Reaction to Obama’s school speech is tragic, sinister and sickening

This is my response to the column found here.

Dear Bob Ray -

Thank you for your courage in writing about a tough topic, and more courageously, admitting your ignorance.

Fortunately, the key to your enlightenment is at hand.

You start off assuming that the folks you disagree with are "frightened, misguided and hate-filled".  When you assume your opponents are irrational, it takes the burden off of you to see how and why their world view might make sense to them.  You don't take the time and trouble to see what subset of the facts they are focused on.  And you thus have no way to speak to them in their own terms.

This used to be the problem the Bush administration was accused of having with regard to the Middle East -- our opponents were all "evil" and understanding them wasn't necessary or desirable.  That Bush mindset, to the extent it guided foreign policy, codified intolerance.

And now you're doing it to your fellow Americans.

Tell me that, if Bush 43 had issued a lesson plan instructing children to write themselves letters regarding how they could support him, you seriously would have thought that was normal, standard, and unremarkable.  I would have found that creepy and overreaching.

As Hillary Clinton so eloquently put it, it's very American to dissent, debate and disagree.  It's not very American to have a President telling teachers to tell our children to write themselves letters listing ways they can support the Dear Leader.  Very North Korean, maybe.

If you can accept the possibility -- just the possibility -- that folks on the other side from you are actually motivated by love of their children, love of their country, and a different interpretation of some key facts, you can love them and respect them enough to figure out how to talk to them and about them in ways that will actually connect with them.  Maybe you'll even become persuasive.

Until then, the most intolerant person in this picture is still you.  You've got to be the change you want to see.

I think you can do it.

Cheers.
 -Tom