Still In Shock?

Another one of my rants--but it is not pro or con on the Trump/Clinton matter. I am just upset at what I am seeing happen around me!

November was an insane month.. I was not as dismayed as many by the results of the election although I was very surprised.  What has shocked me was the eruption of violence and viciousness. That has frankly left me reeling! I have cut way back on my Facebook activity because many people that I have thought of as friends have become almost unrecognizable with their rants and vituperative spews of hatred! These are people who claim to be all for peace, love, harmony and being nice! I will freely admit that Donald Trump comes across as a jerk but this tsunami of rage and 'fear' and "we cannot let this happen" leaves me troubled, shocked and very concerned.

I am shaking my head and trying to understand. I am a far cry from "Christian Right" and certainly not what they are calling Alt Right. and consider myself mostly middle-of-the-road on most issues or more or less fiscally conservative and socially liberal but this over the top reaction in many places leaves me dumbfounded.  There has got to be a happy medium between the extremes of Left and Right, Red and Blue or however you want to label them.

The way I see it, both extremes, have been brainwashed by the portions of the media which cater to  those opposite ends of the political spectrum. They believe literally ""everything"" said on Fox News or CNN etc.  The candidate of the opposition is satan incarnate and will surely bring death and destruction and unmentionable horrors if they were allowed to take office.  Give me a break!!!

We have been bouncing back and forth between Democrat and Republican administrations since my first time voting in 1964 when I cast my ballot of LBJ. So far the world has not ended; some things have gone  on under both sides that I was not happy with and felt did not make either me or the whole country better off  but the sun still rose and set and basically life went on pretty much as it always had. This is why I cannot understand the hysteria that has blown up like a volcano.

There is no question that America is deeply divided--roughly 50-50 between the liberal and conservative camps. (Somehow Democrat and Republican do not seem to have much meaning anymore.)  To oversimplify, the former deeply distrust free enterprise and business in general and feel that people are incapable of taking proper care of themselves, each other and the earth itself so the government must step in and micro-manage almost everything. On the other side, the people deeply distrust government at all except the most basic local level and resist any effort to direct, control or limit their freedom of speech, action, reckless behavior or resistance to the current mantra of diversity/inclusiveness that the Liberals deem sacred.

It has become almost the classic rock and hard place--there is no middle except to get smashed flat between these two implacable resisting forces.  And that is where I am. It is not comfortable  I do not want to have to shut out friends who lean strongly to one side or the other but the noise is making my head and heart ache. I am truly sick of the extremes of political correctness and I DO NOT think anyone has a sacred right to never be offended. I am offended often and somehow manage not to need therapy, counselling, protection or --perish the thought--violent protesting to salve my wound!

I cannot help but feel that various minority groups and special interests are being used in a most callus way by the Leftist Establishment to create disruption and to deepen the fractures in our country as much and as quickly as they can. I can theorize the reasons but I really do not know--only know what I see.  They are making issues of non-issues and convincing many people that these things are really important when jobs, national security, the economy, the real environmental issues and similar matters are swept under the rug and ignored. In the dying days of the Roman empire, the government used "bread and circuses" (ie-lions versus Christians and gladiator-slaves fighting to the death) to distract the people. Now we have pro sports, flashy celebrities, and non-issues to do the same thing so WE fiddle while Rome--or our country--burns.