Lord, do I hate the Left and the Right, and what they both are doing to my country and my mind, and the way in which they pollute and corrupt the very air we breathe. A pox on them, may the cherubs swoop down from heaven and sting all their cheeks.

I really hate very few things in the world these days, a monumental and welcome evolution for me.

I’m with Dr. King, I’ve  decided to stick to love, hate is just too great a burden to bear, and I’m no good at it. It does seem I am quite out of sync with much of my country and many of my readers.

But I do truly hate the Left and the Right and I hope they devour one another completely, as many are beginning to do.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to people who think differently from  me, expressing my sorrow at the attacks on Sarah Huckabee Sanders the other night, and  exploring my idea of walking more gently and softly in the world. I wanted to tell them they are welcome to read my blog, it is not important to me to be agreed with (blessedly). I have always learned more from people who disagree with me than from anyone.

I’ve learned this year that trying to do good is quite selfish. It feels so much better than hatred or anger and the perpetual argument and dogma that passes for conversation online, on TV and all over Washington. Such a simple idea, walking gently, and  so elusive.

Unlike any other animal on the earth, something about the human loves to hate. I see I’m writing some sappy stuff lately, only the canned and mindless rhetoric of the Left and the Right could get me to do that, I think they are breaking me down.

I was inspired to write the piece by the controversy over comedian Michelle Wolf’s very personal riff on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. I found the skit unnecessarily cruel and harsh. I like Wolf and her biting comedy, it usually is funny. But the other night, it just seemed mean to me.

It made me uncomfortable, which satire and comedy sometimes does, and sometimes should do. It totally obscured the notion of a free and independent press, which was allegedly the point of the whole night.

For me, it just went too far, especially with the invited target just a few feet away and with no place to run or hide.

I won’t be coy, I didn’t expect my somewhat  woo-woo post would end the deepening polarization and argument in our world, but I thought it might at least get someone to think or talk about being gentler. I’m getting soft in the head, worn down by yelling and self-righteousness.  My post  was a kind of gentle lament about the endless controversies engulfing our country, the idea that there are only two ways to look at the world, it is rubbing our sensibilities raw and separating us from one another.

And so I needed to say I was sorry about it, a narcissistic impulse, I suppose. I wanted people who think differently to stay around me, they are precious.

But I mean, who cares what I think about it all? Even the dogs yawn when I write sometimes.

But you know what? People do care, although not necessarily in the ways I might like.

I was quickly disabused by my sappy musing,  my Thomas Merton’ish  (you, sir, are no Thomas Merton, and he would not have lasted an hour on Facebook)  rumination by the first post on Facebook, it was from Nancy, a warrior of the Left, she was having none of it. She loved the comedy skit, every word.

“You don’t get to clutch your pearls with one hand, and enable a pussy-grabbing, neo-Nazi apologizing, money-launderer for the Russian mob with the other.”

Well, so much for soft talking.

I liked the writing, but given her tone and sweep,  it got my back up a bit. I am no  Dalai Lama.

I said I couldn’t really tell the difference from the endlessly vicious tweets coming out of the White House and Nancy’s description of Trumpism. “He had it coming, so let’s get her,” didn’t quite work as an argument for me, it reminded me of Middle School, which I really hated.

To me,  Nancy’s comment was the very expression of elitism, an assumption of moral superiority, an indirect but very clear swipe at more than half of the country, which includes many of my friends and neighbors.

I live in  Trump Land. I remember all those Trump signs sprouting up like dandelions.

I do not exactly accurately reflect the politics of my town, but the people I know here are not Nazi’s or money launderers, or sexual predators or bigots. Almost all of them voted for Donald Trump. I have learned a lot from listening to them this year rather than calling them names.

As I have come to know them, they are good and hard-working and law-abiding people who feel angry and left behind and are struggling all the time to stay afloat. They make me feel welcome her, carry things to my car, open doors for me, invite me to dinner, grumble about the weather. They want this too old trap they are in to change, for them and their children.

This week, all of the restaurants in my town are empty because it’s a bit colder than usual at this time of year, and people have had to go out and buy one more cord of firewood and order another tankful of heating oil and propane.

Every waitress in town knows that there is nothing left over for a hamburger with the kids on Friday night. One more cord of wood, one more tank of oil  makes a big difference here.

I told Nancy we didn’t do The Nasty on my web and Facebook pages and blog, that was sort of the point of my piece, I told her to take it elsewhere. She was, of course,  outraged and indignant said she was going elsewhere and never returning. She said she was a loyal and long-time reader of mine. I guess not.

She was clearly not into the mushy stuff I was writing, she wanted to stick her fork right in somebody’s thieving, Nazi, money-laundering neck. Look how much good that has done for us, I thought.

I said she was always welcome to come back, just not to be nasty. She will not come back.

Then another woman complained that I was undermining my own argument, “attacking” a stranger on Facebook. I had no right to disagree with someone jeering at my own ideas.

Then the shock troops, the very vigilant guardians of the Left and the Right arrived – they must have the ability to send secret signals to one another – my naive and woo wood lament was quickly engulfed in the canned Left/Right arguments and cant that now consume any public discussion about any subject anywhere in America.

So there were all these digital squabbles breaking out on my Facebook Page, like a tailgate party after a football game, the very things I was saying I hope to get away from and had never been a part of, he-said, she-said, but they did it, so we can do it, and nyaaaah, nyaaaah, and blah-blah-blah. Is it just me, or this loud noise which says nothing bothering anybody else? And here, I invited it right into my digital home.

I welcome  you into my small world where we might be able to start a new tradition of listening and civility which might become a meme, a digital virus that spreads across the Internet. It could happen. Look what Thomas Paine did with a pamphlet.

Think of the irony of it, my pathetic little argument for being softer draws  all kinds of hard responses, suddenly there’s hate like flies on honey all over my Facebook page.

Here’s where we are: not being cruel is now controversial, we can’t agree on it.

Because Donald Trump composes hateful tweets, it is now acceptable to be as cruel and angry as we want, one bad turn deserves another. It doesn’t take Einstein to figure out where this ultimately must end. Just look at Congress, all locked together in their deadly dance. They even go after the Pastor for Pastoring.

I told Nancy I really couldn’t tell the difference between her words and those uttered by our Tweety BIrd President, whom, I should say in the interest of openness, that, I don’t much care for.

So I hate the Left and the Right, in part for making me hate the Left and the Right.

These two narrow and failed labels and ideologies are a scourge upon the earth, a way for people to not think and stop listening or talking to one another.

I hope to be struck down by lightning if I ever put a label on myself announcing to the world that I no longer have to think, only react.

I am often unsuccessful and foolish, but I never quit and do not unravel. I’ve seen a lot in my lengthening life, I have the skin of a Tyrannosaurus.

I am sorry to read and see such cruelty as I saw the other night, I hope I can keep my pledge to walk softly and gently on the earth. I’m heading the other way than Nancy.

Nancy, wherever you are, my blog will be a sore test of your values, and perhaps you are wise for getting away from it. I’m sorry about that too.

But you are not someone I hate.