AN OPEN LETTER TO THE 3 OR SO CONSERVATIVES THAT STILL FOLLOW ME
[TLDR: I am asking if you are lonely and if we can help you a bit with that.]...
Hey folks,
As you know, we’re having a really heated time in our streets, on social media, in our heads, and in our brazen American hearts. Everybody’s enraged, everybody’s calling each other names, everyone is vociferously defending their side and it’s gotten well beyond ugly. I’m not writing this to comment on those events or details. I’m keen to do so in other posts about that, but in this, I want to address a big ‘ol room in the elephant. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but I ask you at least take a look at it, hear me out, and consider the benefits of this medicine. I can’t and won’t force you to take it, of course, but I do think y’all’s loved ones also know you need somethin’.
I grew up among some of you folks who would become MAGA in Ohio in the 70s & 80s. Builders. Mechanics. Machinists. Farmers. Teachers. Christian folks. I went to Catholic school from 1st grade through high school. I very seriously considered becoming a priest. I saw you (be you poor, working class, or semi-wealthy), strive for excellence in your work, support and raise up your families, friends, and communities, and I saw you participate in the fun things, the communal things in life: Block parties, dancing, building, making and repairing things, hosting theme parties, and generally having fun while also working hard to sustain your lifestyle as part of the American economy. I didn’t agree with everything you said, and sometimes you said things that seemed a little shortsighted, but I liked you just fine. You were perfectly normal and okay folks to me as a kid.
But as years wore on, and, I suspect, talk radio and the 24 hour news cycle of cable took a heroin-like grip on you, the people that I knew and liked and in some cases loved, started to slowly fade away, replaced drop by drop with someone who was a bit crankier, a bit more aggrieved, a bit more uncompromising, and, especially, a lot less fun. Your jokes got meaner, your focus got narrower, and you started jumping at shadows and exhibiting signs of paranoia. You started blaming a lot of people out there for your bad moods, people you rarely, if ever, encountered in real life. You plugged into the internet, and used it to try to validate your fears, armed with bags of confirmation bias.
By the time 9-11 happened to our nation, you were already primed to respond with fear and to lash out. And boy, did you lash out. It was ugly. And it made a lot of us see a side of you that we had been hoping wasn’t really there, but there it was. It was there, it was real, and it was defending itself violently. So, yes, many of us took a step back from you, because that’s what you do when someone who is talking about violence a bit too much is also showing signs of instability. It’s not comfortable to be around such people because they feel DANGEROUS to anyone with any situational awareness.
As the years marched on, we watched you fall for and repeat vile and flagrant lies either out of neglegence or malice, neither of which is a good look. Who wants to be around a liar? Especially when they’re lying in defense of some seriously gross shit? Sound like someone you want to be around, buddy?
And it’s now gotten to the point where, for anyone on the left, being in the same room or even the same internet with a MAGA person is just an exercise in futility, and I don’t think it’s projecting to assume that y’all are just as tired of all this shit as we are, right? So here’s the bitter pill that sounds so suspicious, but if you take it, I promise, promise, it will feel like shit for a while, but you’ll eventually wake up with some huge weights off your shoulders, and your life can be fun again. Here it is:
The MAGA people I know are – by a long shot – the loneliest, saddest people I know. But you don't have to be.
I ain’t saying there are no happy MAGAs, of course there are, but I have yet to meet one in person, and as these debates rage online, I check to make sure I am discussing these very important issues with actual human beings and not bots. And what I keep finding (aside from the battalions of MAGAbots) is real people with a tiny handful of friends, a little circle, not even what you could call a tribe. And many of them have posts calling hypocrisy on liberals for shunning them, for losing friends over their political beliefs, but guys, I hate to tell ya, that’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back in most cases. If you want to know why you have so few friends, it’s because people like to be around people who are nicer and more fun than you are.
As someone who thought he was conservative as a kid, I had a lot of pre-conceived notions about a lot of people because you tend to take on the ethics of those around you, but when I actually left home and talked to people in other places, and was exposed to a lot more ideas about things, it became very clear that I had been living in a bubble, and outside that bubble was a lot more thought and consideration, a lot more kindness and nurturing, a lot more potlucks and ribbon-cuttings and folks helping each other out. When you live in the liberal world, you are surrounded by warm family wherever you go, and when you have to dip back into the conservative world to, say, visit a buddy who’s into that, it’s not fun. It’s not nice. It’s not thoughtful. It’s just ranting or being distracted and not much else.
Y’all are so insistent that the party two doors down is just fulla criminals and idiots and wimps and cucks and loons, but I think what you might want to consider is that you’re telling yourself that because you’re afraid if you came to that party, you would get mocked and made to look stupid. And hey, maybe that would happen, I dunno, but while I can see how that makes sense as an emotional response, it doesn’t make sense as a rational response. Until you’ve gone to the party and met your weird neighbors, you don’t know if they’re Elvis or Elvira or Ed Asner.
Many of us on the Left grew up with conservative thought as a big part of our lives, so it’s not out of blind ignorance, but rather direct experience that we speak when we critique it. Surely there ARE conservative pundits, who have spent enough time with real folks on the left to know they’re not the cartoon of them you imagine, but for the average MAGA Joe or Joleen, I think ya gotta admit you haven’t really tried to see what it’s like on the left side, socially, how much less exhausting it is to put on the acts that conservatism demands of you, and how nice it feels to take those heavy coats off, ya know?
So if you’re baffled as to why some of your left-leaning friends, family, or neighbors are steering clear of you, consider sending something like this, but in your own words to them:
“Hey, I want to be your friend, and that means really trying to understand where you come from. If I promise to truly listen and consider what you say as possible, will you give me a chance to try to understand, sincerely?”
And if they consent, sincerely do that.
So that’s your bitter pill for better living. If you keep listening to people, fact-checking things, and learning to be properly social, you’ll get more and more friends and less and less lonely. Promise.
If you keep blaming people for not wanting to be your friend, please remember that the common denominator in that equation is YOU.
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