I sometimes ponder the division in this country, the way one might describe the "sides." The thing that I often come back to is that there is a fundamental difference among the divided. One "side" appears to be fearful of, well, anyone not like them, while the other appears to be very fixated on a positive and amazing world with less fear.
The fearful side is pretty obvious. It's the folks that appear to be scared of literally everyone not most like them. It's the usual boogeymen... immigrants, the gays, the trans, the brown and black people, sometimes Jews and usually Muslims. For the hopeful, there's a good chance that these folks are either part of the group already, or obviously people that are in their lives. My birth lottery may be some of the reason that this group of people, despite being a white, straight male, are not people I would fear. They've always been there. They are my friends and chosen family. That I love them as a part of my life is not an exaggeration.
As a hopeful person, again, these folks are an integral part of my life. They make the world better, and I know this first hand. They're my friends and coworkers.
Is one group more morally correct? I'd like to think so. I often go back to the immigrant thing. A part of the population is deeply alarmed at the folks showing up at the border with Mexico, but are those folks really a threat to the way of life to people who fear them? Crime statistics show that they are not more likely to commit crimes than "natives." Labor statistics show they don't "take" jobs from "natives." And worse, statistics show that some of the most vocally opposed to immigrants, legal or not, are well off and in zero position to be affected by any kind of immigration.
The hard thing about this observation, for me, is that I always come back to the observation about who the "good" people are. The super weird thing about it is that "those" folks often self-identify as Christian, and while I do not, I remember enough to know that the rejection of the people not like us, who are need, are exactly the people that Christ insisted we help. It's totally non-ambiguous.
I am definitely in the hopeful camp.
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