Opening Insights: Friends to Enemies
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
GROUCHO MARX
Let's say that you and I meet at a restaurant. This is a place we frequent that offers cuisine we both enjoy. We've been meeting here regularly for over five years and as long as the menu stays great we'll keep coming back.
During the course of one such meeting we discuss the sources of ingredients that the restaurant uses. You are firm on the need to source only fair trade chocolate for use in the deserts. I am immovable on my position of using only coffee beans produced by farmers that protect the environment.
You say that coffee farming has little impact on the environment, that what I should really be concerned with is the human rights trampling that runs rampant in cacao cultivation. I turn up my lip in disgust that you would think a few cacao growers would have any measurable impact on the health of our planet and I assert that people working for growers have the choice to find work elsewhere if they want.
No longer can either of us stand to be seated across the table from the other. Gone is our mutual interest in sharing the meal, the conversation or the ticket at the end. You stand up and announce that you paid for the last time and that this one is on me. I refuse, because I only had an appetizer and a coffee while you ate two courses and desert. The host has to come mediate.
We go our separate ways after leaving the restaurant. I can't believe how selfish, unfair and uncaring you are. I cannot allow your ignorance to infect anyone else. When I get home, I delete you as a friend from my online social networks. I begin posting inflammatory comments, degrading you and illustrating to all our mutual contacts your level of incompetence and how you couldn't care less for the well-being of our planet, that you may as well be responsible for it's destruction.
You launch an equally destructive campaign at my expense. Neither of us can believe that the other would have the childish arrogance to openly smear the other online. This means war!
It's not enough to disagree. If you do not believe the same things I do, then I must destroy you.
Informational Insights: Destruction of Legacy
The following article was published by Fox News, "a 24-hour all-encompassing news service delivering breaking news as well as political and business news." It was written by Nick Givas, a reporter with Fox News.
Supporting President Trump and taking a conservative stance in public ruined Chuck Woolery's career and got him shadow-banned from Twitter, said the former game show host on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday.
Woolery tweeted about his personal political beliefs last week and claimed he paid a heavy professional price for simply expressing how he felt.
"To answer your question. Yes I have pretty much destroyed my career by openly supporting Trump and letting all know, I am a conservative. Painful at times, but true. After all is said and done. It was my choice and I can live with it. I would do it all again," he tweeted.
"It was kind of a self-deprecating tweet I sent out because I know I'm shadow-banned. I've got about 650 or 700,000 followers," he told "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade.
"I know the half of them don't get what I say. So I sent this thing out just as kind of a test -- because it made me look [like] I was losing in life. And it just went crazy -- it was the biggest tweet I ever had in my life. So as long as you're a loser they love you."
Woolery chastised those who've taken his past comments out of context and said most Americans aren't as outraged as they're made out to be.
"My career kind of phased into commercial life. So I have several companies I represent. And they are bombarded," he said earlier in the segment.
"These people sit in their basement, and they make it look like there are thousands of people complaining about Chuck Woolery or about the products and who he represents -- and 'how could you let this fascist, racist guy represent your company' -- when none of it is true. And these are the same people by the way who I get on Twitter [saying] 'I watched you when I was growing up. I loved you... What happened to you?'"
Political discourse in America has gotten so out of control that it's emboldened people to ruin the lives of those they disagree with, Woolery added.
"What you have wrong is... the companies who you represent are just inundated with all of this negative [stuff]. It's not true," he said. "They just make this stuff up and throw it out [there] because they want to destroy your life. They don't just want to disagree with you. They are so vehement and so virulent. They just want to destroy you and that's their purpose."
This article originally appeared on FOX NEWS: Chuck Woolery: Supporting Trump 'pretty much destroyed my career'
Possibilities of Consideration: B for Bananas
Have Americans gone completely bananas? We must have run out of enemies on the outside and now wage war on each other. Have we forgotten that we're all on the same team pulling together for the same purpose - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Admittedly, the opening anecdote to this article was ridiculous, but just think about it, is the current divide in our country any less ridiculous?
Here's a challenge: Find someone you disagree with on a topic of importance to YOU and seek to understand them and their reasoning. Don't try to change their mind or get them to see the craziness of their ideas, just accept that somebody has a different view than you and listen. Look for the value in what the other person has to say, then share your own thoughts.
If you are interested in helping people find their way back to the polite and mutually respectful discourse that empowers us all to learn, while restoring an America built on unity of common principles, then fill out the eMod SocraticQ Conversation below.
Add Your Insight
Take a moment and examine…
- As you reviewed the material above, what stood out to you?
- What is the potential impact, economically and/or socially?
- What action is needed to stop or support this idea?
- You may want to consider whether you:
- want to be aware of,
- should become supportive of,
- would want to be active in this topic?
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
LEONARDO DA VINCI