Hissy Fit - March 2017

Everyone needs to take a giant chill pill. I’m not endorsing drugs. (I have to clarify in today’s overly sensitive environment.) I’m saying it’s time to come up for air and breathe. People have become feverishly rabid either hating the current administration, protecting their beliefs, or both. It’s so intense you can see the foam coming out of some people’s mouths just by reading their Facebook posts. People have gone off the deep end with anger, hatred, over zealous opinions, and hanging on the media’s every lie, exaggeration and speculation. In fact, the media has a large bucket of chum they slosh through the airways daily for everyone to swim up and fester into a frenzy. If you could read the ingredients of the media chum, you would never swallow what they’re dishing out.

Stop. Stop. Stop. If you feel your head is swimming, it is. We are all on information and sensory overload and inflated into a heightened state of ready to bear our teeth and come out shooting. Not guns, of course. That would only lead to a whole other frenzy. I’m talking about shooting our mouths off.

What really is damaging is that most will simply hear or see a news nugget of preposterous proportions and perpetuate it as truth and be enraged over it as truth and defend it as truth when they have no idea whether it is truth.

I beg you, regardless of your political views, make a promise to yourself, your kids, your mother, your friends, your community and your country, that you will not pass on propaganda (ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.). This one act would make America great again. After all, the people of America are what make America great, and we can’t be great if all we do is regurgitate hatred, think negative and tear others down.

Enough is enough. When did it become OK to be rude? And it doesn’t have to be about politics. I read a post on Facebook recently, where a friend was desperately justifying her decision to purchase a pure bred cat. She is a serious cat owner who lost her long time pet last year and is now in the process of researching what type of cat she wants. Knowing this cat will hopefully be around for close to 20 years or more, it’s important to her for it to be a good fit. Bottom line: She has decided on a purebred, specialty breed and she is going to buy a kitten when the litter arrives. Does this make you mad?

It outraged many of her Facebook friends. She got bombarded with a long verbiage trail of judgmental posts and harsh, rude opinions because she is not adopting a cat. In other words, this poor woman was raked over the coals for her decision. I don’t think she would have been more looked down upon if she was a Salem witch, and I’m thinking some of those “posters” would love to see her burned at the stake.

Even if you are a proponent for rescue animals, and I am, can you not understand that your way may not be for everyone and it’s OK if it’s not? Maybe it’s hard to see clearly when the horse you ride is so high, but I don’t believe people understand the severe damage they are doing to others, society and themselves by raging for their cause and putting it above humanity. When did a rescue cat (that you don’t even know) become more important than a friend? It reminds me of when my mother swatted me for wiping my hands on the “good” dishtowel, and it dawned on me that the three-dollar dishtowel was more important than me. If you think that’s ridiculous, how is it any different?

Do your part to make America great again by starting with yourself. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”  
I think I will do the same. Will you?