Saturday, January 9, 2021

"I just don't get it"...words from a moderate

 A post on social media is by Ted Muftic, my son:  (Ted is a graduate of  Stanford in international relations and economics and a Harvard MBA, and an international business consultant with experience from  Wall Street to nearly every continent).  His perspective is valued by me and I wanted to share this:

I agree that we should understand the motivations and find a way to address them and work to calm the situation. At the same time, I am white and don't feel villainized at all, so I hope it is not just a race issue or that "MSM" is trying to make this a race issue or that "urbans" are trying to villainize "rurals". What happened in Yugoslavia is that very cynical politicians exploited and enhanced already deep divisions in society along ethnic and religious lines to cement their power and to profit by it. I see many parallels here right now, re: how politicians here seek to divide along race, culture and socio economic lines to profit and consolidate their power.  Our historical racial divisions are obvious and undeniable. What is new is this "culture" war (maybe just code for race) and this information ecosystem which creates two sets of facts and no room for dialogue -- call it political propaganda and extreme tribalism.  We need to address this now or we may be really in trouble.

 I mean,  I really struggle with this. I don't fear the black. I dont fear the brown, I don't fear the Muslim or the Christian or the Jew. I don't fear the rural, I don't fear the 2nd amendment, I don't fear the media, I don't fear the demographic changes in the country, I don't hate our history, I don't hate the elites, I don't fear the poor or the sick or the weak,  or hate the Republicans or fear foreigners or "the illegals" and really don't understand why anyone would. What I fear is an end to this wonderful imperfect democratic experiment which has done a lot of good, created the most prosperous  society the world has ever seen, led the world in creating free democratic societies and has given me and my family so much. I try not to live with any hate in my heart for anyone and welcome everyone and respect our constitution and really believe that "all men are created equal". So I really don't understand why we insist on dividing ourselves and feel so compelled to do so. I just don't get it.


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