Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive.
~Dalai Lama
I have been sitting still, watching and listening, for decades. Writers are natural observers and I am no exception. I love watching people and events from the sidelines. But in the past few weeks, it has become more and more difficult for me to simply sit still and observe.
I have been watching and listening for months as Donald Trump encourages his followers to act from a place of hatred and rage. In the beginning, Mr. Trump seemed like a bad joke – a blowhard reality TV star runs for president, really?! But now he has managed to become the Republican nominee for President of the United States, and this ridiculous political side show just got very very scary.
I want to run screaming into the street and stop cars. I want to ask everyone I meet if they have listened carefully to what Mr. Trump says in speech after speech. I want to insist that they follow me home to my living room where I can show them clip after clip of Trump gleefully inciting hatred and racism and divisions between people. And I want to remind them of what McCarthy and other peddlers of hate have done to our country in the past. I want to beg people to not let that happen again.
But I won’t do that. I won’t run into the street and stop strangers. I would be labeled crazy. I won’t make people sit still, watch and LISTEN to what Donald Trump has been saying for months. I wish I could but I cannot.
What I can do is express my deep fear about what Donald Trump may do if he becomes our President. I can voice my concerns to family and friends, and to you, my readers. I can tell you how disturbed I am by all the vitriol and fear that Mr. Trump is selling.
I believe that love is always the answer. And sometimes love requires that we stand up and shout NO, this is NOT OK! Sometime love requires that we step out of our comfort zone and enter the fray.
Mr. Trump’s vision of America is NOT my vision. He does NOT speak for me or the Americans I know and love.
Polite silence is not the answer. Sitting still is not the answer. So I am standing up and shouting NO! every chance I get. I am telling family and friends exactly what I have observed in this man who wants to be my president. And I am doing it in the name of love and unity and compassion.
I hope you will stand up and join me.
“Trump came one breath short of advocating a police state tonight
(it is not an accident that David Duke tweeted such great applause)…
I pray the better angels of America will rise up and
dissolve all the hatred that was spewed
into our body politic tonight.”
~Marianne Williamson, July 21, 2016
