Is this where free speech has brought us?

I find myself in the unusual position of feeling the need to defend Ivanka Trump.

This is going to be a longish post, so I thought I would put that up front, and you can decide if you want to read the rest. And BTW, if anyone uses this post to go off on a personal diatribe attacking anyone I will delete your comments.

Here is where I am right now, and I know this will send some of you who seem to consider the US Constitution and “wisdom of the founding fathers” to be a sacred document on semi-equal footing with scripture into a state of hysteria: Free speech be damned.

I am tired of people spewing filth and hatred and defending their ‘right’ to do it under the guise of free speech. This is true of both people on both the left and the right. I find the hatred poured out on people personally in the last two election cycles to be totally depressing. This is true of the filth and racial slurs poured out on the Obama’s (and in some cases their children), who by any reasonable measure are good parents and well-meaning people to the filth poured out on Ivanka Trumps and on Barron who is not even a teenager yet, to the loathing that I have heard expressed by people for Hillary Clinton (I had a “Christian” tell me how much they hated her, guess she hasn’t read her Bible in a while), and yes to the people who say they hope Donald Trump dies a horrible death.

So, back to the beginning. Ivanka Trump went to Iowa and her hair done in salon. Now people are calling for a boycott of the salon. In my opinion the salon owner has done nothing to deserve that, and Ivanka has done nothing to deserve the level of vitriol targeted at here. I do not agree with her politics, but in all fairness she has tried to be a moderating influence on some of the more radical policies touted by her father’s administration. Have we really reached this point? I would not expect a diner in a liberal stronghold to refuse to serve a meal to the President, as much as find him personally distasteful, in fact I would sit down and have a meal with him myself, even if only for the opportunity to engage him in a debate.

There have been numerous instances of people tweeting something and receiving death threats on both sides of the political spectrum. I have seen comments where people have posted they hope Hillary Clinton gets raped. An official in West Virginia did a post calling Michelle Obama an “Ape in heels”. And this is not just a Donald Trump thing, this has been going on since the Clinton’s, the anonymous nature of the Internet has just exposed it.

Is this really what laws around free speech intended? That cowards could sit behind aliases and threaten people’s lives, spew racist filth, make up lies and spread them? Americans are so quick to criticize countries like Germany for banning Nazi symbol, but what purpose do they fulfill when you carry swastika’s while marching down a road carrying guns? If this where free speech has brought us, I say modify the constitution.

I have always been aware of the underbelly of racism and hatred in this country. I think one huge disservice the Internet has done has been to bring people with unacceptable ideas in contact with other people who think the same way, essentially creating walled-garden virtual communities where people come to believe their horrific ideas are valid. Again, these beliefs did not suddenly have birth overnight.

While working for a school district outside of Nashville in 1999/2000 (which is part semi-urban, part rural) I was approached on more than one occasion by white teachers when they found out I was a white South African. They would sidle up to me with a conspiratorial tone to tell me in a whisper how they wanted me to know that what “we” whites did to the blacks in South Africa was the right thing. One person informed me (just before I told him I had a multi-racial family and opposed Apartheid), that if “we” had done the same thing to the N*****s in America the country wouldn’t be in the situation is in in. And these were the people teaching our children.

Ivanka Trump has done nothing to deserve the treatment she received in Iowa, and the Obama’s have done nothing to deserve the personal attacks on their race and family. Most people in this country are not at these extremes, why should the vast majority of Americans have to suffer this filth? How will anyone ever change, or reach a middle ground, if we are so entrenched in our stupid and ill-informed biases that we will not even cut someone’s hair, or sit down and have a meal?

Forget about making America great again, I think it’s time that reasonable people took America back.