SKIN DEEP

What the heck is going on?

I'm speechless.

For me, that's saying quite a bit.

What has happened to courtesy? Common or otherwise?  It's been an amazing couple of days for me and the whipped cream with the cherry on top is the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords in Tuscon, Arizona.

Let me go back a day or so.

I got an email from a friend of mine who is working to help get research on the XMRV retrovirus. He suffers from Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia and has worked very hard to get funding for research. He happened to mention it on a forum and from that moment on his life has been a living hell. I have never read such vile attacks as those I read on a Chronic Fatigue forum by their members. What kind of people are these? As I wrote back to him, rabid attack dogs are kinder than those people. 

There is ABSOLUTELY no room in forums for people like this. Research is limited at best. Funding dollars haven't exactly been thrown at researchers for Chronic Fatigue/ME or Fibromyalgia. After reading what I read I wouldn't want to spend my dollars to help finding a cure for these people. It sounds like they'd still have a problem even if they didn't have this disease. I know I sound very, VERY harsh, but, I hate this kind of garbage. I hate injustice and their vile attacks on someone who is trying to do something good and to pay it forward is unwarranted.

Why can't people just say thank you?

Why can't we just agree to disagree?

Why can't we all just get along?

I sound like Rodney King.

I am on the more conservative side of the fence and I have many friends that tend to be on the more liberal side. Do we agree on every issue? No. Would I ever question their intentions? Absolutely not. 

I was raised to believe that I should treat people with kindness. Not everyone will respond in kind, however, that had no bearing on the way I should act or react, for that matter.  I was raised with class and dignity and will say right here and now that people that use this forum to say vile and hateful things are classless. 

There is a way to disagree with civility.

Things can get heated because issues that are near and dear to our hearts cause us to get quite passionate. That is understandable. To resort to rhetorical or physical violence is hard for me to fathom. What have we done as a society that caused us to bypass discipline when raising our children? What have we done as a society when accountability for our actions accuses us of being intolerant or not "politically correct?"

How do people justify their actions? What warped and twisted rationale is used to say that this is the appropriate way to voice their opinion?

I'm watching CNN and I'm appalled by the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords. Again, I will never understand actions like this. 

It's becoming acceptable to become verbally abusive and to write vile comments when we disagree. 

Physical violence has, sadly, become a part of our everyday lives. 

We only need to turn on the TV and be bombarded.

I pray for a society that doesn't know how to exercise control over our mouths or our actions.