A thicker skin

I am fairly new to the world of striving to be an informed and politically active citizen. I spent far too long being innattentive and over trusting of the repesentatives I voted for. That all change about a year and a 1/2 ago. I work harder to be informed and to be braver about speaking my mind. Now I need to work on developing a thicker skin. Everywhere I look in the media, people like me are being called racists, hate-mongers, crazy, & gun-toting religious zealots. And because our grassroots protests are against the administration rather than for it, our voices are being dismissed. We are accused of merely being "astroturf", paid by big business to cause problems for the administration. Earlier this week all those names really got to me and sent me on a rant on my facebook page. That post spurred over 50 comments.

I've learned that if I'm going to keep speaking out, I have to toughen up. I've learned to do that where my religion is concerned, because I've been dealing with those misconceptions, false accusations and ridicule most of my life. I can pretty much blow those off now. I'm not there yet when it comes to politics. Maybe because I feel like I'm still learning. I know what feels right and wrong, but I'm still working on gathering the facts to back those instincts up. And since my memory for names and dates and details has never been fabulous, I lack confidence in my ability to present an intelligent, fact based argument. But I'm not going back to being part of the uniformed, and silent. (Though I'm sure there are members of my family that wish I would at least go back to being silent.)