Please go back to drinking beer and scratching yourself....

So...I'm not expecting a lot of readers this time.  I had given up blogging for a while--technically, more than 6 months.   In an intentional, initially non-intentional, experiment, I needed to focus on other things.  I wanted to buy a house and get my personal life "back to where" I was a decade ago.  Like a majority of Americans, the last 10 years has been a strain.  While we all probably were ready to leave 9/11 behind us, we entered an era of financial uncertainty and an economy that was crushing many of us.  This fed a division in this country that egged on old demons like racism and anti-female sentiments.  Right now, we are so divided that most of us have felt like we had to choose sides.  If we didn't like this, we had to be that, even if that was an impossibility.  I'm notoriously middle in everything.  One of my best friends points out I try to assess as many facts as I can get a hold of before ever making a decision. (It took me 3 years to decide what car to buy.) She tells me all the time most people don't do this.  She does I counter-point, but then she points out that if she really wants more facts she calls me.  Ummm.  Okay.  Mentioned this to another couple different close friends, and well, they were all in agreement.  My sister calls me a walking encyclopedia.  I read, listen and absorb--everything, and generally can recall it relatively easily.

My one bestie actually said it's probably a curse in some ways.  Maybe.  It certainly serves me well when it comes to work.  I can remember details about how things are supposed to work, what's required, what's not, what things I need to get done, priorities, et cetera.  But I can visualize anything back like it just happened.  It's not hard for me to recall with a weird precision more things than apparently is "normal".  I can remember coming home to my grandmother watching a new show in the 80s, some woman from Chicago who was just becoming an afternoon favorite with the women who were still housewives, you might know her--Oprah Winfrey.  I sat on the floor next to Grams on the sofa and asked her what she was watching.  She shushed me and said this was important and I needed to watch.  It's really nice to be able to recall that like it happened yesterday and see my grandmother in my mind sitting on her sofa. It gives me comfort while bringing tears to my eyes.  But what was so important I watch was the discussion on one of those subjects that would eventually become one of those polarized subjects where you are either this or that and there can be no compromise.  The subject was abortion.  Nope, we're not going there.

Where we are going?  Well, unfortunately abortion is just one of many subjects that you have to be  this way or that.  The polarization in this country is where we are going.  The far, extreme right, likes to use a term that Nixon coined in the 1970s, "the silent majority".  Ironic, since the far right has never been silent and certainly has never been the majority.  The last time the "far right" was the majority was the original million man march in the 1920s.  World War II changed everything in this country.  That's right.  What we all argue about now?  In some way, everything stems back to WWII and it's aftermath.  I'm not talking about global issues.  I'm talking about the American psyche.  All the things we "argue" about and have become so polarized about all stem to changes we had to make to win the war.  We were changed forever.

WWII proved that race or sex weren't a real factor in abilities.  The racial structure of this country is rapidly changing.  Most of us don't really care about race anymore.  We are almost all mortified when we watch some racist rant and rave like a lunatic in a restaurant, yet all those old tensions that many of us were raised around have been coming to a boil over the last decade.  The original million man march was in the 1920s and was conducted by the infamous Ku Klux Klan.  Most people don't even realize there had been an "original" march, even many of the men who participated in the 1990s version, didn't realize it.  But by the middle of the 2020s, an hundred years later, the majority of Americans will be some shade of olive.  Estimates are a little "darker" than I am.  Are we okay with this?  I don't know, but it sure has become a polar point.  You are either a fan of this or you are racist.  I had a "white", German-Polish in descent, friend, unfriend me and calling me a racist because I didn't like Obama.  I didn't like my increase in taxes that made my life more difficult, and yes, I blamed Obama.  But, seriously my ultra-white stereotype friend that I had been friends with for more than 30 years calling me racist?  It was laughable.  When I pointed that out, she called me a slew of bigot slurs and ended our friendship.  Frankly, she had become so far left she didn't see the irony in her own accusations, but it was tantamount to where we were headed as a country.  If you don't like this, you have to be that.

The pro-choice movement has suffered from the same attacks.  If you are pro-choice, you can't be pro-life.  Again, ironic, since the pro-life movement has openly sanctioned murders of doctors and nurses.  I'm pretty sure that's life too, so it's really kind of a pick and choose what life matters at that point.  But if you are pro-choice, well, you had to hate babies.  This was a meme I saw in the last 10 years.  What? Come on.  Common sense should prevail, right?  Pro-choice simply means you don't think other people's problems are your business.  MYOB.  But suddenly, faced by a former friend who was an extreme Bible thumper, I was bombarded with me sanctioning baby killing.  I wanted to buy her a ticket to Somalia.  There's plenty of already born babies dying there all the time.  She didn't want to hear about those babies.  You were either on her side or you weren't.  Well, I'm all for saving babies, but I think the ones that are already alive might be more important.  There was no in between for her.  I was sanctioning baby killing if I didn't agree with her.  If you don't agree with this, then you have to be that.

As we strolled through the last decade, most people's blinders have become more like full eye patches.  A friend suggested, she's a middle of the road person for the most part, that maybe it's because I've got too many far right leaned friends and acquaintances.  My perception might be skewed.  Okay, so the great experiment:  Get active on far left leaning discussions with the "middle" view, neither right or left, and see what the response was.  OMG.  The same.  Honestly, I think the far left leaning nuts are more volatile and hostile.  But, really, redneck trash has been in bar fights or definitely know people who have been, and therefore, at some point, they know they might be pushing a limit.  The left, for the most part, as Jay-Z puts it, "wouldn't bust a grape in a food fight".  But oh my gosh, can they run their mouths.....People like to say you can't hear if you're talking.  Not true.  We love these old adages, because they are simple one liners that sound like golden nuggets of wisdom.  No, you can't hear if you have closed your mind.  If you have polarized yourself, and yes this is all on each of us, you can't hear what others are saying, because you have reached the point where no matter what someone else says, it has to fit your narrative or it's untrue.  We close ourselves off to "hearing" what we don't want to hear and we can't see the forest for the trees.

Compromise, a friend said recently, has become a thing of the past.  Yet, I have conversations with a lot of my good friends that even when we disagree, we both walk away with something to think about.  The best friend that suggested that I always have more facts, well, she always teaches me something.  When we have differing views, I've learned more about a subject and vice versa, and both of us walk away with more information to digest.  She and I have discussed this polarization at length.  We both agree that it's ruining this country and neither of us have the solution to get out of these polarized ruts.  It's like 2 ditches on the opposite sides of a road.  If you fall into one, there's no way to get out of it, and the road of compromise in between is getting narrower and narrower.

This goes on all the time a friend told me.  It's part of daily life.  Yes, I suppose for some people this is true.  An acquaintance said I needed to make up my mind and get off the fence on a certain issue that was going on between two friends.  First, it's between them.  I'm riding the fence, because really it's none of my business.  Bluntly, it isn't really the acquaintance's business either.  But it got me thinking on all this.  So the second point?  Why in the hell do any of us have to pick a side?  I can think they both are wrong, both are right, anything in between or have no opinion whatsoever.  Finally, everyone that started picking sides?  Well, those aren't really mature adults, are they?  They all started demanding everyone pick sides suddenly, like they were in a bad movie with Lindsey Lohan.  That is what we've digressed to in every subject in this country, and all I can say is I like the middle road.  I'm not here to win a popularity contest, and real adults wouldn't be either.

Years ago, a guy I worked with, "Chance", said when all Americans were engaged in political debates it would be a nightmare.  They wouldn't have a clue what they were talking about the majority of the time, they would digress into high school antics and nothing would get done.  We were better off, he said, if the ignorant portion stayed ignorant watching their NASCAR or basketball, drinking beer and scratching themselves and as far away from politics as possible.  They would turn the whole country into one big joke.  "Chance", I concede.  Twenty-five years later, and the internet, have proven he was right.  People who really are too lazy to know what they are talking about too easily grab one liner memes and run with them.  It was better when people who didn't know what they were talking about didn't pretend to be in the know.  We could talk like he and I did that day and then just agree to disagree until one of us was proven wrong.  I was wrong.  I long for the days where people too lazy to pretend to know just go back to drinking beer and scratching themselves.  Leave the politics to those that actually really care, are the true middle majority, and who are capable of compromise.