Man, I was just coming here to post about Lamott's article! You beat me to it.
Good stuff.

Or, rather, bad stuff.

It's bizarre. How out of sorts people get, how hypocritical they get, when they are unleashing their emotional fury in the guise of politics.

I can't read Bene Diction much any more for the same reason. Year after year it's the same stuff. Intolerant, stereotypical, graceless posturing about all those "intolerant, stereotyping, legalistic" conservatives.

Pot meet kettle.

I think God hates it when we call people haters hatefully.

I was going to type a long comment, with enough links and examples to choke an elephant, but that wouldn't help anything. Instead, I'll keep in simple.

I don't hate, but I think I have very good reasons to be uneasy and, in some cases, to even refuse fellowship. They chain the Gospel to twisted earthly philosophies and call it "love." In some cases, they replace it with a "social gospel" and become heretics. And at some point, they become unrecognizable, having inculcated Leftism totally.

There are many areas of politics where people of good conscience can disagree, but not everything falls into that category. In reality, it most often has nothing to do with specific policies, but with a whole worldview that is anathema to the faith. "Progressive" Christians are sticking their toe into a pool full of sharks and calling other people to do the same. That's not something that sits easy with me.

I'll be so glad when this election's over . . .

One interesting thing about the Lamott article - one of the first things she said was that people need to quit talking about Palin and start talking about Obama (yes, please!)

Then she spent the whole article talking about Palin, even ridiculing the way the Palins name their kids (there's mockery of her family again).

November 5th, please come soon. People are going nuts out there.

Also, Jared - I'd like to read the post you were going to post. Go for it!

Agreeing with Bill that Jared should post as well.

Hate is anger that is cherished and nurtured over time. On the other hand, this election has given us much to be angry about, legitimately. Be angry but do not sin. Expose those who lie with rational speech and reason. Vitriol just weakens one's argument and bolsters that of the opposition.

Anne Lamott: We felt this grief and nausea during the run-up to the war in Iraq. We felt it after the 2004 election. And now we feel it again.

Ori: It's the kind of grief and nausea you feel when you see your values fail and your country going to those with whom you struggled all your life. Very understandable. Anne Lamott lost trying to stop the war in Iraq, and lost trying to get John Kerry elected in 2004. She feels she is about to lose again. She probably have good reasons for that.

I'd expect the rhetoric on the left to become shriller and shriller with time, by the way. US political power comes from numbers. Ideologies that encourage people to have small families (at the most) are inherently self-defeating. Aborted babies do not grow up to march in support of Roe vs. Wade.

At the same time, I grew up in the Middle East, so forgive me if I take all the hateful rhetoric in the US with a huge helping of salt. People who truly hate don't write nasty little articles making fun of people's names. They plot, they assassinate, and they target members of the other side. In other words, they act like it's the 1850s in Kansas.

Her quote says it all: "I feel horribly betrayed when my conservative brothers and sisters deny my faith and reject my fellowship on the grounds of theological and political differences." The fact that so-called progressives find theology an inappropriate basis for fellowship (not friendship, fellowship) shows why there is no healing this split. The slogan on the back of my favorite Harley-Davidson shirt will suffice for response: "If I have to explain, you wouldn't understand."

Can I throw a thought in here, please?

Is the visceral, animal, almost diabolical hatred of opponents that one finds on both sides (though admittedly my boys on the left have reached new lows with Palin) in American discourse (and I'm sad to say it is American discourse, mainly, except where poor W is concerned, in which case everyone has a go) a result of a pervasive but almost certainly wrong faith in the size of the difference that will actually be made by who happens to be in government for the next four years?

What I find only slightly less bizarre than the seemingly boundless depths of the rancor, is the notion that it doesn't matter who's in the Big Chair. I remember voting for Jimmy Carter a few decades ago. We're still reeling from the mess he stirred up in the middle east. Iran today is the scion of Jimmy's policies because we released him from the peanut farm and gave him a shot at the world.

Now I have no grounds whatsoever to hate Obama. That way lies insanity. But by experience and common sense I recognize the seeds of "deja vu all over again..."

Les, that's a good point.

When I read British Nathan's comment, part of me agreed, but then I thought of the election of 1980 - it can legitimately be said that if that election had gone the other way the Soviet Union would not have fallen. And many other good things that Reagan accomplished might not have happened.

Elections do matter.

Les and Bill: good point with good examples. I'm expressing myself badly if I sound like I think who's in the White House doesn't make a real difference. I'm just surprised that, to hear some people speak, you'd think one side was personally going to sell everyone's souls to Osama bin Laden (though I haven't heard that kind of screed here, let me please clarify) and the other was going to turn the country into The Handmaid's Tale.

By the way, I apologise for always flagging up my nationality on here - it's just because a number of my friends in Switzerland, where I used to live, call me "British Nathan" as opposed to "Science Nathan", who works at CERN but did not personally break the LHC last week, and because there's another guy who comments on here sometimes who's also called Nathan but who isn't me.

What especially annoys me about this is that I've read several of Anne Lamott's books, and in one of them she says something to the effect of "You know you've made God in your own image when He/She [by the way, that annoys me, too, but that's another story] hates the same people as you." Practice what you preach, Anne.