The steps necessary to build and maintain healthy relationships is completely thrown out the window when it comes to maintaining good relationships in a political context.
This is perhaps most obvious when we see how the extreme left & right talk about race relations.
This is perhaps most obvious when we see how the extreme left & right talk about race relations.
Consider this incredible advice on self-mastery and relationships by @jadapsmith recently posted to her Instagram: 
This approach applies to almost every type of relationship I can think of. Yet in another world, the political world of our time, people are encouraged to quote literally allow their traumas and fears dictate how they interact with people who don't look like them.
In his book, 'Between the World and Me,' Coates's fears and traumas dictate how he navigates and interacts with the white world; in the process he despairs and looses a bit of his humanity (see his callous attitude to 9/11).
In @netflix documentary 'White Right: Meeting the Enemy,' filmmaker @Deeyah_Khan discovers that the alt-right members also use their own fears and anxieties and traumas to dictate their behavior toward those who are not white.
And in a recent move that seems more self-righteous than sincere, (if it's sincere, that's actually terrifying) @Vox editor @ezraklein has defended the hashtag #killallmen in an article. Of course no therapist worth his/her salt would ever suggest such an attitude was healthy.
Despite past injury inflicted on a person in the name of bigotry, misogyny, or simple misguidedness, no one who is tasked with helping clients have meaningful relationships would ever suggest they use the trauma of the past to shape their future.
And yet, I think @jadapsmith has profoundly articulated what is going on at the edges of political moderation in our current discourse: "We are all a bunch of open wounds slamming into each other all day."
Precisely.
Precisely.
We see this in the empty-yet-loud rhetoric of @RealCandaceO slamming members of #BlackLivesMatter instead of offering constructive, healthy points of dialogue in a spirit of real concern for those she disagrees with I.E WHAT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WOULD ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE.
We saw it in Professor @MichaelEDyson 's snide dismissiveness of Professor @jordanbpeterson as an "angry white man"; again, the foundations of an unhealthy relationship.
We see it in pieces like this absolutely toxic article published by @broadly in which I am almost certain the author took her accumulated experiences and assumed the absolute worst about white people: her wounded self slammed into others
broadly.vice.com/amp/en_us/arti…
broadly.vice.com/amp/en_us/arti…
When actually, this should be our approach in dealing with each other:
Fin ✌🏾
