Hurtful

I celebrated for all of 20 delightful minutes last night that my preferred candidate won the election.  That delight has been more than overshadowed by the hurtful things that my friends and family have said about Obama and his supporters in the aftermath of the results.

My mom expressed that she is less than charitable towards people who bought snake oil from the charmer.  What the eff? 

My coworker yesterday (who didn't vote, and admitted he didn't know anything about politics or the issues at hand) told me that Obama scared him.  I told him that Obama reminded me of a friendly neighbor.  He replied with "a friendly neighbor that's going to shoot you!"  I asked him what information provided him with the basis for those comments and he said that he had none.

My mom's best friend (who I've always fondly thought of as a favorite aunt) says it's a sign of the times that the world is ending.  Didn't you hear?  It's this December.  I remember praying during the 2004 election for Bush to win because if he didn't then I believed the world would end.  How ignorant can we conservative religious people be?

One of my Facebook friends posted this: 

"This is a quote from a newspaper friendly to John Adams during the presidential election of 1800:
"If Thomas Jefferson wins, murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced. The air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes. Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames, female chastity violated, and children writhing on a pike?"

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314245/words-don-t-pull-triggers-charles-c-w-cooke#

I've read multiple rephrased but still dramatic versions of this on facebook since last night. The country clearly survived Thomas Jefferson, it survived the past four years, and I think we'll be just fine over the next four years as well."

 

I can understand why people voted for Romney.  I don't think he's a bad person.  I think that he has a different train of thought than I do.  I believe that Romney supporters weighted issues differently than I did.  For me, it was and always will be about social issues.  For awhile I thought about voting Romney because of the belief that he could slash some of our country's debt.  Ultimately it came down to things about equality for me:  in healthcare, in pay between sexes, the DREAM Act and same-sex marriage.  These things weren't important for everyone or not as important or the complete different opinion in the same level of importance.  

I'm hurt that my mother has never asked me why I vote the way I do or that she yells and shuts down when I try to explain.  I am her flesh.  She grew me, birthed me, and raised me.  She instilled me with the beliefs of equality that I have and as such, it is hurtful to me when she thinks that I bought snake oil from a charmer.  If that were true, then the original charmer was my mother, who nursed me on the beliefs that homosexuals were just people like heterosexuals, that women should never be in a position where they cannot better themselves, and who pushed me academically and wondered where her little girl came from when she liked going to school.  I prayed about my decision multiple times and always felt like voting for Obama was okay with my Heavenly Father.

 

Thank you, negativity and sore losership,for making me want to clean the bathroom tub so I can lay in it and sob.