The Justices and the Elephant

When Justice Scalia died this week, some of my Facebook friends made terrible comments. Words celebrating the death of another human because his politics and legal opinions were different than their own.

And then, I saw a picture of Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsberg together on the back of an elephant.  (You can see that here.)  I read an article where she called him her best buddy.  (Read that here.)  And if you know much about the US Supreme Court you know these two could not be more opposite. They rarely agreed in difficult cases. I bet they never voted for the same presidential candidate. And still, they were best friends.  They had dinners together, saw the opera together, and took family vacations with each other.  They were able to put politics aside and see the person. And that's beautiful. 

I have friends who are quite different than me.  Uber liberals. Super conservatives. Catholics and Jews and agnostics.  Some have no credit cards and others are in debt up to their eyeballs. They drive one ton pick ups, a Ford Prius, and some don't have a car at all.  They graduated from Stanford, from community college, welding school, and some barely made it though high school.  

And although they are not all like me, our backgrounds, our ideals, our goals....they are good friends. My life is better for knowing them. And I don't care if we never agree on a political issue, or if I never agree with someoene's judicial decision, they are a person and that is enough reason for me to respect them and mourn their passing. 

In my opinion, this is the biggest problem in our country today. We cannot put our politics aside and see the people. We cannot respect someone with different views. And because of this, we are missing the point. We are causing hatred and divisiveness. We are missing the chance to know great people.  

So whether someone's yard has a Hilary sign, a Cruz sign, or even (Heaven help us!) a Trump sign, we can respect them.  We can be kind to them.  We can mourn their deaths.  Heck, we can even befriend them.

Be like those two Justices on the back of the elephant.  That's that this world needs!