is not a "Republican" or "Democrat" type of election.  It is not run based on a political party at all and as a matter of fact only one candidate  (of the 8) even says anything about their political party (not the person who's shirt I was wearing though).  Anyways, I put on the shirt and walked across the shirt when a complete stranger (neither my wife or I know her) walks up and ask me "Is that shirt for a Republican?"  Although my friend is not running as a Republican I do know that she is a Republican so I answered the young lady with a "Yes, she is".  The young lady than told me "Than you should be shot " with a serious look on her face.  This was one of those moments in life where you are unsure of whether or not a person is joking, but the hate in her eyes told the truth and my wife and I were quite shocked.  I told her "That is the ugliest thing that has been said to me all day", and than I told her that "I hope that you have a nice day".  She said "Yeah, right, until I walk away".  I said "No, I really hope that you have a nice day" and than my wife and I walked away from her.  This is not a made up story and it is not exaggerated either.  This amount of ugliness really happened to me and all I did was put on a t-shirt!  Now, this true example is NOT meant to show that "Democrat's" are wrong and ugly, for I am quite sure that there are "Republicans" who are doing this type of things as well, but still, regardless of political party, ugly is ugly and wrong is wrong.  Is this the best we can do?  Is this as good as we can be to one another?

Another example of ugliness actually happened today when my wife forwarded a message from a friend of hers to some of her own friends.  This message had some information about one of the presidential candidates in it and my wife was just trying to share the info.  I know that I have gotten info from both sides and all I do is read them and throw them away.  Two of these people, that mean quite a bit to my wife, e-mailed her back ugly messages where they called her names and made false accusations about her.  These two people really meant a lot to my wife and that is how she gets treated?  If you don't agree and if you are voting for someone else than just delete the message if that is what you think.  I have seen another friend of mine get chewed out and cussed at via e-mail because he just had a different opinion than someone else.  Is that any way to act? Is this as beautiful as America can get towards one another when it tries to pick the person to run the country?  It is no wonder that we are having the difficulty that we are having when we cant even listen to each other and at least TRY to work together.

It doesn't matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat, you should have common courtesy and decency when dealing with other people.  If you disagree than don't hang out with that person instead of cussing them out of treating them as if they don't matter... everyone matters so please treat each other as if we do.

chris