What you express should emphasize the “in my opinion” part

Otherwise would you not place yourself in the “my truth is higher than your truth” mode?

Could such be the reason why civility of discussion is dying, or rather, being assassinated by hate language and partisan passion?

Whatever happened to the idea of town meetings as a means toward consensus and agreement in solving pressing problems?

I see where the son of Billy Graham, one Franklin Graham, a reverend (a fictitious title meant to convey that God rides around on his shoulders whispering things to Graham that He doesn’t whisper to lay Christians), says he can “accept” President Obama’s self-revelation as a practicing Christian.

Accept?  As compared to what?

Personally, having read several things Mr. Graham has had to say, I don’t see how the truth of anything hangs on the supposed weight of his “acceptance.” This supposed weight stuff is principally personal fantasy. It pretends to the superiority of one’s personal opinions whether those very  value judgments are naturally developed or mimicked by something read or heard in some broadcast forum. I’ve been there and done that. Most have in some context or another.

These very words I write that are intentionally critical of Mr. Graham’s assumptions of judgmental authority as to Barack Obama’s legitimate Christian practice are in fact only my opinion.

Having followed the personal death and destruction consequences of the previous American Christian In The Whitehouse, I feel as authorized as Mr. Graham apparently does regarding our current president.  I reject the Christian practices and question the genuine Christian values of the previous President who has innocent blood on his hands… but that is only - as is the subject of this writing - “in my opinion.”

 

Those who offer serious criticisms or those who offer silly junior-high putdowns (i.e. a recent young LDS lady’s trip to one of the church’s temples was dampened because the current American President was in the same city) of current political figures  requires a kind of personal validation.

If you are going to talk the talk, what kind of bona fides have you?

What I’m talking about is the immediate impulse to respond in kind when we encounter shoot-from-the-hip political criticisms from people who apparently only recently have acquired a gift of critical thinking. This as compared to a history of so naively or ignorantly staying quiet on the sidelines for the past decade. Even though they voted for previous political figures whose actions have borne fruit that the whole country and its succeeding generations will pay for, I see from those sideline warriors very little record of protest or criticism of what those politicians were doing to the rest of the country.

If the claim is that there was no harm done over the previous presidential terms, then does not that make the wide-eyed tea-drinking panic-stricken shouting about the Democrats currently in office kind of seriously one-sided, woefully un-informed and of questionable legitimacy based on fact?

When eyes go wild and panic proceeds from apparently shallow minds, the response their message generates is not shock and awe and an urge to join the tea-bag revolt.

Rather, it could translate into

“If you are so critical of the current politicos who inherited  political, foreign policy, military and domestic disasters from failed Republicans and their policies, where WERE you when the Republican government was trashing the pottery barn, the hen house, the treasury and the military?”

Honesty requires that we make readers and listeners aware that when we express our opinions we are doing nothing more than exactly that. We are not revealing some previously unknown truth nor making factual what we ourselves would like to believe.

Honesty requires that if we are ever to return to constructive discussion of issues with an intent toward harmony and wise choices, we must acknowledge and admit to what are our opinions, recognize that they are not absolute truths and not try to create truth where a truth may in fact not exist.

Then we stop demanding that the rest start living by our illusions.

I write this from experience and cite myself as what prompted this article.