{"id":6330,"date":"2016-06-19T06:46:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-19T10:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=6330"},"modified":"2016-06-19T06:49:29","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T10:49:29","slug":"redirecting-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=6330","title":{"rendered":"redirecting anger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo-1422558044352-896cd9799885\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The examples are seemingly endless. First is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.): \u201cIf anybody is directly responsible for Orlando, it\u2019s the Republican Party for stymieing all manner of gun control.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Next is Sen. John McCain: \u201cBarack Obama is directly responsible for it because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, Al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama\u2019s failures, utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not omit ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, suggesting Christians are to blame: \u201cYou know what is gross \u2014 your [Christian] thoughts and prayers and Islamophobia after you created this anti-queer climate.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I get it. We\u2019re mad. We\u2019re mad that someone could annihilate the innocent. It makes no sense. To all of us.<\/p>\n

While conversations regarding gun control, Obama\u2019s military strategy, and the truths in Christianity can and should be respectfully had, each of the above arguments directs the anger more at something other\u00a0than the source. As stated in a recent post, we don\u2019t know all the details yet in regard to what happened at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. What we do know is that a Muslim man who claimed loyalty to ISIS, an Islamic terrorist organization that routinely executes homosexuals, took it upon himself to brutally murder 49 more.<\/p>\n

My sense is our most intense anger should be directed at him.<\/p>\n

It concerns me, nonetheless, when we redirect our anger. It\u2019s as if when someone does not match the intensity of our passion, we assume they should be looped into the opposition. It\u2019s as if we\u2019ve changed the idea of \u201cif you’re not for us, you\u2019re against us\u201d to \u201cif you\u2019re not as loud and angry as we are, you are just as bad as them.\u201d<\/p>\n

We seem to keep feeding the growing divide\u2026 the divide that too many of the politically expedient immediately succumb to. I was saddened, I will say, that in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity in Orlando, some of the most prominent politicians attacked their partisan opposition more than focusing on the victims. When we pounce on politics first, we have fed the division more than wrestled with the truth.<\/p>\n

What happened in Orlando was awful. As said here previously, I believe it was the clear manifestation of evil. So regardless of whether you\u2019re a Republican or Democrat (or like the many more seemingly gathering somewhere in the middle),<\/em> whether you\u2019re a card-carrying member of the NRA or desire to abolish the 2nd Amendment, or even if you\u2019re a supporter or not of gay marriage as the law of this land, it doesn\u2019t change the fact that what happened in Orlando was horrendous. And we can each see that regardless of partisan stance.<\/p>\n

Now is not the time to chastise those who don\u2019t share our intensity. Now is not the time to demand that everyone \u201cagree with me\u201d because only \u201cI\u201d know what is right. Now is also, no less, not the time to feed any division.<\/p>\n

What if we could pause long enough to see what we have in common?<\/p>\n

Republicans and Democrats\u2026
\nGay and straight\u2026
\nNRA members and non-members\u2026
\nTrans-bathroom supporters and non-supporters\u2026<\/p>\n

What if we realized that regardless of where each of the above stand on the issues with which they most identify, their hearts still hurt for what happened to those 49 innocent men and women in Orlando?<\/p>\n

What would happen if we took the time to take a deep breath and realize that?<\/p>\n

Maybe, just maybe, we then could wrestle with the truth. Maybe, too, we could heal.<\/p>\n

Respectfully\u2026
\nAR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The examples are seemingly endless. First is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.): \u201cIf anybody is directly responsible for Orlando, it\u2019s the Republican Party for stymieing all manner of gun control.\u201d Next is Sen. John McCain: \u201cBarack Obama is directly responsible for it because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, Al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “redirecting anger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[589],"class_list":["post-6330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-event","category-current-issue","tag-pulse-orlando"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6330"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6335,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330\/revisions\/6335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}