Peacemaking after the Election

[Robert]

Could you link us to some proof of the widespread use of paid protesters?

This is a 6 minute clip. There are much longer videos. There is also some foul language in this. Viewer beware.

https://youtu.be/-pwW0ze2HYM

Here are the full first two videos. Lots longer.

https://youtu.be/yi9O_Gl15XA

[Bootstrap]

James O'Keefe and Project Veritas are clearly activists trying to get people angry at "the other side", and they have been pretty misleading. For instance, he clearly lied about the ACORN videos on Fox:

During a September 14 television appearance on FOX, O'Keefe appeared dressed in a fur coat, sunglasses, and holding a cane. The host announced "... [O'Keefe] is dressed exactly in the same outfit that he wore to these ACORN offices up and down the eastern seaboard." He asked, "s that what you think a pimp looks like?" O'Keefe answered yes. Within weeks, political journalist Mike Stark revealed that O'Keefe did not wear such clothing to the ACORN offices, where he wore subdued clothing and a tie, and in one instance posed as a candidate for Congress. Stark said, "If they really wanted the truth out there, why do they need to edit these tapes in the first place? Why aren't the unedited videos already in the public domain?"

That's true in general of his work. His unedited tapes are not available, his editing implies things that are quite simply not true, and he clearly has a strong political motivation. Incidentally, Glenn Beck has also reported on problems with Veritas reporting, as Snopes points out.

James O'Keefe also makes misleading claims in his fundraising appeals. He makes his money by getting people all riled up, and happy to use editing to bend the truth. So how do you know what to believe in heavily edited, politically motivated Internet videos?

Remember Wayne's "Drama Queen" category? James O'Keefe is clearly a drama queen, complete with a pimp costume and a Youtube channel.

Ignoring people like this might be part of peacemaking after the election.

[PeterG]

Whatever, I give up.

For those unwilling to corrupt themselves by stepping into Bootstrap's partisan echo chamber, here is some analysis of a Project Veritas video from The Blaze.

[Josh]

Boot, O'Keefe managed to get Planned Parenthood executives talking about what they really do (sell aborted baby parts) when absolutely none of your "respectable" journalistic outlets would go near such a thing.

That's why values-voters respect him. If you want values voters to quit watching O'Keefe videos, you need to get investigative journalists on the left to actually take a critical eye for once at things like the abortion industry. Until they do, nobody on the right is going to listen.

[Robert]

James O'Keefe and Project Veritas are clearly activists trying to get people angry at "the other side", and they have been pretty misleading.

I am not validating O'Keefe. I was asked to present facts that there were paid protestors. The leaders that were recorded in these videos clearly stated that themselves. Their own words. They paid people to protest, even mentally ill people. I have no facts that the other side did it. I would not be surprised, but, to this point, there is no evidence/facts showing they did.

The subject is paid protesters, Boot. Please stay on topic. Your opinion of O'Keefe really does not change the fact that they did pay for people to protest and antagonize the other side, as the ads I posted seemed to show. I have no idea if the ads are factual or not. It has, and I suspect is being done now. Soros is throwing a LOT of money around to keep the strife going. Someone is being paid and making money over the election issues.

[Bootstrap]

The subject is paid protesters, Boot. Please stay on topic.

I thought the subject was peacemaking after the election.

Your opinion of O'Keefe really does not change the fact that they did pay for people to protest and antagonize the other side, as the ads I posted seemed to show. I have no idea if the ads are factual or not. It has, and I suspect is being done now. Soros is throwing a LOT of money around to keep the strife going. Someone is being paid and making money over the election issues.

So given our various understandings of what is going on, what's the best way to do peacemaking after the election?

I assume one starting point is this: lots of the "facts" we see everywhere, on all sides, are very questionable. Lots of people are trying to deceive us. There's a war between political factions in That Other Kingdom, and truth is a clear casualty of the war. On all sides.

So what is our role as peacemakers? I suspect being very skeptical of claims by politically motivated people on all sides is part of it, demanding proof before believing things they say, refusing to let them bait us into signing up for their side of a war. If we are gullible and easily manipulated emotionally, we'll have a much harder time being peacemakers.

But another part of it is probably blooming where we are planted, focusing on things we can understand and control and to which God is calling us. And really accepting people who strongly disagree with us politically, remembering which kingdom we actually belong to.

[Robert]

I thought the subject was peacemaking after the election.

Overall topic, yes, but Dan asked me to give links to this directly.

So given our various understandings of what is going on, what's the best way to do peacemaking after the election?

One thing that has to be understood is what is really at play. There is no easy way to bring peacemaking to people being paid to disrupt, without paying them more since I doubt they are motivated by altruistic motives.

Also understanding that things on both sides are being exaggerated. Also allowing both sides to have their say and feel they have been heard. This was not done for 8 years of the Obama administration. We also need to remind those who feel heard now what it was like to not be heard and remind us all that we should not put others in that same place. If we did not like it, they will not either. Jesus calls us to treat others the way we want to be treated, not the way we were treated. It is hard to take the higher road and a price to pay when we do.

Time will also allow things to heal and normalize. Being patient with one another is important. Demandng our way is not helpful at all.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

[RZehr]

This week I was told about a church congregation that was in need of peacemaking, and they brought in an outside bishop to help them. At the open meeting, the bishop listened, and at the end he simply said 'There is nothing I can do to help you. Ya'll just like to fight'. And he resigned his peacemaking position and went home.

Now I'm not quoting verbatim, and I don't know anything about who/where/when this was. But I think this is the case with many political activists. If they didn't have the other side to fight with and unite their own side against, they'd fight among themselves. They just like to fight.

[Josh]

Part of peacemaking does include discerning who are people whose only agenda is to disrupt, cause violence, and destroy peace. That doesn't mean I go to war with them, but it does mean I limit my interactions with them to just what I can do on a personal level and I do not engage them as a group or give what they are saying any legitimacy.

[Dan Z]

Robert...thanks for the links on paid protesters. I appreciate it. They are a reminder to me...to us all...that politics is dirty business - on both sides of the isle. The operatives interviewed were most-certainly interested in discrediting the other side - as were the producers of the video!

If we are to be peacemakers,it seems like a real error to believe, as some have seemed to posit in these political discussions, that there is more virtue on one side than the other. Perhaps the beginning of the peacemaking endeavor is to purge ourselves of the idea that, in politics, there is a good team and an evil team (although, as peacemakers, it would be good to admit that there are some good intentions, and even a few good points, on all sides).

Don't get me wrong, there is a good team - but it's not to be found in the political world - and it is not good by virtue of its members. It's good by virtue of it's King!