It has been a hard week. It is hard not to fall into depression at the concentrated and violent hatred I have seen expressed. It's worse to see the deep divisions among my friends.
However, it has all been through the media, especially social media. What I have personally seen has been amazing in the other direction. In person, people are so much more polite than on social media!
For example, we just spent several days in New York City. New York is like Paris, apparently. Both have a reputation for being rude and unfriendly. But when we went to Paris a few years ago, we found that in 99.9% of our encounters people were friendly, patient, and helpful.
So it was with New York. We stayed in three hotels, and visited several different parts of the city. We saw strangers helping strangers, people reaching out to one another. We saw smiles, and heard friendly greetings everywhere. We overheard politically-charged, random conversations that were measured, reasonable, and willing to give others the benefit of the doubt. "Please," "thank you," and other forms of polite social interaction abounded, and—in marked contrast to social media—profanity and angry words were almost nil.
There is much more good out there than we think, and it's not limited to our own social circles and to those who agree with us.
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Category Politics Random Musings
