That\u2019s why one of your more recent articles came as a complete and utter shock to me. Not because I disagree with the stance you took, nor do I agree completely. That\u2019s not relevant to this letter, though.<\/p>\n
What surprised me was how wrong my assumptions were. I skimmed through the topics while walking to my car and thought I knew what was printed on the page before even reading it. Afterwards, I knew people would be unhappy about what actually was printed on the page. I knew that people would be offended. Some genuinely, and others offended by the mere thought of possibly offending. Low and behold, people responded as usual.<\/p>\n
I found your response to be gracious, bold, and meaningful. While I can\u2019t speak to the responses you received personally, a few things I\u2019ve seen and heard, among current events, have compelled me to voice my own opinion.<\/p>\n
It seems as though the ones most vocal, the ones denouncing hate and condemning division, are the ones being the most hateful which is only further driving the wedge. The moment people started thinking any other view is unacceptable is the moment when presenting an honest opinion became worthy of shame and nothing more. The moment that generalizing an idea as \u201chateful\u201d became an acceptable way to debate our peers is the moment the conversation died out. And that\u2019s the problem. People don\u2019t debate anything anymore. It\u2019s much easier to hurl an insult and claim discrimination, avoiding any real discussion. It\u2019s much easier to deny an inconvenient truth than to face the reality that some people might be offended, no matter what you do. It\u2019s much easier to believe that people who think differently than you are fundamentally wrong on the basis of prejudice rather than having to use your brain defending your own position.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s just one problem with the easy route. Those people who have seemingly been silenced by a wide range of \u201c-ism\u201d and \u201c-phobia\u201d spoke volumes in the voting booth, and who knew? Maybe, just maybe, we weren\u2019t listening. Maybe being \u201coffended\u201d by good people with genuine intentions doesn\u2019t send a very strong message of love and tolerance.<\/p>\n
Maybe calling people evil or deplorable is no longer an effective recruitment strategy. The election is over, anyway. Now it\u2019s time to figure out how to move forward from this point.<\/p>\n
We need to be able to engage in conversation, present our views to each other, and give someone else the chance to explain why they think differently. That is the lost art of persuasion. That simply can\u2019t happen when everyone with an opposing view is immediately shut down, labeled as hateful, and shamed. When you don\u2019t allow people to express themselves without fearing judgment, you then become suppressive, oppressive, hateful, intolerant and ultimately everything you claim to be against. <\/span>When has anyone ever changed your mind by invalidating you with a label?<\/p>\n – Jessica Gable Hello, Let me start by saying that I have been purposely avoiding opinion columns for some time now. More often than not, opinion is presented in ways that cannot, or should not be disputed as \u201cfact.\u201d Recently, opinion based \u201cfacts\u201d have been further reinforced by popularity. It seems as though unpopular opinion has increasingly become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2212,3],"tags":[1653,1384],"class_list":["post-14421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","category-tartan-news","tag-letter-to-the-editor","tag-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3KB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36456,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14421\/revisions\/36456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Letters](\"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/LetterAd.jpg\")
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