Someone I have known since high school days responded to my last blog on the hypocrisy of the evangelical vote for Trump with the comment: “Get over it, you lost.”
Contrast that with what a friend of mine I also grew up with wrote: “I suppose I will have to accept a Trump presidency, but it is hard. I will not treat him the way Obama was treated.”
For me that said it all.
It was first of all a confession of how difficult Trump’s election has been for my friend and me and millions of others.
We are not petty partisans who cannot stand to lose. We have lost before. No, we are Americans who were shocked by the election of someone who has shown his personal character to be morally corrupt and whose lack of qualifications to be president we believe puts our nation and the world in danger.
So, no, we are not mad because we lost. We, instead, are left wondering what kind of nation we will be after four years under the leadership of someone whose late night tweets sound more like a petulant child than a man who is to be president.
My friend admitted this is difficult to accept, and when he did he spoke for the majority of Americans who in fact did not vote for Donald Trump.
But his second comment showed the quality of his own personal character. “I will not treat him [Trump] the way Obama was treated.”
This is a statement that takes seriously the kind of meanness that has been loose in the nation during the Obama years, showing itself in persistent racism, pettiness, and a Republican Congress that disrespected the office of President by trying to delegitimize Obama’s tenure.
Nothing can erase the degree of disgusting behavior Republicans have shown the last eight years.
Trump’s election made it worse because it represented a de facto endorsement of words and behavior by political leaders that brought shame to our entire nation.
Yet, my friend is choosing not to act that way, not to stoop that low, is choosing to follow Michelle Obama’s counsel, “Whey they go low, we go high.”
This is the kind of behavior that has always made America great – again and again, something Trump and his supporters know little about.
My friend’s words inspired me to the point where I have decided to join him in resisting the temptation to treat Trump and his supporters the way they have treated President Obama and his family.
I do so because I care more about the health and well being of our nation than I do about giving them a taste of their own medicine.
But let’s be clear.
Not treating Trump the way he, his supporters, and Republicans in Congress treated President Obama does not mean sitting around the campfire singing Kum-ba-Yah with them.
It only means staying focused on the issues instead of making the kind of personal attacks they made against Obama, and those of us who supported him.
I will not be petty and mean the way they have been. My friend’s words call me to go as high as they went low.
Yet, make no mistake, there are forces at work trying to take our nation to a very dark place, which is why this a time for us not only to be civil, but to be vigilant.
I am sure my friend would agree we need to be both.
Trump and company can count on it.
linnposts.com 