#101 - Failure at The Red Hen

Look, I understand why the co-owner of the Red Hen politely asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her restaurant. But if I could speak with her directly, I would tell her, she was just shooting her cause in the foot.  For a brief moment yes, it allowed her to feel good, but really, what good did it do?  Nothing was accomplished. 

Stephanie Wilkinson, the co-owner of the restaurant, said she asked Sanders and her family to leave because of previous comments she had made defending the Trump administration’s ban on transgender military members.

Wilkinson explained that the restaurant employs several LGBT employees, some of whom voiced concerns over having to serve Huckabee Sanders and said she took her actions in order to uphold her morals.

That sounds fair, on the surface perhaps, but it doesn’t excuse what would normally be described before the Age of Trump anyway, as rude behavior on her part.  

Asking Huckabee Sanders to leave a public restaurant when she was clearly “off the click” that night did nothing to uphold any moral values.  It just provided more fodder for the haters as Huckabee Sanders legitimately became the victim.

With her actions, Ms.Wilkinson, despite her fair and reasonable moral conviction, played right into the open and waiting arms of Donald Trump, the President of Hate and Vitriol (POHAV).  And in doing so, the divide in our country just got a little bit deeper.

No matter how much we disagree with others on the other end of the political spectrum, our goal must be to continue to employ the art of political discourse with the belief that at a absolute minimum, we can reach a point of compromise or possibly, just possibly, convince others that our thoughts, our policies, our ideas… are not as bad, as they might think.

This doesn’t mean we give up our right of free speech or our right to gather and protest peacefully, but we should not intrude in our opponents’ distinctly private pieces of their lives.

We must always treat those with differing opinions with respect, despite the fact that these same words knowingly fall on Donald Trump's deaf ears.

Yes, I know, I can feel your blood boiling. How can I hold Ms. Wilkinson to a higher standard while  Donald Trump has been routinely spewing hateful messages since the day he came down the escalator?

We must accept this unfairness and move forward, for one reason and one reason only. We are better than him.Trump motivates his supporters by branding enemies for them to hate: illegal immigrants, the Deep State, the Liberal Press, the FBI, the Justice Department, any politician with a “D” beside their name, and all the Republican Senators from the great State of Arizona, just to name a few.

For hate is the easiest of motivators. It’s his MO, and there is no one on the planet better at it then him. And he embraces it as a winning strategy, that if he takes us all down to the land of the bottom feeders, this lose - lose proposition is a win for him.  He seems to think this is how to Make America Great Again.

But we have a choice, we all have a choice.  Both his supporters and those who would oppose him. We don’t have to follow him to the bottom. We don’t. 

We win the the battle and the war by not losing our souls.