I noticed the other day that an acquaintance had a rather direct message on his social-networking Web page: he hates Democrats and feels that our government needs to do more to kill “Arab terrorists.” It was a stark declaration that left me wondering just how deep his emotions run.

But it is to be expected, I guess, in what is shaping up to be an intensely personal political season in the United States. Every day, the newspapers paint a story of two parties pitted against each other in what seems to be a death match. At one point or another, both sides have intentionally stoked ugly emotions tied to distrust between races. It seems as if people on the extreme edges of each party will go to any means to ensure their candidate/ideals/philosophies/agendas win the day.

OK, so maybe that’s just what comes with a national political race? But what about the happenings in California, where the Supreme Court just reached a landmark decision on marriage equality. Once again, the venom spills out into the press. Even in tiny, seemingly insignificant matters, there are often no holds barred: the pastor of a church in my neighborhood told his parishioners a few years ago that men frequenting a proposed bar down the street would lie in wait early Sunday mornings, ready to molest the children of the churchgoers and “convert” the young people to homosexuality, all in an effort to use ignorance and hate to rally public opinion to his cause.

What drives people to such lengths? Are we becoming such a tolerant society that the only way to sway the heart and mind of John Q. Public is to scare the hell out of him? Or is it that these tactics have proven to be incredibly effective, meaning that they must become increasingly more caustic in order to trump the other side’s fear-mongering?

I’m not throwing stones from a glass house, as I am just as guilty. I stood in a public meeting and said some pretty nasty things a couple years back after a neighborhood commissioner told a group of 50 or so people in the same meeting that “fags had taken over the neighborhood.” His provocative words provoked an equally provocative reaction.

The solution, I believe, is to take the oft-cited advice of my boss: stop, take a moment, and breathe. Pause and reflect. Ask yourself, how will it benefit the issue if I compound and magnify the nastiness by what is, in effect, perpetuating it with a similarly offensive statement?

Leaders like King, Gandhi and Jesus took the same approach. And it worked.

In the news coverage this morning of a second storm approaching the Irrawaddy delta in Burma, a rickshaw driver named Min Min, whose house was lost to Cyclone Nargis, expressed his fear of the coming disaster.

“I prayed to the Lord Buddha, ‘Please save us from another cyclone. Not just me but all of Myanmar,’ ” he said. Min Min, his wife and three children now live on their wrecked premises under plastic sheets.

Min’s prayer highlights what I have found to be one of the most difficult aspects of Buddhism to understand: if, indeed, everything in this world is ruled by the overarching cause-and-effect system of karma, what could have possibly happened to the 2 million people hit by Cyclone Nargis that they would deserve to be in this situation? Could this be karma’s way of rectifying the bad deeds that have, perhaps, accumulated over the eons? Or is it something greater, perhaps the karmic result of mankind’s abuse of the planet and its inhabitants (including his fellow man) since the Industrial Revolution?

While scientific proof might point to the latter, it is still tough to reconcile.

Tougher still is watching the events unfold. I ask myself if my own prayers for the safety and strength of the Burmese people, coupled with a geniune desire to generate as much compassion as possible for them, is enough.

Life is change: this moment is completely different from the previous one, which is nothing like the one I’ll experience by the time I reach the end of this sentence. And yet, we all cling in vain to that which we think is continuous and permanent.

What good would it do for me, right now, to dig in my heels and try to stop the changes that are taking place around me? Now, more than ever, I need to turn my attention inward. Otherwise, it is like the tiny man yelling at the massive stone wall: a waste of time, energy and opportunity.

Throughout the centuries, teachers have urged their students to look inside, to “be the change you wish to see in the world.” It’s a radical concept, especially in an over-caffeinated, hyper-accessible, work-till-you-drop society.

The thought of being able to close my eyes while sitting in the middle of a place like Times Square, simply being present (or, being simply present) while a swarm of humanity surrounds me, is unfathomable. I’ve watched in amazement as followers of Falun Gong have held meditation protests on crowded sidewalks in Manhattan, unfazed by the presence of thousands of people.

I understand the why. But how? I have the motivation to develop this type of inner insight, but do I have the will?

Got an e-mail today from a distant relative who I’ve never met. He’s working on the family tree, and it made me think about the parts of mine that I know about.

Meet my great-great-great-grandfather, Rear Admiral Benjamin Franklin Sands. The good admiral used to run this little thing in D.C. known as the Naval Observatory, which is the only part of the city that is still pixelated out on aerial photos like those used on Google Maps. See for yourself. (Go ahead, try zooming in.)

My guess is that the Observatory’s current master, Dick Cheney, is a little paranoid, because they un-pixelated the White House and Capitol a few years ago, but the Veep’s House stays hidden.

Ben, along with my great-great-grandfather and my great-grandfather, were famous around town — socialites in their day who served the country via the U.S. Navy. Old copies of the New York Times and the Washington Post carried tales of their conquests on the high seas and their good deeds at home. But time is a fleeting mistress (or something waxy like that): I can’t get a same-day reservation at Oya on 7th Street NW to save my life.

“But wait, I’m the great-great-great-grandson of…” doesn’t get you very far in Washington in 2008. And if it did, life in this town would likely be unbearable!

Shame on the International Olympic Committee for calling protests against the torch relay “a blasphemy of the Olympic spirit.”

Although the Communist Chinese government claims to support basic human rights, its track record shows that it will use any means necessary to quell the rights of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and freedom of the press.  What’s worse, the government of China manipulated the institution of the Olympic Games, claiming it would grant extraordinary freedoms leading up to the games.  And yet, the cultural genocide in Tibet and other non-Han majority areas of China continues to this very day.

Why wouldn’t Tibetans and their supporters in free countries like the United Kingdom and France use the opportunity of the Olympic Torch Relay to engage in acts of civil disobedience?  In their home country, they would likely be tortured or executed for taking such a stand.

Is the world going to standby while the voiceless try to elevate their issue to the global stage?  Is that blasphemy?

I repeat, shame on the International Olympic Committee — they let the Chinese government pull a fast one by granting them the Olympic games on empty promises.  If anything, the repression of basic human rights, and the concerted effort afterward to cover it up, is blasphemy against the Olympic spirit.