Daily Reminder # 62

(Please scroll down for the Weekly Wordzzle Challenge.)

Love is stronger than hate and truth is stronger than lies. It doesn't always seem that way, but I know that this is ultimately true. Sometimes, it's hard not to get drawn into the ugliness.

We live in strange times here in the US - an in the world as a whole, I guess. Here at home, a whole collection of people spew hate and claim it's patriotism. The latest craziness is so silly you would think it was a joke - except it's not. The GOP in IOWA has apparently got something going called "the thirteenthers." According to these people President Obama's citizenship should be stripped from him because he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize which puts him (and Jimmy Carter and a host of other pretty awesome Americans) in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment - not the current one, which, among other things bans slavery - but the originally drawn 13th which was never ratified.

Then there's Glenn Beck who thinks everyone is a Nazi, who advocates violence (by proclaiming that people need to protect themselves against the violent takeover planned by progressive Democrats). Already someone - fortunately stopped before he took action - has taken Beck up and was set to kill a bunch of people to protect American from Socialism. There's Rush Limbaugh who is such an overt racist and hate monger that he might as well wear a sheet and burn crosses on lawns. There was the recent travesty in which a black woman was intentionally and falsely "outed" as a racist.

Last night I received an email from some woman in Arizona, asking me to join her Sarah Palin to protect the country (by sending them money) from "denegration" (apparently this woman and Palin use the same English mis-usage dictionary) of building a mosque "honoring terrorists" near the Trade Center site. I was in a mood, so I wrote back and told her that I didn't think mosques honored terrorist, who were Muslims in name only, but were places of worship and that building a place of worship on sacred ground seemed to me to be a healing thing. I think I also told her that if she and Ms. Palin stopped spewing hate, we'd be better off and that I thought they were less interested in the good of the country than in power and greed and self-aggrandizement. I'm probably on a hit list now.

But anyway... all this stuff upsets me. I find it ugly and crude and destructive and depressing and... un American. Or at least I hope it's unAmerican. I keep digressing, though. What troubles me is that I believe with my head and heart that hating these people is not the answer, that "you become the thing you hate." But it's SOOOO tempting to be drawn into the ugliness and want to beat it back instead of sending love to it, praying for them. I do think Liberals/Progressives like me need to find a way to respond to these people that's different from what we do now. I think we need to find a way to call them out on their lies and their ugliness without being ugly ourselves. We've got all this "political correctness" and "balance" in media which seems to mean that people get to lie with impunity. It was so wonderful last week when Shirley Sherrod called the people who lied about her out on their lie. It was like balm on a festering wound.

I think we need to speak truth more. When people lie, we need to counter the lies with truth. I don't know exactly how to do it. Ms. Sherrod was wonderful because she never got ugly. She just kept repeating the truth and others came out and backed her up.

I'm kind of rambling around in the desert here looking for water, so I apologize that this isn't a very uplifting reminder. Not ever totally clear what I'm reminding us of.

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• truth
• hope
• wordzzles
• lovely, cool weather
• imagination
• email

I'm outa here...

Have a Wonderful Weekend!