I just hung up from being blindsided by a Tea-Party loving "friend" - I'm speechless, shocked.

[BellaKos]

67. The first time

I had this kind of experience was a few years ago, during a conversation with my sister-in-law. She is a beautiful, soft-spoken, refined woman with a Masters degree in education.

The aspect that shocked me was not so much that she had the wrong information, but that she had delivered it as if she were an evangelist and with an utterly hateful tone. I told her that I appreciated that her facts were *in dispute.* I did not confront her.

After we hung up, I thought about what had happened for a long time. I considered fully what this episode meant. She is a lovely person generally. We share many interests, not the least of which are family ties, but I came to the conclusion that I had to retreat from the relationship because her heart and soul were now infected with a level of toxic hatefulness that I could not accept.

Over the years, I've spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what happened to her. There's plenty of documentation out there that explains our collective predicament. The US is now plagued by a segment of the population who are delusional, brainwashed, and deliberately misinformed. It's all by design. A crafty scheme that incites the emotions of otherwise regular folks in order to manipulate them politically.

Sadly, she was just the first of my friends who succumbed. Since then, I have found that many of my friends are now deluded. No *facts* will sway them from their religion. But even that could be tolerated if they just didn't *hate* so much.
So very much hate.
It's ugly and a dangerous element in our democracy. And I don't have any intention of enabling this disease by "pretending" that these distorted perspectives are acceptable, rational, or deserve the slightest consideration.

But how to cure it? I don't know.