In a preview of the way the U.S. presidential election descended into such a tacky, acrimonious battle of insults, American commentator James Rubin pleaded: “We must disagree agreeably.”
It’s hard, though, when an awful human being has just been elected President to be agreeable.
Sadly, it seems a forlorn hope because we live in an age of the angry, shouty man (and woman). Not everyone is guilty, but more and more in the public arena we see difference of opinion expressed in the form of personal abuse.
Social media has given a voice to all sorts of “keyboard warriors”; it’s easy to vent your vitriol by tapping out an effing and blinding message when you don’t have to face your target. But it’s not just those conversations that yell extremism. I fear that snarling nastiness is reality, a modern phenomenon that is only going to get worse.

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How true, still today, is the line from the book of James that “the tongue is a flame of fire.”
The aforementioned Trump v Clinton slugfest is a good example, but far from exclusive.
Look at the treatment the British tabloid press dished out to the judges after a court ruling that Brexit must go through by Act of Parliament. The Daily Mail, never a paper to shirk sinking to a new low, put three “mug shots” of the judges on their front page under the huge headline: “Enemies of the people.”
Politics across the world has always been a robust, even dirty, business. But such has been the poisonous venom in the rat race for the White House that one cannot help but wonder if America will ever be quite the same again.
I love America; it is a wonderful country. My various visits to Chicago, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and south to Louisville, Kentucky and the obligatory Disney trip to Florida have allowed me to see a place of culture and beauty, full of charming people. It is not the brash, dirty and often foul-mouthed America of the movies, though I admit I don’t grasp their fascination with guns as mass murders are far too common.
And I’m uncomfortable with how evangelical zeal can spill over.
It’s a huge and varied country of nearly 320 million people; from sophisticated and cool California which alone has 38 million, to the expanses of Montana with only a million, down to the unique state of Texas, whose white, strident working-class revel in the insult of being called “Rednecks.”
The varied, friendly but often eccentric people were superbly featured in the Billy Connolly series when he travelled along Route 66.
The nation had the good sense to elect Barack Obama, and along with his wife, Michelle, the Obamas have been a class act.  
Trump started out as something of a joke, with his allegations that Obama shouldn’t even be President because he was born in Kenya. A lie, of course, and not his last one either.
Following the first televised debate with Hillary, a political research team revealed that 66 per cent of the facts he had come out with that night were either false, or mostly false.
I, for one, remember writing at the start of this long journey that people shouldn’t worry, he’d never be taken seriously. And yet, the more outrageous his campaign became, the more voters he attracted.
His style of speeches has never been seen before in a Presidential election, with (to say the least) loose and cynical language.
Some of the stuff he comes out with is just jaw-dropping, and there’s no compunction in making wild claims. And this from a man who shrugs off comments about his glorying in his sex assaults on women and his pure racism.
And yet, Hillary Clinton could never really shake off the whiff of scandal about her emails, the claims of Clinton Foundation fraud and the murky past of husband, Bill.
Why is Hillary so hated by large sections of America? To the point that Trump was able to describe her as the most corrupt candidate ever.
Policies? What policies? We hardly know what either of them really stands for, as the personal battle rages.
Trump, you feel, has played a blinder in setting a crazy agenda. But the disgusting madness worked.
How then, America, did it all come to this? To this apocalypse now in the land of the free, the home of the brave and the richest, strongest democracy on the planet?
I thought one of the most significant comments came from a woman, an ordinary voter, who explained in a television vox pop why she was voting for Trump.
“He’s not a politician,” she said, “and we’re so sick of politicians.”
You may think that not being a politician would be a disadvantage when seeking political office. But such is the disillusion in the establishment that people were seriously tempted to put their faith in an unhinged maverick like Trump.
The world over, people have been let down by the banks, business, the political class, the church and the media. So, they don’t have trust in the old order any more and are seeking for something. Especially as the corrupt at the top escape accountability.
People without jobs and hope were putting their faith in a multi-billionaire who boasts about avoiding paying the tax that might actually help them.
Huh?
In such circumstances, the far right in particular take advantage and it can be hard to find the truth. It must be true, I saw it on Facebook; it has to be the truth, I was reading an article in the Daily Express. I read it on the internet.
Remarkably, the lie by Trump that Obama was born abroad is still believed by a quarter of Americans, according to a recent survey.
In an age where you can google anything, including what might be wrong with you medically, we’re all experts; and we don’t trust in authority the way we used to, and certainly not the “lefty” liberal media.
It isn’t just America, of course, and it just hasn’t happened overnight. You have to ask how someone like Nigel Farage becomes such a significant figure, and look at other countries in Europe where the far right is playing on people’s fear and uncertainty in a world of terror.
Spin, half-truths and downright lies are the order of the day and rational argument becomes ever more lost in the mist.
By the way, I liked a piece I read in which Christian, Max Lucado wrote:
“I know exactly what November 9 will bring. Another day of God’s perfect sovereignty. He will still be in charge. His throne will still be occupied. He will still manage the affairs of the world.”
In the meantime, of course, people in America and indeed in many other countries are facing up to desperately changing times.