Dealing with Frustration

Something I learned late in life is how to get angry without losing my temper.  This is something we have to do daily, with the onslaught of foolishness that Donald Trump unleashes on the —now far from unsuspecting— public.  I need not list the matters that are in the news du jour— kneeling for the National Anthem, hurling invective at Korea, responding to foolish behavior from children and in-laws, being befuddled with the continual attempts of the majority in Congress and Senate to repeal the ACA (Obamacare), repatriate children of immigrants, and destroy protections for National Parks and wilderness refuges.  (Well, I listed them anyway.)

Of course, like most Americans, I sneak a peek at faceBook every day, and since most of my friends are either die hard liberals or moderate conservatives, there is a lot of hateful posts ridiculing the president and his gang.  If one of my friends cannot invent a vicious meme him- or herself, he/she finds one on the Internet and links to that.

I don't think our hate really has any good effect.  All it does is incite us to steadily worse behavior, while the president (who does not read the posts on my wall) simply ignores it.  My conservative friends ignore them.  Only my liberal friends read all this poison, and it gives them a bellyache.  We hurt no one but ourselves with all this vitriol.

Of course we can't help being angry.  But how can one actually hate someone with a cognitive disability?  In addition to cognitive disability in the White House, there is poor behavior, loose morals, lack of empathy, ignorance of history, obliviousness to the best examples of Presidents of the past, lack of being able to interpret the words of others, and so on.  We needed a leader with intelligence, tact and subtlety, and a sense of fairness, and we got . . . that.  But hating . . . him . . . is totally useless.  It's like hating a mosquito.  We certainly do, but it doesn't do the mosquito much harm.

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