Candi-dates
Here we are, about to start off another round of prognosticating, evaluations, and overall turd-throwing. The targets, candidates have already begun to line up, some declaring their need for sadistic disapproval officially, while others lie in wait for the eventual deluge of nastiness. It is a sickening submersion into the soup of psychotic shortcomings and one that we are apparently addicted to as much as the best meth head and alcoholic that can be found. A loop of the Whitesnake song keeps playing in my mind, a primal scream along with the words “Here we go again…”
When the fallout of ’16 was over, months and months later, the trauma was still there. The shock is still there, and at this point it may be a massive case of populace PTSD type of study. It took me months to even begin to try to open up and look around again. I was anti-news, anti politics, a permanent face of “don’t talk to me, I haven’t had enough coffee…” I was short tempered and pissed off at every single person I knew that admitted they voted for the idiot, life changed then, it still does today. In the blooming of hatred and division, in the empowerment of all the things that were better left for dead in the last century, my sensibilities changed. My filters got a little finer, my tribe became more and more filled with like minded people. The BS meter from even my progressive friends set to tilt at even the thought of revisiting the last election, and the state of minds that happened to both sides of the aisle. I wondered how this could be with Obama doing such a great job considering what he had to work with, why did it all just get turned around in the messaging and the answers?
We never learned our lesson.
That much is clear to me at this point, at this juncture as we start to see the candidates come forward. As the progressive voices behind each one of the candidates come forward with them, we haven’t learned a dang thing at all. The past needs vindicating, the old arguments are new again because there’s always more to add, and the betterment of others begins in earnest. The misappropriated idea that since one side does something bad that the other side must do something good… right? Let me know how that works for you. The voices that are coming forward are the same ones that have always been there, though, we seem to have gotten sucked into playing the old game, the ones where we get taken apart and lose at the polls. The very things that make us “so right” is also the thing that we get “so wrong” in the big game, the bigger pictures.
I know where the right gets their elitist point from. We do try to be elite, elite in progressive lingo would be concise and accurate information taking into consideration other aspects. By the time we get to concise in the last sentence, others are moving onto what good it would bring and not the negative. So, elitists will be cautious and apply and misapply tangents to ideas, as much as the other side does and does not. This is where the door opened up a bit more, this is where our best thinking is not always the best in developing congealed groups the size of the rabid right. The meme mentality is a hard line trained set of lockstep actions and reactions, while it is faced with the freedom of thought on the left, it’s not hard to coalesce the right and as is apparent now, almost impossible for the left. The funny thing is, this is one thing that can be blamed squarely on the left with utterly no help from the right on. So, yeah, we never learned our lesson.
Farmers?
When you plant your right’s, and sow your wrongs, what is left is your parcel of character. In the big scheme of things, doing good, in our individualistic piece of land will bring about some room for the character to grow. In the process, good character requires consideration and empathy, sympathy and compassion while determining the best way forward. I have to say that that part is right up there in my sensibilities about these matters, I have to say though that many times I have been wrong too. This is where the separation point comes in in the whole right/left fields. It is a point that has been nagging at me for a while and one I couldn’t quite put my keyboard slammers on. Then I heard it in a meeting, a meeting on something else entirely, the bridge was connected and the various cast members of my personality took over. In a talk about self care and addiction recovery, one of the most pertinent things we attempt to do is apply the right thinking to our troubles. We apply emotional responses to emotional needs and rational responses to rational needs. Boop, like a rock falling from a few feet above and knocking me giddy enough to get it… That’s the opposite of what I have been seeing in political discussions. In fact quite the opposite, these symptoms of addiction and shock and a country begging for someone to tell them what’s wrong with them?… It’s my story on a scale though, that makes it unrecognizable.
My Best Friend
My best friend growing up nearly go me killed on more than one occasion, and looking back now, I have to thank him. He wasn’t trying to get me killed, he was just doing what he did, what he enjoyed and I went along with him a bunch because I liked parts of it too. My addictions also almost got me killed or dead on more than one occasion, and looking back now I would like to thank them too, for being gone now, but for teaching me so much while trying to kill me, all while convincing me beyond my best thinking that it was my best friend and had to be in my life. While around both of these friends, these influencers, I was reacting to the world around me as it passed by, or I came into contact with it. As soon as I was made aware that I did those things, that my addictions and needs caused an entire domino effect on thinking and thus life; I could change, I had something to respond to instead of react to, life was mine to respond to. As I responded to life and not reacted to it, even in my thinking, the actions fell into place.
So, this morning as I was perusing some older posts for evidence of this it was everywhere. It is a generalization and those things are always filled with troubles, but it is also evident in the way we approach a lot of the issues that surround us today. The tendency to apply emotional responses to rational problems, and rational responses to emotional problems is going to plague us for decades, it is the derivative of the snowflake narrative. It is also the bullet that we use to shoot ourselves in the foot every single time we try to get together. Because there is not enough hands to stroke the fur of a thousand sensibility monsters. That overall setting up for the progressive sides that is happening is all good for information purposes, but caution that it’s not a good practice for berating a fellow progressive. We believe and understand those things that we do, and know better than to try to weaponize knowledge, or usurp experiences. We should understand the difference between a rational and logical problem and an emotional and philosophical one. If we really are trying to do things better, we have to understand where we didn’t do well before, and sometimes we can’t see all of that through the noise. I can apply an emotion to anything or anyone, the thing is so can anybody else, I can also apply reason and logic, the thing is so can… oh wait? lol, they voted for Trump.