Eight Years of Obama vs. Who knows?

Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

There are a number of people, I’m sure, who like me wondered for eight years how Republicans (and many others not disposed to being identified politically) could muster the energy continually to hate President Obama as much as they did. There was a surfeit of hate, sufficient to spill over even to the present, and it inspired the constant drumbeat of obstruction through his entire tenure, and beyond.

Perhaps now, with, if anything, a more definitive and, if anything, in a strange way a more substantive and self-evident provocation to such dire feelings and the need to resist and hinder in all manner of ways the agenda—malign in our view—we can have a better sense of where such sentiments and the fuel to sustain them derive.

All I’m saying is, if you find yourself wondering, as an increasingly transient and mountingly irrelevant thought – almost a quick dip into an all too brief salutary nostalgia for the bad acts of others, and how superior it makes you feel – how, and where, on earth people found a store of such powerful feelings with an attendant need to express them, ponder no further. Look only to your own human nature. We all have that store. We can debate all we want the rationality of what we will doggedly argue is the sound basis for triggering such malign feelings towards a leader (never mind that it is indeed an almost autonomic response to any politician who doesn’t hew to our individual sense of right and justice). The fact is, there is nothing to agonize over in terms of “understanding” another person’s feelings—too often seemingly the absolute obverse of our own on the same issues.

The problem we are suffering in our divisiveness – and we all play a part; if there’s a division, it’s nearly impossible to stand one’s ground in a space that isn’t defined by the line of discord – is that we spend all too much time straining to resolve our thoughts with those of the opposition, and always failing. The fault is in not recognizing, consciously and mindfully, I would suggest also heroically, that the place of commonality is in our feelings.

You might think that rancor, antagonism, derision, and dismissal are a poor atmosphere for seeking congress, congruence, and eventually compromise. But these are one true commonality we’ve got. On the one side we’ve got Obama, who is no longer in a position to effect the mayhem he was always accused of foisting on an innocent and hoodwinked electorate. On the other Trump, who has long since been declared terminally incompetent to discharge his duties as President, and who is about to push us that one extra measure of distance between us and the abyss.

There is no changing the nature of the agent of our scorn. Let’s put those personalities aside. Before finding a leader, some future Fortinbras, we must first make peace with those with whom we share feelings of malice for the target of our hatred. Then, and only then, maybe we can begin to discuss quietly, if however passionately, our grievances, our personal reasons for disquiet, the antagonists for our malaise at our own condition. Then and only then maybe we will be able to begin to see some other common ground.

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