"Too many people are overreacting" The interesting question is why. What does this imply about us? Why do we have teams and attach our passions to them?
Because these are serious questions, my experience tells me they are questions almost nobody is interested in. The really fun (easy)thing is to get into the frey and swing away. Since, however this pains some of you so much (Isla here in particular), maybe I can switch out of my funner hold up an opposing mirror game, and say what I see that makes this easer, at least for me, to handle. I have the same Republican family, on my side as you Isla. Not just Republican, but active politically in the party.
Well the answer to where all the passion is comming from is the same as the answer to everything. It is a matter of personal identification. Here it is in the thumbnail, because you already have heard this fleshed out elsewhere. We hate ourselves, don't know it and don't want to know it. In order to attain some measure of self worth, since we are cut off from the only place where we can find true self worth, God or the True Self, however you prefer, we attach ourselves to outside things, religions, political parties, nations, isms of all kind. The stature these things have gained become our substitute self worth. I am of the true religion, the right party. I am one of the good guys. Threaten that and you threaten to awaken to awarness how bad I feel about myself burried deep in the past.
You might think that the worse the feelings of worthlessness are, the more hateful the person who is threated with awareness would be, but it isn't just that. It matters how much the external thing is the cover for the real feeling, and how close to the surface the feeling is. This is what we mean when we talk of people having buttons you can push.
The tough part is trying to find some pease in a mad world. Your family is sick, but so are you and so am I. In trying to save themselves from feeling their own sense of worthlessness, the make you feel yours. Somewhere inside, you will find a desire to do the same to them. We are all the same. You can do nothing about other people. That is their curse and their responsibility. All you can ever change is yourself. By voting your conscious, you voted correctly. The hatred and anger that some will throw at you for that is exactly the same hatred and anger they have chained their true self with. We crucify ourselves.
If you can remember that everything that is wrong with the world is in your own head, the fact that you don't like yourself, you can maybe just maybe add a little less to the total mass of hate in the world, pass on down to your kids just a little less. We have real work to do to cough up and vomit the lies were taught, that we are bad, but meanwhile I think it helps to remember that we are all the same, and that our true selves, below the self hate, are those beautiful babies we were born as, beings with infinite potential in every direction.
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