America is sick with hatred and anger.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love to be themselves, not to bully or argue or twist them to fit our own image.

That is my approach to politics. My well being is not in any way dependent on forcing others to live in my own image.

I look for meaning in different ways. Now I need to look for love in different ways.

Change starts at home.

If we can’t love what others are, then we don’t love them, we are only loving the reflection of ourselves that we find in them.

Thomas Merton wrote that love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.

Patriotism means different things to different people. Right now, patriotism in my mind means thinking of how to make my country less angry and hateful.

Like climate change, it’s too big a thing for one person to take on or conquer, it seems overwhelming.

I will follow my path one day, one person at a time approach. I don’t tell other people what to do; I will work on myself and share what I intend to do.

People can take what they want from that.

Someone wrote the other day that our country had become an incubator of hatred and rage.

There is truth to that.

As a public person who shares his life and opinions openly, I come face to face with that hatred and anger every day. I’ve been writing online and dealing with hostility for years, it has never been this bad. Most of the rage is centered around our politics.

In many ways, this has made me better. I’m beginning to come to terms with it in a way that is healthy for me, and I hope, possibly for other people.

That is the miracle of trouble; it either does you in or makes you better.

I’m hopeful about our country, and I am looking past November towards the coming struggle for a kinder America. That’s the big one as far as I’m concerned.

I’m planning to walk with my better angels there.

This will not be simple, short, or easy.

Hard times give us the chance to define ourselves, to ask who we are and who we wish to be. They can gobble us up or inspire us.

A patriot can fight for his country in all sorts of ways beyond fighting or writing nasty messages on Facebook.

In many ways, the real challenge, the most laborious work for me, begins after the election.

People who want a more compassionate America are fretting about the election, and about the future. I’m not good at fretting.  I will make my future.

For me, it’s not a time to wring my hands. It’s a time to look past Trump and Trumpism – he is finished –  and get to work.  I have hope and faith.

First off, I am working on Active Listening.

I am not telling my African-American friends that I am not a racist or confessing that I am. They are sick of hearing white people patronize them while things get worse.

I want to listen for a while and come to a better understanding of life in what I see is a different world than mine.

Until I understand that, I don’t know what I am.

Secondly, I will continue to refuse to argue my beliefs online with strangers. People are always welcome to disagree with me if they can do so in a civil way. But my blog is a monologue, not a dialogue. I explore and share my feelings and opinions.

I don’t need people to agree with me; I am not bothered if they don’t. I’m not running for office.

I see my role as helping people to think, and if I do that, I am successful, and if I don’t do that, I have failed.

I don’t need to be right, I just need to be honest.

Customer Service. I’m not running for mayor and don’t offer customer service.  Your messages are not relevant to me unless they get me to think. I don’t seek or need your agreement or approval of what I write.

Disagreement is always welcome, so long as it is civil.

My blog and FB page are my online homes, and I don’t permit people to come into my house and insult me.

If my work is not useful to you, you should of course, go somewhere else, not tell me what I should be writing. That never works.

If you need to make a dramatic announcement about it, have fun.

I do not regret the loss of any reader who can’t bear to be disagreed with. That marriage will be short and pointless.

If you write publicly and frequently and authentically, you will piss somebody off at least once a day, probably more. I will continue to work on listening to those complaints. There may be something in them. I need to hear that it will be helpful to me.

I’m learning to take a deep breath, and consider for a bit. It is better for me and for them.

I Won’t Argue With You. When I get a message I feel is offensive or condescending to me (as when people inform me there are typos in my writing and tell me to get an editor), I have learned to wait a few hours or even a day, before responding. I have a temper, and I don’t want to write anything in anger.

Mostly I don’t respond to those messages; I just delete them. Deleting is an important option. If the message is over the top or angry, I don’t enable it by responding. Anger is fuel for many people on social media. If they are deprived of fuel, they go away.

Courteous people deserve a reply if there is time, even if they don’t agree with me, which is also fine.

A Spiritual Life. I continue to believe that as America becomes aspiritual and fixated on money and security, we become angrier and more disconnected from other people. Dogs can’t do everything for us, we have to tend to our own emotions.

I will continue my meditation and spiritual practices, my reading, and sharing what I have found and learn.  The search for a spiritual life is the search to be a better human, it is the search to learn how to care for one another.

We can disagree and still uplift one another and share our spiritual growth.

I have absolutely no interest in arguing with people. We each have to answer to our own Gods.

I am not here to change people’s minds. I’m here to use my own mind to grow and make good and moral choices for myself.

When I think about politics or my country, I never tell other people what to do. This has become so unusual it shocks and flusters the people who have come to confuse argument with thought.

President Trump is complicit in this trouble. He uses social media to promote hatred and false information, he supports violent extremists in almost every way he can and supports white nationalists who want to keep America white.

I’ve always disagreed with some of his policies and agreed with others. But the pressure on him now is turning him to the dark side, and that is promoting tremendous hostility and fury.

I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

That so many Americans cheer him on in this way is disheartening for me, but it just inspires me to want to be better and be different. That is not a movement I wish to join.

Many of us have lost the belief in the right of people to think as they wish. We have lost the ability to trust our leaders.

We call strangers names and scoff at their motives and moan about what’s happening to our country.

Free thought is a kind of treason now, a betrayal of some kind, which is heartbreaking for the birthplace of democracy.

I ask myself what it is that I need to do, not what you need to do.

I am not good enough to tell others what to do.

I believe that I will not only have to face up to race and the ghosts of slavery,  I will also have to face up to the mounting damage unchecked and unmoderated social media is doing to our country, our legislative system,  and to our own individual emotional health.

Facebook and Twitter and countless websites and mailing lists are a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, division, terrorism, and lies. They make billions of dollars for their owners and investors, every penny comes right out of our democratic way of life.

I want to be open and say I am considering leaving Facebook and Twitter and publishing my blog as an independent entity, which is what it has always been. That would mean canceling my membership to Facebook and making sure people who want to read the blog have full and free access to it.

That is doable.

If I do this, it will be after the election. A lot of new readers have come to me on Facebook. Many share my work there and some have joined the Army Of Good. I think I’ll have to leave Facebook at some point but now is not the right time.

FYI: people can always sign up to receive the blog as an e-mail every morning, whether I stay on Facebook or not. Just type in your e-mail and hit “submit.” You can cancel at any time and the blog is, has always been and will always be free.

Almost every hateful or deranged message I get comes via Facebook, and even Coca-Cola has withdrawn its ads because Facebook refuses to control or eliminate hate speech and demonstrably false and divisive political advertising.

I’m coming to see it as a poisonous and destructive environment, even though leaving it could deprive me of a chance to widen my audience.

But at every point in my life, I have to look in the mirror and like what I see. That rule is guiding me well now.

I don’t think social media is healthy in its current form, and if the people running it won’t take responsibility for the content they profit off of, I don’t need to be a part of it.

Stay tuned.

The journalism culture in which I once worked for was far from perfect, but we were held accountable for what we wrote. There were ethical and other standards that were set, outlined, and enforced.

People on social media seem to me to be teaching themselves how to hate free speech and thought, rather than learn how to be free.

My politics are how I live, not what I say.

That’s one thing I can do. There are others.

I am learning to be more patient.

I  never argue my beliefs with strangers online. It is corrosive and unhealthy. My beliefs stand or fall on their own. They have a right to live. So do yours. If you don’t like my blog, start your own and send your own message into the light.

There are many bright spots in my life, they have withstood the test of hate and anger. Maria, the farm, my blog, the dogs and animals, my pictures.

It turns out, much to my surprise, that I am good at doing good. I will continue with my work at Bishop Maginn High School and with the elderly people at the Mansion Medicaid Assisted Care Facility.

More than any other thing, this has been a bulwark against the rising tide of fear, anger, and judgment that if the other pandemic threatening our country.

I know I can do better, and if I can do better – I have been such a mess in my life – I know other people can as well.

And yes, there is the question of love. I lost it in my life and got it back, I will never again underestimate its importance.

I believe love can help guide me through these choppy waters.

Love has made me gentler, kinder, and more compassionate. It has helped me to heal. I have learned these past few years that people are good, given the chance.

We all want to love, at least most of us do.

I believe that is a more powerful force in life than the left or the right.