Oregon Trail
Guess who's back? Back again. Real Hussein. I'm not dead.
Yes, gentle reader, there is something here for you to gently read.
I have returned from a long spell away from my computer. I spent the last couple of weeks in the hinterlands of Oregon, where they have yet to discover teh Intarweb. Or Japanese food. Or the wheel. Primitive fucking savages.
No, I was visiting my grandparents up in Oregon. And this visit convinced me that I never need to visit my grandparents again. They can live out their lives and die up in Oregon without any interference from me.
As the gentle reader well knows, the subject of love has been much on my mind of late. I'm learning a lot about what it means to be close to somebody, and about how trust and affection and shared values can overcome differences in opinion, and about how these things sometimes can't overcome those differences.
So with this on my mind--and fully feeling that I know more about what it means to relate to other human beings, and know how to relate to human beings better than I ever have before--I went up to Oregon to see my grandparents for the first time in some years.
There was the initial exchange of embraces at the airport, of course. Things went downhill from there. Within a day of my arrival, my grandparents were watching Bill O'Reilly and listening to Rush Limbaugh. They were soundly cursing liberals at every opportunity, blaming all of the world's problems--from the ice on the roads to the oppressively high cost of an annual Costco membership ($45!!!111!1!1!) on the liberals, as well as the allies of the liberals: the blacks, the Mexicans (who, like Indians, can't handle money and would only drink their wages away, as was conclusively demonstrated by an anecdote my grandfather shared with me about Mexican field laborers working in Wisconsin in the 1940s). Oh, and let's not forget the gays, either. Those insidious gays.
Gentle reader, you should know I strive to be apolitical. Which is to say, in mixed company, I do my damnedest not to express any kind of divisive political opinion. Or to express any divisive opinion at all, for that matter. I do not want to foment conflicts which would have no easy and clean resolution, and discussions between people of different political persuasions are rarely easy and clean.
In some kind of alternate universe, people with different opinions are able to discuss their differences in a calm and civil and respectful manner. These people are able, through the use of reason and logic, to arrive at the best possible conclusions on any given subject. When one person is proved wrong he accepts his error gracefully; he does not wrap his ego and his sense of self-worth around his opinion, but rather is eager to learn and expand his mind and also resolve the inconsistencies and errors within his own thinking.
Let me tell you, gentle reader: that alternate universe has no place for Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. Or my grandparents.
I think debate and argument and discussion are ultimately pretty fucking pointless. Does anybody ever convince anybody of anything? I mean, I could have done my absolute best to talk to my grandparents about why it is that they shouldn't presume all Mexicans to be greedy and stupid and lazy, or why it is fallacious and downright hurtful and injurious to the cooperation and compromise that *must* occur within a civil society to say things like "these people are so stupid" when making a blanket statement about all liberals. I could have done my absolute best to talk to them about how I feel they are incorrect--or at least tell them how they were hurting my feelings and making me feel physically ill when they said this kind of stuff--and it wouldn't have counted for shit. And all their hate-talk--did it convince me of anything? No, it certainly didn't. So what's the point? What the fuck is the point?
It seems to me that political discussion is usually about saying we're right, and the other guys are evil. Dialog, compromise, civility, logic, respect for the rights of others...these things fall by the wayside. I feel like discussions of politics are often just abusive and divisive; they make the people who agree with you feel smart and superior, and they make the people who disagree with you all the more convinced that you are amoral.
Sometimes I feel like all discussion and dialog between people is like that. But sometimes somebody comes along to remind me that no, we don't *have* to be so fucking mean to each other all the time, that it is possible to be sensitive and respectful and supportive, to help others to feel good about themselves, rather than make others feel like shit.
If I hadn't called Bonny every night that I was staying with my grandparents, I expect I would've fallen into a deep depression. As it was, I was just in a mild depression, with headaches and stomach pains continuing throughout the week.
Does the gentle reader know that I really cannot abide excesses of negative emotion? That the mere presence of strife and conflict and hatred, even if I am not directly involved, is deeply disturbing for me? I want to resolve conflicts directly, and quickly. When there's no direct or quick solution--or even the possibility of a civil resolution for the conflict--it is agonizing for me. And so I spent my week with my grandparents, my tongue bleeding from having bitten down on it so often, and for so long.
Enough. Enough for now. I'm back. I must remember my trip once more, to record it here, and then I can do my absolute best to forget it.
Yes, gentle reader, there is something here for you to gently read.
I have returned from a long spell away from my computer. I spent the last couple of weeks in the hinterlands of Oregon, where they have yet to discover teh Intarweb. Or Japanese food. Or the wheel. Primitive fucking savages.
No, I was visiting my grandparents up in Oregon. And this visit convinced me that I never need to visit my grandparents again. They can live out their lives and die up in Oregon without any interference from me.
As the gentle reader well knows, the subject of love has been much on my mind of late. I'm learning a lot about what it means to be close to somebody, and about how trust and affection and shared values can overcome differences in opinion, and about how these things sometimes can't overcome those differences.
So with this on my mind--and fully feeling that I know more about what it means to relate to other human beings, and know how to relate to human beings better than I ever have before--I went up to Oregon to see my grandparents for the first time in some years.
There was the initial exchange of embraces at the airport, of course. Things went downhill from there. Within a day of my arrival, my grandparents were watching Bill O'Reilly and listening to Rush Limbaugh. They were soundly cursing liberals at every opportunity, blaming all of the world's problems--from the ice on the roads to the oppressively high cost of an annual Costco membership ($45!!!111!1!1!) on the liberals, as well as the allies of the liberals: the blacks, the Mexicans (who, like Indians, can't handle money and would only drink their wages away, as was conclusively demonstrated by an anecdote my grandfather shared with me about Mexican field laborers working in Wisconsin in the 1940s). Oh, and let's not forget the gays, either. Those insidious gays.
Gentle reader, you should know I strive to be apolitical. Which is to say, in mixed company, I do my damnedest not to express any kind of divisive political opinion. Or to express any divisive opinion at all, for that matter. I do not want to foment conflicts which would have no easy and clean resolution, and discussions between people of different political persuasions are rarely easy and clean.
In some kind of alternate universe, people with different opinions are able to discuss their differences in a calm and civil and respectful manner. These people are able, through the use of reason and logic, to arrive at the best possible conclusions on any given subject. When one person is proved wrong he accepts his error gracefully; he does not wrap his ego and his sense of self-worth around his opinion, but rather is eager to learn and expand his mind and also resolve the inconsistencies and errors within his own thinking.
Let me tell you, gentle reader: that alternate universe has no place for Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. Or my grandparents.
I think debate and argument and discussion are ultimately pretty fucking pointless. Does anybody ever convince anybody of anything? I mean, I could have done my absolute best to talk to my grandparents about why it is that they shouldn't presume all Mexicans to be greedy and stupid and lazy, or why it is fallacious and downright hurtful and injurious to the cooperation and compromise that *must* occur within a civil society to say things like "these people are so stupid" when making a blanket statement about all liberals. I could have done my absolute best to talk to them about how I feel they are incorrect--or at least tell them how they were hurting my feelings and making me feel physically ill when they said this kind of stuff--and it wouldn't have counted for shit. And all their hate-talk--did it convince me of anything? No, it certainly didn't. So what's the point? What the fuck is the point?
It seems to me that political discussion is usually about saying we're right, and the other guys are evil. Dialog, compromise, civility, logic, respect for the rights of others...these things fall by the wayside. I feel like discussions of politics are often just abusive and divisive; they make the people who agree with you feel smart and superior, and they make the people who disagree with you all the more convinced that you are amoral.
Sometimes I feel like all discussion and dialog between people is like that. But sometimes somebody comes along to remind me that no, we don't *have* to be so fucking mean to each other all the time, that it is possible to be sensitive and respectful and supportive, to help others to feel good about themselves, rather than make others feel like shit.
If I hadn't called Bonny every night that I was staying with my grandparents, I expect I would've fallen into a deep depression. As it was, I was just in a mild depression, with headaches and stomach pains continuing throughout the week.
Does the gentle reader know that I really cannot abide excesses of negative emotion? That the mere presence of strife and conflict and hatred, even if I am not directly involved, is deeply disturbing for me? I want to resolve conflicts directly, and quickly. When there's no direct or quick solution--or even the possibility of a civil resolution for the conflict--it is agonizing for me. And so I spent my week with my grandparents, my tongue bleeding from having bitten down on it so often, and for so long.
Enough. Enough for now. I'm back. I must remember my trip once more, to record it here, and then I can do my absolute best to forget it.