When
I first read this headline, I thought to myself, “Well now this kid has been
kicked out of college and will hang around with other racist, homophobic or
bigoted people like himself and will never learn tolerance, understanding or
how to control himself in pubic.”
Somehow, I don’t think the punishment fit the crime. It’s not disciplinary unless we seek to reverse
a negative action into a positive change.
Then
I got to thinking, this is a perfect example of where our current society has
migrated—hateful actions will bring about other hateful actions. This is the type of situation where a young
man who might have had an opportunity to educate himself, had a reasonable and
just discipline for his actions, will now – quite possibly—find a weapon and lash
out on unsuspecting bystanders.
I
really hate what we’ve all become. And I
use the word “we” sparingly, and include myself because there are times I am so
despondent and so fed-up with political acts of revenge and exclusion, that I
just want to rip someone’s head off.
But, of course, I don’t. Instead
I put myself in this myopic space looking only for “the good” until “the bad”
feeling passes.
From the “Pause,” journalist
Ezra Klein talks with Krista Tippett about “Why we are so polarized?” He says, “We need to build a politics where
one of our aims is the participation and respect, we give to each other. That
doesn’t mean a politics where the fights aren’t hard-fought or the stakes
aren’t high or everything is compromised down for no reason … but we need to be
looking to pull people into the process, and we need to be looking to pull
people back from the ledge.”
The podcast: https://onbeing.org/programs/ezra-klein-how-we-walked-into-this-and-how-we-can-walk-out/
Comments welcome --
