Posted on Jan 22, 2017
Do you think America will overcome the divisive hate rhetoric? Whose responsibility is it to change?
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Is America still exceptional? Is the hate speech that began during the election season now a habit that we can't break? I am avoiding most social media site because no matter where I go, news, social media, I am overwhelmed by the hate expressed by both sides. The hypocrisy and disinformation or misinformation is upsetting to a patriot. Since you have all mostly served in the Armed Forces, lead on
Posted in these groups: 
Patriotism
United States
Patriotism United States
Posted 9 y ago
Responses: 30
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the problems were slowly going away and be deleted till January 2009... in time they would have been all but forgotten...
Unfortunately BHO was Not satisfied with the slow elimination of the problems and made thing worse and destroyed 50 years of healing and mending ... Now we will have to try to restart the mending and healing ... this time it will be harder because Old wounds are open and in some cases salt was poured rubbed in...
at best the Civil rights and race Relations have been set back 20-40 years...
what would have been a distant memory in My mind in 25-30 years is going to be fresh in every ones mind...
Responsibility for Change is everyones... and it starts from the Leaders in all sectors and all the way down ... But when you have Teachers and educators and civic leaders creating the problems , rewriting history, inciting the masses over dramatizing and shoving the past in everyones face as if it were yesterday...
This is an Issue that will be here for a Long time...
Unfortunately BHO was Not satisfied with the slow elimination of the problems and made thing worse and destroyed 50 years of healing and mending ... Now we will have to try to restart the mending and healing ... this time it will be harder because Old wounds are open and in some cases salt was poured rubbed in...
at best the Civil rights and race Relations have been set back 20-40 years...
what would have been a distant memory in My mind in 25-30 years is going to be fresh in every ones mind...
Responsibility for Change is everyones... and it starts from the Leaders in all sectors and all the way down ... But when you have Teachers and educators and civic leaders creating the problems , rewriting history, inciting the masses over dramatizing and shoving the past in everyones face as if it were yesterday...
This is an Issue that will be here for a Long time...
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Maj (Join to see)
SP5 Christine C. - OMG, really? The only reason conservatives dislike Obama is because he's black? It doesn't have anything to do with what he's done, what he's said, or the content of his character? Pretty racist of you to assert that Obama can't be judged based on his actions and that he can only be judged because he's biracial. And I'm real curious-- what do you think Make America Great Again means? What's the secret code to decipher this? Because I think it means that no more apology tours for America being exceptional.
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Maj (Join to see)
SP5 Christine C. - The facts are out there. I sometimes wish I could so willfully choose to ignore them, but then I would be a low information voter and not being doing my due diligence as a free person.
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I don't see the divisive speech ending any time soon but it is ALL our responsibility to come together and start acting like Americans again. Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't make them less of a human. A little naive or misguided maybe but certainly not less of a person. Many on both sides have somehow decided those who don't think or act exactly like them must be utterly destroyed at any cost.
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Whose responsibility is it? All of ours. The first step is to refrain from insults. By all means disagree. But our ideological opponents aren't our enemies. We're failing to argue issues and facts and instead divert our energies towards ad hominem. Perhaps the next step is to stop relying on internet memes to express opinions. Many of them are little more than poorly referenced finger pointing.
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1SG(P) (Join to see)
Col Rebecca Lorraine - Ma'am, unfortunately, no. I'm afraid we'll need another lethal reset, e.g. 9/11, for that to occur. I place much of the blame on the rise of social media and 24-hour news channels.
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The way this will change is one person, one group, one leader at a time. I do not expect government to solve this problem. I have purposely stayed off rallypoint because I didn't want to be involved in hate filled posts disguised as discussions. On FB, I have done something similar because I have friends from one of end of the spectrum to the other. I went for a nice neutral feed of cute animal videos as I watched politics play out. I voted. Trump is in. The next question is what can I do to make my community better? What strengths do I have to contribute to help reunify our country? Does it help heal the country when I only talk to people with the same viewpoint as mine? We must head to the trenches. While in the military, we managed to get along for the sake of the mission.
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Maj Kim Patterson
I guess he said it first. Just a bit differently. Also remember his Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
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Col Rebecca Lorraine
Great thoughts for how we should be, yet we need American citizens to buy this, see that they alone are responsible to change. "I can pick my friends, I can pick my nose, but I can't pick my friend's nose" dumb saying, but true. LOL.
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I posted before, but, here is today's thought.
It is everyone's responsibility to change and I see two major places for change. One, do not talk hatefully. It is okay to disagree, but, not okay to do so with hate. Two, quite calling every statement that you do not agree with hate. It most often is not.
It is everyone's responsibility to change and I see two major places for change. One, do not talk hatefully. It is okay to disagree, but, not okay to do so with hate. Two, quite calling every statement that you do not agree with hate. It most often is not.
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Col Rebecca Lorraine
I would add leaving the labels out. Get back to talking about now and where we are aheaded together.
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Col Rebecca Lorraine
http://bsu.edu/learningfromhate/hatespeech.htm defining it is a start.
Learning from a Legacy of Hate
Hate speech consists of verbal and nonverbal expression that is used to demean, oppress, or promote violence against someone on the basis of their membership in a social or ethnic group. Hate speech involves more than simply indicating that you dislike someone. It also is different than simply teasing or ridiculing someone, or shouting an ugly word at them in a single moment of anger or frustration.
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Col Rebecca Lorraine
Hate speech is going mainstream
What an expert has to say about it may be equally alarming.
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Yes, America is still exceptional. It is the only Country in the World based on Northern European "Protestant/Christian" values. Unfortunately, the number of Americans who agree with those values is rapidly declining. I would say the that America is currently engaged in a war between two ideologies. On one side are those traditional Americans who love freedom, respect individuals, their rights, and their property (Capitalists) and on the other are those willing to use violence in the promulgation of their Social Justice/Liberation ideology (pseudo Marxism). Of course the majority of Americans are on a wide spectrum between the two side.
With the elevation of a Capitalist to the Presidency and Republicans (not all of them are Capitalists) in control of both the Senate and the House, the Marxist Left will need to act out more and more in an effort to fool the majority of Americans, who have not picked a side, that the Left is the party of the majority in America. And that means more screaming, more rioting, more acting out, more hypocrisy, more disinformation, and more propaganda. I will not be at all surprised if we see a resurgence of 1960s style violent protests. We've been cursed to live in interesting times.
With the elevation of a Capitalist to the Presidency and Republicans (not all of them are Capitalists) in control of both the Senate and the House, the Marxist Left will need to act out more and more in an effort to fool the majority of Americans, who have not picked a side, that the Left is the party of the majority in America. And that means more screaming, more rioting, more acting out, more hypocrisy, more disinformation, and more propaganda. I will not be at all surprised if we see a resurgence of 1960s style violent protests. We've been cursed to live in interesting times.
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Yes, we are still exceptional, but I fear we have a long way to go before people in power truly put America first. For way too many years our political process has put the needs of political parties ahead of those of the people they were elected to represent. The recent election may have given Republicans control but not enough to accomplish many things without the support of Democrats. I don't see this "across the aisle" support coming any time soon so the divisiveness is going to continue. I kind of agree with Col Jon Thompson that we will need some type of event to get us to focus on the needs of America again.
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This is a complex problem. There are a few reasons for this hatred.
The first is that we are forced into a 2 party system that is by its very nature to be antagonistic. George Washington was afraid of this in the early years of the country. He saw the infighting that having the federalists and Democratic Republicans at each other's throats. The situation at the time was worse than now. We even had a Democratic Republican vice president kill the federalist treasury secretary.
Secondly, we now have special places to go that people can go to avoid other points of view. People in these echo chambers begin to see opposing views as hateful to them. When one side loses an election or have a court rule against their side, the get upset and accuse the other side of being against the ideals of America.
Finally, we have conditioned the young to believe that their feelings and opinions are always valid. This means that people don't feel that they need to evaluate their ideas.
There are no quick fixes to this. We need to try to break down the walls that we have built between us and teach kids that they should always question their ideas and seek input from others because nobody has all the answers.
The first is that we are forced into a 2 party system that is by its very nature to be antagonistic. George Washington was afraid of this in the early years of the country. He saw the infighting that having the federalists and Democratic Republicans at each other's throats. The situation at the time was worse than now. We even had a Democratic Republican vice president kill the federalist treasury secretary.
Secondly, we now have special places to go that people can go to avoid other points of view. People in these echo chambers begin to see opposing views as hateful to them. When one side loses an election or have a court rule against their side, the get upset and accuse the other side of being against the ideals of America.
Finally, we have conditioned the young to believe that their feelings and opinions are always valid. This means that people don't feel that they need to evaluate their ideas.
There are no quick fixes to this. We need to try to break down the walls that we have built between us and teach kids that they should always question their ideas and seek input from others because nobody has all the answers.
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I was a Sidewinder OC working at NTC when the planes hit the towers. It was personal. I spent the last decade of service so utterly consumed by deployments and training Soldiers in FORSCOM and TRADOC that I didn't pay attention to the news. It wasn't important. America was important. I didn't have any friends or peers that had any racial component besides "Soldier". I couldn't tell you where their families came from and couldn't care less. All they needed to be was proficient at their skill. Since retirement, I have watched the horribly partisan news, listened to the endless vitriol by our youth and been called by democrat pundits every name imaginable for being a middle aged Caucasian man. I haven't violated even a traffic law in 25 years. I'm not a bad person, but the days of enduring insults and staying silent are over. That ship has sailed.
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Col Rebecca Lorraine
The point is it is both sides and we need to heal ourselves before we can hope to heal America. Neither side is right in this. SP5 Christine Conley -
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Maj (Join to see)
SP5 Christine C. - Those insults you opine about are insignificant to the ones the left has been hurling at us for 8years. And you're offended at "ape in heels"? What about "you can put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig." The left's notion of tolerance is hardly what one would consider tolerant.
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Hmmm...I think while in the past, we had issues that divided us, some of them of great significance, I think our "American-ness", our identity as Americans allowed us to, at the very least, function.
This sentiment no longer exists. Pick a divisive social issue. Persons on either side do not feel comfortable or even able to compromise, because to do so would impinge on a fundamental aspect of "self". The battle lines are drawn and their side (whomever that is) is evil and lazy and bent on the destruction of the Republic.
This is the end, or at least the beginning of it.
Most Americans probably identify as something other than American (black, white, liberal, conservative, gay, feminist, gun owner) before they identify as American.
This sentiment no longer exists. Pick a divisive social issue. Persons on either side do not feel comfortable or even able to compromise, because to do so would impinge on a fundamental aspect of "self". The battle lines are drawn and their side (whomever that is) is evil and lazy and bent on the destruction of the Republic.
This is the end, or at least the beginning of it.
Most Americans probably identify as something other than American (black, white, liberal, conservative, gay, feminist, gun owner) before they identify as American.
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SFC Marcus Belt
Col Rebecca Lorraine - Ma'am: I have to add that while I am not an optimistic person by nature, I have acquired some attitudes and skills to help me along, and so while I am not optimistic that we will resolve these issues, that's not to say that they cannot be resolved.
People who maintain generally liberal ideologies tend to give voice to every possible grievance, and in so doing, ignore what is best for the most people, and also perpetuate stereotypes of "victimhood" that do not empower anyone, other than elected leaders who exploit the second and third order grievances for political and personal gain. (Talking to you Jesse Jackson, Sr., Al Sharpton, et al.).
People who maintain generally conservative ideologies are guilty of the equal and opposite sin: they minimize the real grievances that people have against existing structures...real issues that, in many cases, have existed for as long as the Republic has existed. They further ignore the fact that whatever progress has been made was not made without social dissent and protest. Protest, that by its very nature, has to get people angry in order for anything to change.
Take Colin Kaepernick's protest as an example: African Americans live shorter lives, make less money, are more likely to die by violence, live in poverty and spend significant time in jail than other ethnic groups. If we assume that these issues are not intrinsic to our DNA, then we must assume that there are outside causes. This is what Mr. Kaepernick says he was trying to bring attention to. Every one of these issues is an affront to liberty and all that the flag represents, but some would rather burn Kaepernick alive than even think about addressing the issues.
So this is what the end looks like.
It was good while it lasted.
People who maintain generally liberal ideologies tend to give voice to every possible grievance, and in so doing, ignore what is best for the most people, and also perpetuate stereotypes of "victimhood" that do not empower anyone, other than elected leaders who exploit the second and third order grievances for political and personal gain. (Talking to you Jesse Jackson, Sr., Al Sharpton, et al.).
People who maintain generally conservative ideologies are guilty of the equal and opposite sin: they minimize the real grievances that people have against existing structures...real issues that, in many cases, have existed for as long as the Republic has existed. They further ignore the fact that whatever progress has been made was not made without social dissent and protest. Protest, that by its very nature, has to get people angry in order for anything to change.
Take Colin Kaepernick's protest as an example: African Americans live shorter lives, make less money, are more likely to die by violence, live in poverty and spend significant time in jail than other ethnic groups. If we assume that these issues are not intrinsic to our DNA, then we must assume that there are outside causes. This is what Mr. Kaepernick says he was trying to bring attention to. Every one of these issues is an affront to liberty and all that the flag represents, but some would rather burn Kaepernick alive than even think about addressing the issues.
So this is what the end looks like.
It was good while it lasted.
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