Graceful Politics

I wrote to my political representatives this week. I felt like the American Deaf population needed some support in continuing funding for their telephone services. I drafted a letter stating what I felt like, how the current program was a good service to the people, and how if the funding cut by 50%, as was planned, all Deaf telephone interpretation services in the country would go bankrupt.

I said it nicely, with respect for how these people might be feeling that day, and signed it with my credentials as an educated and experienced person on this issue.


I’d like to contrast that respectful communication with a certain phrase that is circulating through popular political commentary: “trying to destroy our Country.” I recently made a comment on a friend’s networking website, and was responded to with the statement “People who are trying to destroy our country deserve to be spoken unkindly about.”

Really? Do you really believe that the people who are on the other side of the bi-partisan spectrum from you are actively trying to “destroy the country?” I hear this phrase repeated in spam emails and by political commentators. Do these people actually believe that when Nancy Pellosi wakes up in the morning, that she immediately begins crafting a plan for how she can nuke Texas? Or that our President is actively trying to introduce flesh-eating piranha into the sewer systems to attack us on the john?

To me it just sounds like an excuse to loose your temper or vilify someone else. And it sounds like its own brand of ignorance.

The people who we ask to make choices for the country are just like you and me. I submit that if you were in their position, you might be doing the same as them: trying to address the problems that you see in society. Our country is nothing if we do not stand together and support our leaders. I see it as the highest mark of maturity to stand up for the Presidency when your candidate lost. If you do not agree with the direction the country is taking, write letters RESPECTFULLY. Lobbying is not mudslinging. And spouting verbal sewage on your couch is not going to make our country a better place.