Please, America: We can all use a little more harmony and a little less hangry

Jayme West and I were talking on the radio Wednesday morning about a 73-year-old woman who decided to divorce her husband because he (at one time) supported President Donald Trump.

Yes. D-i-v-o-r-c-e. (Sorry, Tammy Wynette.)

And she’s not divorcing him because he actually voted for Trump. Because, it turns out, that he didn’t.

Nope, Gayle McCormick, who describes herself as a “Democrat leaning towards socialist,” said the fact that her husband simply told friends before the election that he was planning to vote for Trump was enough of a deal-breaker.

Give her some credit: At least she said it was a tough decision to end her 22-year marriage. But, in the end, she couldn’t stand by her man (sorry again, Tammy) because her husband agreed with Trump on anything.

She’s crazy, right? I mean, who does that? Well, a lot more people than you might think.

According to a new poll by Reuters, 16 percent of Americans (including 22 percent of people who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016) said they no longer talk to a close friend or a member of their family because of the presidential election.

Does the admonition to never discuss politics or religion in polite company now need to extend to our personal lives as well? Maybe.

Divisions along political lines have even happened in my family. Without going into too much detail — because I didn’t ask anybody’s permission to talk about this — I have one family member (we’ll call him A) who refuses to talk to another family member (hereafter known as B).

A has a health condition and they’re worried that disagreements with B over politics could exacerbate that.

So what happens? B calls to ask me why A isn’t talking to them and B ends up trying to argue about politics with me! (You can call me C if you want.)

Argh!

I know a lot of us want to blame social media for a good portion of this but I think it just amplifies how we feel. It’s not Facebook’s fault in the first place.

I know people who have decided that they’ve had enough and have completely quit some social media networks or have unfollowed people they were close to for years — including family members — because they can’t take the constant barrage of hate towards either side.

Whatever happened to the term agree to disagree? Can’t we get back to a little bit of that in America?

I sure hope so.

In the meantime, while we re-learn how to be polite, gain some tolerance for other people’s views and stop demonizing them if they don’t agree with us, maybe we should heed the advice of James, who tweets as @thorninAZ:

@JimSharpe maybe everyone just needs to eat a Snickers bar & just calm the heck down

— thorninaz (@thorninaz) February 8, 2017

Good plan. America could use a little less HANGRY.

Follow @JimSharpe