The presidential election is in a few days. I am hearing rhetoric on the news that is so awful that I can’t believe it. I feel like all my nightmares are becoming reality because hatred has become normalized in our political sphere. I never thought that would happen. When I was growing up, everyone knew that politicians lied and did deals behind closed doors, but the idea of holding political office, especially the President of the United States, had an air of respect and dignity. However, after this election, no matter who wins, that respect and dignity which generations of Americans held so dear has been destroyed and I don’t know if we can ever build it up again after what has been said and done.
One of the things that I learned about dictatorships was that after they get the political leadership to follow them, the next step is to get the news media to bend to their will. I see that happening more and more. Journalism also had an air of respect and dignity. People knew that they could trust journalists to be unbiased in their reporting. I’m not naïve. I know journalists and news reporting is a business. They manipulate their coverage based on what would get the best ratings and what would see the most news, but they never stepped over the line where instead of reporting facts, they started to report opinions. These days the public has to pay services to tell them how far left or how far right the opinion of the news report is. Journalistic integrity has been destroyed and I don’t know if it will ever come back again.
I can’t help wondering what’s on the horizon. The part that depress me the most is all of these tactics seek to divide people, categorize them into different groups, and make them hate each other because of their differences.
Last night as I wrote my post, I felt this strong feeling that overwhelmed me. I have been feeling it more and more. I feel connected to the rest of humanity.
I realized this year or last year that at some point life began. Whenever that happened, from a cell splitting or Adam and Eve or whatever, that life has produced all other life on Earth. We are incapable of creating new life. Every single life on Earth has come from some other life before it. When they create test tube babies, they use live cells, when they do IVF, they use live cells, even when they clone, they start with a live cells from another animal. No one any where has started with a dead cell and created a live cell. Never.
So, consider that instead of all of us humans being individual organisms, what if we are all part of the same entity? What if one life force keeps splitting itself up and dividing itself over and over again for some unknown reason? Maybe we are all one? And could that possibly be the reason why God tells us to love one another as we love ourselves? I shouldn’t hate anyone because I would hate myself. I should kill anyone because I would kill myself. If we could only see the big picture and understand that we aren’t just these tiny little blips like drops in the ocean in time, but one force in the universe, then maybe we would understand God’s message a little better.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
