{"id":4076,"date":"2017-10-16T06:35:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T04:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4076"},"modified":"2017-10-16T06:42:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T04:42:18","slug":"what-would-mr-rogers-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4076","title":{"rendered":"What Would Mr. Rogers Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The other night, I found myself enjoying the not so random mix list offered by nostalgia and YouTube. When it stumbled upon Mr. Rogers, I clicked. If you weren\u2019t a child in America between 1970 and 2000, Mr. Rogers was a TV host for the children\u2019s show Mr. Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood, and he basically raised us.<\/p>\n

Every day after school we met Mr. Rogers in his neighborhood. He walked into his house singing \u201cPlease won\u2019t you be, my neighbor?\u201d while chucking his shoes over his shoulder and slipping off his other oppressive outside clothes for a cardigan and sneakers. I was 100% ready to move to wherever he was, which, in fact, was Pittsburgh, and which, in fact, I did.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rogers is like a modern day god. He was loving and gentle. He loved everyone, no matter who they were. He taught us to share and he taught us to be nice to one another. He taught us the joys of exploration and curiosity. And he told each of us that we were special and that we all mattered. He wanted nothing more than to be our friend and neighbor and, if you were like me, you wanted nothing more than the same.<\/p>\n

In these stressful times, these ideal ideas might fall away or be subject to conditions. Be friends, you say? Sure, as long as you look like me, screw who I want you to screw, and live where I live legally. We surely put similar conditions on love they neighbor, do unto others, and turn the other cheek. It doesn\u2019t work like that, we say. It\u2019s more complex.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe. But couldn\u2019t it be the base we work from? Instead of where we work from now, which seems to be \u2013 unless you agree with me then you are my enemy. In the video Mr. Rogers was trying to garner funding to children\u2019s television programs. In a famous moment he told the gruff head of the senate committee that he trusted him to read a letter and that he trusted that he would put thought into his decision. Trust a politician!? Laughable. You must be kidding. Yeah, maybe, but it worked and he was successful.<\/p>\n

I am not trying to preach folks, and I am certainly not immune to the graying of the black and white ideas such as be nice to each and trust people that life experience pushes us to develop. But if Mr. Rogers\u2019 main ideas were to love each other and be neighborly, our president\u2019s main ideas are the exact opposite. He is a bully who mocks, attacks, and derides people. He seethingly insults those who make the monstrous mistake of disagreeing with him. He\u2019s mean-spirited and promotes violence and dislike. He runs a government on the fuel of spite. And most importantly, he doesn\u2019t want to bring us together like Mr. Rogers did, he wants to tear us apart. And he doesn\u2019t do this because he\u2019s looking out for people, he does it because he\u2019s looking out for him.<\/p>\n

Not only is this person a nightmare, but we\u2019re allowing him to dictate how we treat each other. Because regardless of whose \u201cside\u201d you\u2019re on, many of us are taking social cues from this awful person. If you\u2019re for him, then you have convinced yourself that his tactics are manly and tough. They\u2019re not; they\u2019re intensely cowardly. Like most bullies, our president\u2019s machismo is as fragile as a coating of cellophane, and at the core he is a coward. But those of us against him are also taking our personal interactive cues from him.<\/p>\n

How? We\u2019re being really mean to one another. Look at any political or social \u201cdebate\u201d online and notice how quickly it descends into a bitter squabble rife with attacks and name calling. My two minute peruse on Facebook scares up these gems: You fucking Nazi bitch! Fuck you, libtard snowflake motherfucker! This faggot has sand in his clit (wtf?! This is my questions, by the way). I won\u2019t shut my face hole and if you think your (sic) man enough, come over here and do it for me. You fucking people disgust me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Really? What would Mr. Rogers say if he heard you interact with another person like that? How disappointed would he be? How many times have you spoken to a person like this to their face? Very rarely\u2026I hope. But on Facebook and Twitter and in the troll-stalked comments sections of articles, it\u2019s business as usual. Come on, folks! Just because we disagree doesn’t mean we have to insult and hurt each other.<\/p>\n

The thing is, we didn\u2019t always engage people like this. We weren\u2019t born learning how to shove words down each others\u2019 throats and to not listen to each other. We didn\u2019t learn to viciously attack others in kindergarten and in preschool. And we certainly weren\u2019t taught any of this by Mr. Rogers. And many of the people being so vicious are part of Mr. Rogers\u2019 demographic, we were in his neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Perhaps part of the problem is that we\u2019re not really in \u201cneighborhoods\u201d anymore. We sit at our computers and shout at faceless people. Social tension, anonymity, and distance are triplet culprits. So maybe we need to interact more, physically talk to those you agree and disagree with. I hope it would be harder to yell such hatred at a person whose face you could see. Maybe we can tweak Mr. Rogers\u2019 reasoning for being a vegetarian: \u201cI could never eat something that has a mother.\u201d Perhaps before attacking someone, remember they have a mother. It might trick you into remembering that they are a real person with a life, family, friends, interests, a dog. Or maybe it\u2019s just as simple as asking yourself \u201cWhat would Mr. Rogers Do?\u201d before you get negative with another person. And then do that instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other night, I found myself enjoying the not so random mix list offered by nostalgia and YouTube. When it stumbled upon Mr. Rogers, I clicked. If you weren\u2019t a child in America between 1970 and 2000, Mr. Rogers was a TV host for the children\u2019s show Mr. Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood, and he basically raised us. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/mr-rogers.jpg?fit=960%2C673&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-13K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4076"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4080,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions\/4080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}