IdeaJones

Tag: political

  • How To Save Your Own Life

    hate-is-a-choice-ideajones(Or Break Your Own Heart).

    It’s been a scary year. No matter which side of the fence you were on, or if you chose to stay home, or when offered a choice between A and B you decided to order a mongoose, someone has called you a deluded moron, either online or to your face.

    We’ve been played, dear ones. And we’re still being played.

    We were encouraged to be angry and suspicious of each other. To believe that *our* side held the golden ticket to the 100% pure, diamond-studded Answer From On High, and the people on the other side were idiots, deranged, dangerous, barely human. If you found yourself saying (insert group of your choice) are (stupid, crazy, dangerous, unpatriotic, selfish, lazy, whatever insult you’ve got), say it with me now, “Baaaaaaaa!” We’re growing wool, dear ones.

    Doesn’t matter what party you belong to or if you don’t belong to a party at all. If you criticized not the candidates, but their followers, you got played. Because those people you’ve been calling names? They’re the same people you’re going to have to work with if anything is going to get better. No group is big enough to do it alone. And no group is large enough to do it despite the others. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We may have come to this country on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.” He wasn’t wrong.

    The riots going on? No matter what party we belong to, we own those. If you’re a Republican, and you spent this last year saying “they” don’t love this country, or “they” want to take away jobs and don’t care about what’s important or are just blindly following the party line, you personally asked your neighbors to refuse to accept it if the GOP candidate won and fight to protect themselves. If you didn’t stand up and loudly refuse to go along when candidates and supporters called other people a threat, then you bought a piece of the discord going on now.

    Democrat? Spent the year ridiculing supporters on the other side, saying they’re dangerous, stupid, crazy or all three and want to throw the country back to the Stone Age? Congrats, you helped solidify the opposition’s support and gave those people no good way to simply change their minds.

    Third party voter or nonvoter? By not bothering to find out how the Electoral College works, you turned yourself into a cipher. You removed yourself from the process and made it that much easier for the powers that be to ignore you.

    If you got this far, first off, thanks, you’re a brave soul. And yes, I count myself in the “us” that screwed everything up. We all belong to this club.

    Mason Cooley said “Enjoy an insult as you deliver it, before you learn its cost.” Congratulations, you win a riot, and you win a riot, and we all win a riot! Yay for us?

    So what’s next, dear ones? Where do we go from here? What do we want done? Let’s be clear — no matter who won, that person would still be an insider gaming the system. Not that whoever it is would wish you ill, but chances are his first priority would be pleasing the people who got him there. He’s willing to do you some good if it does him no harm.

    So let’s not leave it up to whoever’s in charge. Leaders can only lead if followers follow — otherwise that “leader” is just a person going it alone. Talk to your neighbors, yes, even the ones you disagree with. What do you want in your community?  What can you agree on? Find that stuff, take all this wild energy we seem to possess, and let’s get to work. Together.

    One thing to remember is that when you’re hurting or unhappy and someone tells you the problem is *that* person *over there,* it’s usually to deflect you from noticing that at least part of the problem is right there, pointing at someone else. People who genuinely want to help you don’t waste time getting you to blame somebody else. They help you.

  • Doing Your Civic Doody

    Doing Your Civic Doody

    We will never forget this election year. Oh, we'll try, but we'll never forget.
    We will never forget this election year. Oh, we’ll try, but we’ll never forget.

    Lord, I’m looking forward to the end of this election.

    I envy people who came of age in the 60s. Who knows what kind of President JFK would have been long-term, but they at least had the chance to be idealistic.

    It was bad enough when the “bleeding heart liberals” faced off against the “heartless right-wingers.” The language has gotten harsher. This time, it sounds as if all sides believe the other side is no longer human, not just mistaken, but evil. Only one side gets heard in the end, because the winning side continues to paint the losing side as tainted, untouchable. We’re giving up the ability to become one country after the votes are tallied.

    While I’ve spoken out about the issues and the candidates in this election, I’ve tried to avoid demonizing or deifying any side. Back someone into a corner, and his only way out is to fight you. Everyone is worried, scared, tense and tired. Not the best condition in which to make decisions. We have to leave each other room to negotiate our shared future regardless of who wins the election.

    My tolerance does not extend to the candidates themselves and their handlers. One especially. I understand how someone could support Donald Trump in the beginning, and once there, with people saying you’re stupid or worse, switching requires eating a huge slice of humble pie. They didn’t leave you any way out with your pride intact.

    But if you can do it, if you can manage to choke down that much humility and admit he fooled you, know that at least one person admires you for that. It is hard to say you’re wrong. I hate admitting I’m wrong. So if you look at the way he hasn’t released his tax records when he’s the only candidate in decades not to do that, the way he says things and then says he didn’t say them when they’ve been recorded and it’s irrefutable that he did, if you can see that you thought you were getting a can-do businessman, but what he’s selling you is a hazardous, toxic man-baby who would lie to your face, use you and discard you in a  heartbeat, then I and every other reasonable, decent person in this country, possibly around the world, will owe you our respect.  Everyone gets fooled from time to time, but it takes a lot to admit it.

    It’s not you I don’t respect — it’s him. You’re not evil. You’re not stupid. You got conned. It happens to most of us. Even if you can’t quite admit it publicly, which is even harder, admit it when you vote your ballot and kick this toxic con artist where it will pain him most — in his ego. You’re in the position to give him the lesson he desperately needs.

    And once it’s over, we all need to put down our darts and knives and come together to keep our government working on the problems we need it to handle. So those who have been demonizing the opposition will have to swallow those “I told you so’s” unsaid, refrain from saying or posting that perfect insult, stop being unmitigated asshats, and work for the common good without name-calling. Mason Cooley once said, “Enjoy an insult as you deliver it, before you learn its cost.” The people you demonize will not work with you. If you want things to get better, you’re going to have to leave those witty barbs unsaid.

    We need to get back to working with each other, talking to each other, and admiring posts of each others’ lunches and pets. It won’t be easy, but it will feel good.

    If we’ve ever wanted to be superheroes, now’s our chance.