It occurred to me today that the chasms are many, and they all seem so wide.

Yesterday, on a run, I ran by a business that put up a pro-presidential candidate banner, stretching from one side edge of the front of the business to the other side edge. The banner suggested that one ought to vote for a certain candidate in order to make members of the opposite political party cry.

Now, before you jump to conclusions about what the sign might say (unless you actually know which sign I’m talking about), let me say this, I’ve seen pro-campaign propaganda for the party opposite from the party whose candidate was being advertised on this business banner, and the pro-campaign propaganda on the opposite side is just as bad. Just as offensive. Just as disparaging.

I just don’t know how we got to this place. There is so much hate.

* * *

If you’ve read a decent number of the post that I’ve put up since April 22nd, then you should know where I’m standing politically right now, and I’m not going to go into rehashing that, in case you haven’t been reading. But, to say that I have never been so unaffiliated with either political party is probably the truest statement that I’ll make on the subject. Part of the reason that I feel disenfranchised by the two-party political system in America is all of the hate.

I keep seeing this meme on Pinterest; maybe you’ve seen it, too. It’s a picture of JFK (a prominent Democrat) standing next to Dwight Eisenhower (a prominent Republic), and the two of them seem to be pleasantly enjoying each other’s company. The meme, alongside the picture, talks about the good ol’ days when people didn’t use to hate political parties so much, back in the days when we were all united as “We The People”, blah, blah, blah.

So, the first step is to imagine that there was a time when partisan politics wasn’t a major impediment to progress in the United States.

Once you are there, the questions then becomes, “At what point did we move from being a country where partisan politics wasn’t a destructive force, to the place where we are now, occupying our opposite sides of a line drawn in the sand?”

* * *

Today, I involved myself in a political conversation with a woman with whom I work. We normally wouldn’t have much to talk about, when it comes to politics. She’s a little bit too far to the left for me to have much to say to, politically.

But, as the conversation progressed, it wasn’t like that.

In our discussion, I discovered that she isn’t that different from me –> she’s most certainly further left than me, but not as much as I would have thought before we talked today.

THAT’S PART OF THE STORY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THEY’VE GOT US THINKING THAT WE ARE ENEMIES, WHEN WE’RE NOT THAT DIFFERENT.

* * *

Hate is extremist. Extremist Democrats hate. Extremist Republicans hate. Extremist Whites hate, as do Extremist Blacks.

While most people aren’t going to go to the extreme of ‘hating’ someone, the extremists (by definition) will.

If hate is extremist, where does that put love? Is love extreme?

I believe that it is.

And, the funny thing about the extremes is this: there aren’t that many people out there, in the extremes.

Take, for example, a bell curve. If you don’t know what a bell curve is, Google it.

In Psychology class, with my high school students, we study the bell curve as a way of plotting the frequency of any particular characteristic within a population of people. I teach my students that the bell curve, which starts at a low level of frequency at one end (or extreme) and results in an equally low level of frequency at the other end (or extreme), is populated by the most people in a moderate range between either extremes.

The people who want to turn America into a new, twenty-first century socialist experiment; there’s like twenty of them in the whole nation and you don’t know any of them so stop freaking out about a socialist left that doesn’t actually have any foothold.

The people who want to turn America into an authoritarian regime of fascism; there’s like twenty of them in the whole nation and you don’t know any of them so stop freaking out about a fascist right that doesn’t actually have any foothold.

Here’s the truth –> the Democrats aren’t as far left as the Republicans would imagine them, just as the Republicans aren’t as far right as the Democrats would imagine them. Check out a bell curve when you get a chance.

* * *

Up above, when I wrote that I think that hate and love are both pretty extreme, it occurred to me that, when I was a kid, I ended up at a lot more funerals than what I think your normal kid ends up at.

At each of these unfortunate family reunions, I struggled with my appropriate emotional response, especially in those situations where some ancient and/or distant relative of mine had died, and I was at their funeral.

Truth be told, in at least a couple of these situations, I honestly didn’t care one way or the other if this particular person was dead.

How awful is that to say!

I tried sometimes, at funerals as a kid, to force myself to cry for the dead people who’d had no effect on me at all, mostly because I thought that the other people at the funeral were expecting me to do so. Those tears, of course, never came. Do you know why?

If love is extreme and hate is extreme, what most of us tend to live in, most of the time, is apathy.

As offensive as this might sound, and as tempted as you might be to lash out at me for saying something like this, let me ask you, “How many people do you love, whose deaths would be ultimately devastating to you? Add to that, the number of people that you hate. Compare that total number to the number of people for whom you’d be hard-pressed to feel very emotional at all at their funeral.”

Remember the bell curve.

In light of this, it’s important to note that a war is being waged, in society, right now. The goal of the war is to get us to hate more or to love more. Since the majority of people would tend to be moderates, since that’s the definition of a normal distribution, we might love a few people and hate a few people, but we have an opportunity to show love to enough people to tip the scales in the proper direction.

Who will decide? You will.