I’ve been seeing this recurring theme of intolerance pop-up almost non-stop in current media. We have the ’08 election and are constantly badgered with views of racism, sexism, ageism, and religious intolerance. This is constant in modern life, no matter what you do, you will come across someone with a very different perspective on some subject.

The story that really brought this idea to fruition in me is that I saw an interview with two 14 year-old girls on television. These girls were kicked off of a bus in Portland last year for kissing by the bus driver who called them ‘sickos’. He didn’t bother to wait to get to the next bus stop. This was someone who was forcing his opinion against homosexuality because he saw it as a truth, in doing so he impeded the girls’ rights.

The election has been wrought with constant bipolar truths that are no doubt going to stay in the mainstream media until at least November. Most of them originating in the Democratic Primaries just to market to the masses on one side of the truth. You have “Hillary is a woman, a woman can’t run the country”, “Barrack is Muslim(not true), he’s going to sell this country out to the terrorists”, “McCain is too old to be president, he’ll die in office”, “Barrack is like Rev. Wright”, and “A black man isn’t capable of running this country, he’ll turn it into a ghetto”, all of these have been either explicitly or implicitly distributed by the media. Is this the representation of the beliefs of everyone in the country? No, they are marketing to their audiences, the only problem is that diffusion has occurred in media and it spreads, having it reach the people that share the other side of the truth.

If your trying to sell something as truth, you have to realize that what your truth is opinion only. As you age, however, your opinion shall become more refined; it needs a proper base to do so. So try to reflect on your views and the flip-side of them. You may be the intolerant bastard who you despise.