Not surprisingly, those who supported Mitt Romney this past election felt a bitter disappointment at his loss, the same feelings Barack Obama’s supporters would have experienced had he failed in his reelection bid.
Despite their discouragement, some have been willing to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get on with business, without resorting to name calling, making threats, or throwing tantrums.
Others have not been so gracious.
Stephen Baldwin is one of those. In response to the election news, he tweeted that his hope is now in Jesus, not Obama. “God’s wrath is upon the US,” he broadcasted to the world.
Victoria Jackson of “Saturday Night Live” fame has also proven to be one of the less gracious. She announced—again, via Twitter—that Democrats voted God out and replaced “Him” with Romans 1, which she equates with environmentalism and homosexuality. Later she compared Obama to Hitler. “I can’t stop crying,” she tweeted. “America dead.”
Such rantings are difficult to outdo, but some might argue that Donald Trump readily exceeds both Baldwin and Jackson with his tweets:
This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!
Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble…like never before.
Our nation is a once great nation divided!
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
Beijing had a bigger celebration than Chicago last night. The Chinese are happier with the election than we are.
Russian leaders are publicly celebrating Obama’s reelection. They can’t wait to see how flexible Obama will be now.
But Ted Turner has nothing on Ted Nugent, the aging rocker whose hateful rhetoric takes tweeting to a whole new level:
Dear God in heaven America vote Mitt Romney Paul Ryan Republican and save America
Vote for Obama & vote for US Constitution hating SCOTUS crazies
Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America
So Obama still demands the hardest workers provide for the nonwotkers. Shared opportunitiesmy ass
What subhuman varmint believes others must pay for their obesity booze cellphones birthcontrol abortions & lives
Goodluk America u just voted for economic & spiritual suicide. Soulless fools
According to floatingsheep.org, Twitter saw a spike in racially motivated hate speech following the election. After taking a sample of messages, the organization calculated each state’s share of election hate tweets in relation to its total number of tweets. The southeastern US had a much higher rate than the national average, with Mississippi and Alabama at the top of the charts, followed closely by Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
Yet Twitter is not the only social network medium where a disgruntled electorate found its voice. A Texas GOP official, in a Facebook posting, left no uncertainty about his reactions to the election:
We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity. But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity.
A teacher in Columbus, Ohio had a slightly different take on the election, as reflected on her Facebook page:
Congrats to those dependent on government, homosexuals, potheads, JAY-Z fans, non Christians, non taxpayers, illegals, communists, Muslims, planned murder clinics, enemies of America, Satan You WON!
In Turlock, California, a 22-year-old woman posted racially charged remarks on her Facebook page and suggested that perhaps Obama “will get assassinated this term.”
At Hampden-Sydney College, a small all-male school in Virginia, 40 students stood outside the Minority Student Union and shouted racial slurs, threw bottles, and set off fireworks.
At the University of Mississippi in Oxford, 400 gathered to protest the election results, using the opportunity to deliver their own assortment of anti-Obama racial slurs.
It would seem, based on such evidence, that the divisions in this country have grown into an unbridgeable chasm. We castigate opposing views. We vilify those who disagree. We condemn anyone whose beliefs or perspectives or lifestyles contradict our own.
At least that’s how some people behave. Others believe that we have a choice, that we don’t have to respond out of fear, ignorance, intolerance, and hate.
This past September, NPR interviewed Brian McLaren, an influential evangelical minister and author of over 20 books. McLaren plays a principal role in the Emerging Church, a Christian movement that rejects traditional religious institutions in favor of a more open and accepting community that embraces diversity.
In discussing the causes of tension among religions, McLaren says that, contrary to popular belief, it’s not the differences between them that’s the problem:
I’ve become more and more convinced that the real issue is something we all have in common, and that is we build a strong identity among us by emphasizing hostility toward [other religions]. We love to recount the stories of how they persecuted us. We love to talk about the threat they pose to us. And in all these ways, we build this oppositional identity.
McLaren came to believe that his call to love God and love his neighbor was in conflict with what he’d been taught the Bible required him to say and do. And he sees the same attitude in young Christians who have dropped out of the church because they didn’t want to be part of a community that put them in a conflicting relationship with their friends and neighbors. “Ironically, their Christian call to love their neighbors as themselves was in conflict with their experience of living as a Christian and experiencing something other than love with their neighbors.”
McLaren believes that if Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, and the Buddha were to bump into each other on the road, they would go have a cup of tea or something and would treat each other far differently and far better than many of their followers. Church goers routinely claim privy to the ultimate truth while challenging the legitimacy of belief systems other than their own. Yet McLaren feels hopeful about the future:
I think we might be entering into an era where we stop arguing with each other about legitimacy. I think this could be a very exciting new era if we look around and say, thank God for the diversity. This diversification doesn’t have to mean division.
But notions of embracing diversity are nothing new. In 1993, Nancy Coker spoke before the Parliament of the World’s Religions, presenting the theosophical view on diversity. According to Coker: “Theosophy teaches that everything and everyone is holy and divine.”
Coker recounts the story of the student who finds his guru sound asleep with his bare feet propped up on a holy shrine. When the guru wakes up and discovers the student’s consternation, the guru says, “Well, then, put my feet some place that is not holy.”
According to theosophical thinking, an essential unity permeates everything that is, and this unity is fundamental in nature. We are interdependent and related. We are one in essence.
On the physical plane, however, this oneness expresses itself in infinite diversity. And it’s this diversity that challenges our ability to come together. As Coker points out, we have unique histories and visions, but we see these differences as conflicts to be avoided. Yet she believes that, within this spectrum of diversity, we can still foster true community:
Not by denying our differences, hiding behind them, ignoring them, nor respecting them from afar. Perhaps we can start by understanding them and by redefining community as the inner connections, rather than the outer ones, the community of the heart where unity is more truly perceived and no one is excluded. This is where we can begin to answer the age-old question about the responsibility we have towards our community: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”—with the response, “my brother and I are one.”
In the Buddhist tradition, there’s a story about two monks who come to a river and find a woman needing to cross to the other side, but the river is too high for her to make it on her own. She asks the younger monk for help, but he refuses because his sacred vows prevent him from touching a woman. The older monk, however, agrees to carry her across the water. So she climbs on his back, they forge the river, and he deposits her on the other side.
As you might expect, the younger monk is pretty miffed at the older one’s behavior. By the time they arrive at the monastery, the younger one can keep quiet no longer and demands to know how the other monk could have betrayed his vows. The older one says, “Oh, that. She needed help. I carried her. I dropped her off on the other side. You did nothing, yet you continue to carry her on your back.”
There are a number of different versions of this story told within the Buddhist community. And there are a couple of Christian versions as well. In fact, I’ve even seen Taoist and Jewish ones. Same story, same message, different faiths.
The greatest challenge we face right now is not the economy or the environment or health care or any number of other issues. The greatest challenge is the divide that separates us from our neighbors and our communities—and that ultimately separates us from ourselves. Until we come together, little else can be discussed or reasoned, let alone resolved.
Differences are an innate part of life. Diversity is the inherent state of nature. In our refusal to accept them, we carry a burden that grows heavier every day. Yet we are born from the same earth. We dissolve into the same dust. We breathe the same essence. Can it possibly be any other way?