The Year is Complete!

Please feel free to look back through the 365 days of 2010 sunrises, but "a year of getting up to meet the day" is officially completed. There will be no more new posts.

PLEASE JOIN ME FOR MORE SUNRISE POSTS AT THE SUNRISE BLOGGER, WHERE YOU WILL FIND SUNRISE PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS FROM ME AND FROM CONTRIBUTORS AROUND THE GLOBE.


Thank you so much for visiting.
A one year blog project in which I share a process of transitions: emptying of the nest, reacquainting with my rusty intellect, plowing onward with my first full length book, entering the second half of my first century, and generally reflecting on life.

(see Dec. 29th, 2009 entry for further explanation)

Thursday, May 13, 2010

hope against hate

sunrise:  5:09
The frost was even stiffer and heavier on the grass this morning - hat and gloves weather on May 13th.  But it's still a thickly greening world.  The dogs are almost disappearing in the tall grass.


There has been a bit of news in the local paper recently about a hate group headquartered in a town not far from here.  They openly promote hate, using the actual word.  Their strategy is to avoid any promotion of or encouragement toward violence, so that they remain protected by free speech.  A clever strategy, recognizing the importance of our civil rights.  Also ironic, seeing as how they would like to curtail the civil rights of anyone else who doesn't fit their superficial model of a preferred human. 

What is wrong with these people?  What an utter waste of a life, to encircle it with hate.  Truly it is not even hate, in my book.  It is ignorance.  It is fear.  They fear change, the unfamiliar, difference, forgetting that our entire country began with a caucasion invasion of native Americans.  Then it grew as an entity that absorbed the tired, the hungry and the poor from all over the world into an ideal nation based on a set of laws to apply to everyone (eventually).  How far backward do they want to go?  Obviously not to pre-colonial days.

I don't know the best way to fight against ignorance and fear.  Reason doesn't seem promising.  Love?  As an example, yes.  But I doubt it could have any direct effect on adults so thoroughly indoctrinated to a poisoned mindset.  Best to ignore them, but essential to be aware of them.  It is excruciating to me to think about children being raised by ignorance and fear.  What can you do?

Instead of white supremacists we could call them stupid scaredy-cats, or frightened fools, or cowardly clowns.  Or we could just call them pathetic.

Maybe someone could trace the genealogies of their leaders and find non-white ancestors.  That might take the wind out of their sails. 

I hope, I hope, I hope that this kind of self-destructive, societally divisive stupidity will die out with the coming generation.  There are so many better things to do.

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