A frequent letter writer to this newspaper often presents a dire picture of our country by complaining of grievous wrongs committed by the party he does not align with. He then stokes fear and anxiety by presenting the people holding opposing views in a threatening, hyper-partisan light.
I have lived and practiced Psychology in Fayette County for the majority of my adult life, and I see little to fear from my neighbors.
The average Republican isn’t a fascist who hates immigrants and people of color and advocates the violent overthrow of democracy.
The average Democrat doesn’t wish to eliminate the police or turn our country into a socialist state on the order of China or Venezuela.
The average Christian doesn’t want to adopt President Trump’s morality or execute homosexuals.
When I look around, I see a community of people who are very decent and respectful of one another, not a bunch of opposing tribes wanting to bash the other. People from every point on the political spectrum want a safe and prosperous country, a better life for their children, and camaraderie with their neighbors.
So next time you have a few minutes, resist turning on cable news or clicking the internet site that bolsters your political ideology.
Instead, walk around your neighborhood and talk with the guy trimming his hedges or the lady out walking her dog — even the person who displayed a political sign for the other party. You’ll be surprised how much you have in common, and (gasp!) you’ll probably like each other.
David Aycock
Fayetteville, Ga.
Wait, is the point of this letter that the fears Trey has and promulgates aren’t real because his neighbors — Republicans and Democrats — are actually nice people? I wish that were true! If nice neighbors meant your country couldn’t be taken over by fascists … I don’t know, I think a lot of fascist states wouldn’t have existed.
The neighbors were nice in pre-WWII Germany; they just wanted their country to be great again, and then they somehow elected a genocidal leader whose forces and policies massacred millions. As Suz points out, the neighbors are nice in Peachtree City, but their country wanted to be great again and somehow elected a man who found good people “on both sides” of white supremacism, who called African nations sh*thole countries, who tore families apart at the Southern border and pushed America down the road to fascism, and whose lies, policies and behavior contributed to the deaths of half a million people from COVID-19. Just having nice neighbors doesn’t mean your fears about the USA becoming authoritarian or fascist are unfounded.
And if this is true, then probably just the existence of nice neighbors doesn’t mean Trey’s fears of … whatever it is he fears, America becoming an atheist, communist nation? … aren’t real. I think my fears of authoritarianism/fascism are more grounded in reality than Trey’s fears of communism/godlessness, but the existence of nice neighbors doesn’t weigh on either side, does it?
Nothing against all the nice neighbors in PTC. I am sure everyone would feel more hopeful and optimistic if they were friendly with their nice neighbors.
All true but what we cannot ignore is the fact that these good people vote and their votes for local and national candidates matter. When people write about the dystopia that we seem to be heading toward (choose your favorite one), they are writing to convince these good people to consider the consequences of their votes. When the lies of one side are repeatedly debunked and definitions of words are changed to leverage power, its incumbent upon voters to not blindly select a candidate based upon party affiliation. And finally, the social issue stances espoused by the two parties could not be more contrasting, so when you vote for a candidate whose party (for example) supports abortion right up to birth, you are supporting that policy even if you personally would not choose to do that.
ptcalf–
I was thinking much the same thing.
I know churches that are filled with lovely, decent people; wonderful neighbors. And I am grateful for every one of them.
Yet I know they listen to The Beatitudes, and The New Commandment, and the parables teaching, “Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was Me–you did it to Me”…and yet they voted for a candidate who urged we build a wall at the border to turn away those fleeing to us for help.
I daresay most would agree–including myself–that life is “safe and prosperous” in Peachtree City with a sweet “camaraderie with
their neighbors”. How fortunate we are.
I also believe this life should be equally enjoyed by all people.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
I have yet to meet a single democrat who supports abortion “right up until birth”. You are missing the point of the article which says the majority of Americans don’t follow these extreme views.
I’m sure you haven’t met them in person. But that doesn’t change the fact that many democrats are supportive not only of late term abortion, but also post-birth infanticide.
Go look at the roll call vote on US Senate Bill 311 from February of 2019, which was intended to outlaw doctors letting children die after being born alive following a botched abortion attempt. 44 Democrats voted to oppose it. 44.
By contrast, you as an ordinary person with no medical training can be charged with negligent homicide if you fail to render aid to a person who is in distress and subsequently dies.
Abortion is killing. Full stop.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that many democrats are supportive not only of late term abortion, but also post-birth infanticide.”
Are you serious? How could someone really believe that “many democrats” support “post-birth infanticide”? What an absurd claim.
Balin – It is difficult to imagine that anyone believes this tripe. However, if you can spare a few IQ points, tune in to Tucker Carlson’s show one night on Fox News. You’ll hear the most ludicrous falsehoods masquerading as “facts.” Just as in computing, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
You were making some great points, until you showed your true colors. Ted Cruz, followed up by the Loser-in-Chief, made these wild and unfounded claims based on a 2019 Virginia law. I won’t bore you with the details, you’re an adult with the ability to read, which is why someone saying something so baseless and ignorant is concerning. Trey Hoffman is a pallid imitation of Trump, regurgitating rhetoric and fear mongering, propagating half truths and outright lies. He is an enemy of democracy, as is anyone so willing to ignore truth.
It’s interesting that more than 6 months after Trump left office, people on the extreme hard left are still suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It’s also amazing that they continue to be wrong. For example, two separate analyses show that far from being a “fear monger”, Trump’s tweets were at a minimum neutral on average, and for the most part were positive. The lowest score came from a program called VADER which uses AI to analyze the text of Trumps public statements, and determined that on a scaled rating system of -1 to 1, Trump was near the center at just above zero. (“What We Learned About The Mood Of Trump’s Tweets”, Danielle Kurzleben, NPR). The other using open source software determined that 51% of Trump’s tweets were positive, 27% were neutral, and only 22% were negative (“Sentiment analysis on Trump’s tweets using Python”, Rodolfo Ferraro).
The truth is that normal people in America have had to put up with four years histrionics, hyperbolic statements, misrepresentations, and lies about Trump. And many people were gaslighting into believing that if they just didn’t openly support Trump, the madness will go away.
And yet here you are, still spewing venom. Trump is not in office anymore. You need to get over him. And you need to start addressing Biden’s rhetoric and possible mental instability. Because between stating that minorities aren’t smart enough to get id’s or vote, threatening to nuke and bomb Americans who assert gun rights, and needing to refer to note cards merely to response to simple unscripted questions, the guy is turning into a global embarrassment.
Fear Monger? Like shouting Jim Crow, or saying build a wall to prevent immigration?. Maybe yell white supremacy and remove health care?
Hi brewster–
The examples you list sound more like conservative policies than
fear mongering.
And I suppose supporters of these could respond with a list of progressive offenses just as egregious to them.
Personally, I have found that fear mongering only works if I allow it to alarm me. And a decision based on fear is almost always horribly regrettable.
Personally I do my best to love boldly; and I vote bravely–that is, I vote my morals, not my fears for myself.
And my morals tell me we are all brothers and sisters with One very good Father/Mother.
That assurance tends to dispel all other fears.
I do believe in Spooks! I do believe in Spooks! I do! I do! I do! I do believe in Spooks!
Forgive me, Brewster…
I don’t understand what your response means.
No offense was intended on my part.
Suz – Bruce is quoting the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz. His oblique references often are idiosyncratic, and he rarely constructs a coherent argument to elucidate his position on anything.
His responses do provide an interesting Rorschach for an evangelical Christian who merely skims the surface of life. I hope he continues to post.
Say what you will about the mental fitness of the 45th president, but never fail to acknowledge his thorough understanding of his sycophants. In January 2016 while on the Iowa campaign trail, he presciently stated, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
Incredibly, five years later on January 6, 2021, he held a “stop the steal” rally blocks from the U.S. Capitol complaining that the election was stolen from him. A large number of attending supporters marched straightway from that rally and stormed the Capitol building, killing a peace officer.
Fulfilling Trump’s prophecy, conservatives, like citizen Andy here, ignore the obvious proximate cause of the insurrection – even admitted by the insurrectionists themselves – in favor of parsing the exact words Trump used at the rally in an anemic attempt to exonerate him.
It’s a bit like watching the ending of Casablanca. Captain Renault (Claude Rains) watches Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) shoot the German officer. He then exclaims, “Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.”
How horribly confining it must be to hold an inflexible ideology that requires constantly bending reality!
Thanks for demonstrating that you can’t help yourself. You demonstrated my point precisely.
Thanks for yet another sesquipedalian post STF, I’m sure Noah is proud. True, I rarely argue a position because my enjoyment is commenting on commentators. I have never read a letter to the editor, especially Trey’s, but boy are the posts entertaining. Suz, what sparked the Lion quote was you said yelling Jim Crow, especially in the south, was not fear mongering. I believe that phrase is used to deliberately arouse public fear, so the quote was to help ease that fear.
Thank you both, Stranger and Brewster, for the clarification.
And for your patience.
Hiya PTCitizen–
Feel free to add me to your list of those (along with Stranger Than Fiction) who find 6 months insufficient to recover from 5 years of horror.
Every single morning I would wake and wonder not what our President had done, but rather how inhumane
his latest deed was. Not to mention how crudely he would inform the country about it.
Would it be another Charlottesville?
Would he bolster the travel ban on Muslim majority countries?
Would the military disallow troops because of sexual/gender identity?
While he pardoned brutal war criminals who targeted civilians?
Would he insult our allies and initiate another unseemly bromance with a dictator?
Would he lift another ban decimating pristine or sacred land?
Would he continue to upbraid the peaceful protests of the NFL players, pointing to the systematic racism we saw unfold in the final minutes of George Floyd’s life?
And would we hear about yet another murder by law enforcement officers again that day?
This is how we lived for 4 years.
And how did it finally end–by an attempted insurrection and overthrow of our election.
Oh, there is someone else for your list who doesn’t think we should forget so quickly–the curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
They will preserve and display the blue suit belonging to Representative Andy Kim (D–NJ).
After 8 hours barricaded in his office, Mr. Kim emerged Jan 7th.
He was heart-broken to find the floor of the Capitol rotunda covered with garbage, litter, bottles, broken glass, and cigarette butts put out on the statues. On his knees, with a plastic bag, he began picking up
the debris.
Perhaps it is just as well that we hold onto those feelings; at least until we have gathered all the garbage Trump’s policies have left, repaired the damage, and make sure it will never happen again.
I truly wish these 6 months had been long enough.
It’s really telling how easily you’re manipulated into a state of pathological neuroses. But not by Trump. Rather, by your own media consumption. The Andy Kim viral photo is a perfect example. It didn’t even occur to you that it was staged. And much like every other made-for-TV crisis between 2016 and 2020 that you enumerated above, you were glued to whatever news outlet reinforced your own ideological bent. The facts were irrelevant. It’s how you feel about it that matters.
But hey… we no longer have mean tweets. Just $3/gal gas which is making it impossible for people to afford to get to work. Well done.
PTCitizen–
I seem to be making real headway–from heretical to a state of pathological neurosis!
May I ask, which of the crisis I enumerated do you feel were staged?
Shameful and regrettable,
yes; but quite well documented.
And in passing, it was a very abridged list of the atrocities we all endured, if we are being honest.
As to your closing quip,
I’ll just paraphrase Holy Scripture in hearkening back to my heretical status–
“For what shall it profit a man if he shall pay for $2/gal gasoline, and lose his soul?”
Wow Suz, what a powerful enumeration of some of the many low points of the failed Trump presidency. It makes me so grateful those days are over!
PTCitizen, I took you for someone smart enough to realize the president doesn’t control the price of gasoline? Check Snopes, Politifact, or even just Google for an explanation of how gas prices always rise in the summer (summer gas has additives not needed in cooler weather? Who knew?) — and of course compared to last year prices seem high because so many fewer people were driving anywhere last year, etc).
But even if you would rather live in a fascist state or an oligarchy and have lower gas prices so you can afford to drive to work — should it be said of us as it was of Mussolini’s Italy that, in general, trains ran on time? — wouldn’t it be better if there were better public transit and more environmentally friendly transport than cars burning fossil fuels? But that seems to be something conservatives find anathema.
Someone that I heard about in Alabama is having a financial meltdown. Should I seek ‘psychological intervention’ for – well, um – MYSELF? I am a DISGRUNTLED ‘INDEPENDENT’ – for the time being and the foreseeable future anyway. 🥵
If you had submitted the final 3 paragraphs alone, this letter would have been absolutely perfect.