I am very tired of all of this hate speech.

I am voting for Obama in the General Election; despite the shocking nature of the videos that have been playing on the networks all day, none of this has shaken my belief that he is a uniter or a divider.

The networks are simply proving his point that politics as usual is getting us nowhere.

I grew up with the anger and hate I hear on radio talk shows--the sort of anger that the high school boys in my home town in rural Minnesota expressed towards Native Americans. They all had guns and pickup trucks and used patriotism as an excuse to threaten anyone who wasn't like them.

Some years ago I moved to New York, where one can hear the anger that Rev. Wright expresses on the streets of the South Bronx. The latter sort of anger is more foreign to me, but like talk-show radio hate it takes root in a climate of poverty and violence and ignorance.

How do we eliminate the poverty and ignorance that gives birth to this?

Mary Refling

Posted at March 14, 2008 11:22 PM in response to Obama's judgment: Wright or Wrong