October 31, 2008

Man, democracy is hard!

A few of us exchange emails about the election, and sometimes they get a little heated. Yesterday was one of those days. We are all stressed out, and I am certainly easily angered. This morning, I turned on email to find a nice email of conciliation.

Spoke to a friend of mine at school and he related that he is a comfort/stress eater, and his diet has just been terrible this last few months. The same guy is a huge OU Football fan and noted that it was hard to really care about the OU/TX game this year (Texas won, btw) with the economy and election. He said his diet would begin next Wednesday. Unless McCain wins, then he was just going to start eating Malomars till the end. :)

It isn't just me, of course. Anglican posted something yesterday about the percentage of Texans who believe that Obama is a Muslim, and got a little pushback. He posted this inspirational plea for reconciliation this morning--one that should be read by all Americans.

This last 16 years feels incredibly partisan and divided. Here is hoping that there is some reconciliation in the next administration that changes that.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Streak said...

Annoying when you try to appeal to something approaching reconciliation and our better selves and you get an annoying and irritating comment in response.

Anonymous said...

Obviously, you only want to hear yourself talk. Fine, you'll be the only one listening.

leighton said...

Sorry Gary, you're the only one we don't want to hear around here.

Streak said...

Ok, Doug/Gary/Troll.

Streak said...

What is it, btw, that a post intended on appealing to people being civil brings out the idiots? Anyone got a theory on that?

leighton said...

Certain personality types get off on being adversarial and provoking others into escalating the level of nastiness in a conversation. It's an addictive behavior that gives a (hopefully) drug-free high. The operative distinction between people like this and people behaving normally is that while you can resolve or defuse most heated arguments by appealing to people's desire not to be so excessively angry all the time, trolls and griefers actually like the negativity. They tend to be most vicious and dismissive toward efforts at reconciliation, rather than loosing most of their venom on actual points of disagreement as you might first expect them to do.

I'm starting to think this trait is overrepresented in the population of lawyers, but that's neither here nor there.

Back on topic, I liked Anglican's post, and I guess I see it as an encouraging sign that apparently the pushback was done through email, instead of waged in public channels for the world to see. Even in the midst of division, I see a little hope in that.

ANewAnglican@gmail.com said...

Thanks, Streak, and thanks to all who either here or through separate channels have sent words of encouragement. We all have fences to mend.

steves said...

What is it, btw, that a post intended on appealing to people being civil brings out the idiots? Anyone got a theory on that?

I could probably come up with something serious and backed up with research, but the simplicity of this one is appealing.