People vs. People

People seem most comfortable surrounded by others like them in places they know. When I first moved out of my comfort zone in San Francisco to a tiny ghost town in northern Nevada, I didn’t know how people would see and respond to me or what I would think of them. After all, I grew up in Brooklyn, went to college in San Francisco and stayed there until moving to Nevada many years later. A big city girl on a high desert mountain in an old mining town. Couldn’t be more different. But I fell in love with the desert. Some people in town told me I’d become a desert rat. I didn’t really know what a desert rat was, but I was glad to find out that it was a good thing.

I’d also never heard the expression “We have always done it this way.” But I kept hearing it over and over. Don’t get me wrong, I understand tradition, but this was something else. It felt like an easy way to separate out newcomers. You know, when you don’t know the way things are done in a place you’ve never been. “We have always done it this way” growled at you says you are wrong and ought to do it the way they do. But it had also become an excuse to never change. But life does change, doesn’t it? Even when it’s out of your control, things change.

So, why do we get instantly angry and confrontational when somebody says something that we don’t see the same way? What if the person comes from another part of the country or the world? What if they are of a different race, a different religion? What if their politics are at the other end of the continuum from our own? Years ago, before Trump, disagreement would call for debate or maybe discussion or even an argument about the issue. Sure, there was always anger at the extremes. But now it doesn’t matter if you are at the extremes; anger levels are out the window even when the rage is about something totally insignificant. Why is it ok to shoot somebody because they cut you off in traffic or didn’t bring enough “duck sauce” with your delivery? What is happening to us? I don’t know! I don’t have answers. I just keep wondering what is wrong with the world right now. Something is definitely wrong. People won’t even talk to one another, when talking would really be better than picking up a gun.

And what is it that those at the violent, right wing extreme want? Wanting a nation run by charlatans who don’t know what they’re doing is like asking your neighbor who sells real estate to perform your brain surgery. Seriously? Calling for a white Christian nation in a country that prides itself on being a melting pot for a free people certainly isn’t helping. What is our future then? Can we continue to keep the heart of our country beating with the peaceful transfer of power? Can we keep this fragile democratic republic alive when half the people don’t care about the other half; when almost half the country worships the charlatan who keeps pretending to be something he’s not? It doesn’t even matter if you pull back the curtain. Worshippers will still see a wizard and we will still see a fool. And some of us will still be wondering how to fight political battles with some sense of decency, without using a gun.