Have We Been Actually Voting for Contempt and Hate? Are You On One of The Lists?

Sadly, our votes and elections are, whatever our motives,
putting lots of people in positions of power

who – in our names – are

a) not interested in understanding the plight of people on my lists below,

and who are

b) quite willing to do them damage through indifference – and through deliberate public policies of exploitation and direct oppression.

Many of my friends would protest and say it isn’t true –
they don’t hate people; they don’t want to hurt anyone, nor even hold them in contempt.
They love them.

 

They just wish they’d straighten up

and … I don’t know what.

• Not be poor?
• Not be born into economically oppressed inner cities (or stagnating rural areas)?
• Not grow up in an American subculture?
• Not be persecuted?
• Not be abused?
• Talk like the white majority in whatever community they are in?
• Go to church with them?
• Don’t listen to weird music?
• Don’t get arrested for things that white people are doing but don’t get arrested for?

I don’t know what they want, frankly. Maybe they just want to be comfortable in their self-esteem.

But some, of course, are quite willing to express it directly as contempt and are proud of it.

So there IS a LOT of contempt (which sometimes is clearly hate) sloshing around in America for :

• African Americans
• Hispanics
• Native Americans
• Immigrants
• Any darker-skinned people
• Muslims
• etc.

And for white folks

• if they are
• Gay / LGBT
• Under arrest
• Poor
• Single with children
• Working minimum wage jobs (often two or three jobs)
• Women
• Not eager to flaunt guns in public
• Registered Democrats
• etc.

One of the most dangerous things about this is that, historically and in the present,

such contempt often leads to violence and to the disintegration of social order.

That’s serious business.

The Bible repeatedly urges us to take a different attitude. For example:

Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who guards your life know it?
Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?
– Proverbs 24:11,12

They will say that we do not defend the unborn. But had Republicans been willing to work with Democrats on issues of social justice over the last two decades abortions would have declined much more in that time than they actually have.

I’m quite sure more unborn have died because of Republican intransigence and finger-pointing

than would have otherwise been the case. They have not really been very pro-life.

I insist it is a very serious, and Biblical, issue

– that there is a lot of contempt and hatred sloshing around in America, and a lot of it is being promoted by holders of high office – and the people who elect them, Democrats and (mostly) Republicans.

[This is a revision of an article published in Nov, 2014.]

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See also:

• I’ll Vote Neither Trump Nor Clinton: Corrupt, Dangerous, or
• Why Many Christians Do Not Vote Republican
• Hitler Defended Christian Morality and Family Values