Transmitting from one liberal enclave to another, I see liberals as masons working in chicken shit.
Socially liberal yes, but clutching the privilege that comes from our separation, we covetously cling to our modest means because we fear fiscally liberal policies will erode the mud wall around us and make us just another corpuscle in a community.
Instead we point to marble walls of our own betters up the hill and suggest they could be just as inspiring if they were more affordable brick. We fear giving itself. We are happy to share our castoffs and used coats, to give leftover food from the office party to the shelter, or send a few bucks here or there, but to seek real means for those without walls at all, well it bothers us.
We leveraged our privilege to get this fuggin’ mud fence and be dammed if we want to live where just anyone can have one.
Until we are willing to work as hard as we can to provide real change for everyone, rich, poor, old, young, urban, rural, red, blue—cradle to grave health care, education, freedom from poverty, food, housing, and retirement security—we will continue to muck our own wall with the dirt we have.
Yet, if we did succeed at change, we might find no need for walls at all. And, at that point, who cares anyway, go ahead and sculpt away…
I don't live in the USA. I don't follow a religion. I have faith in my fellow man. The vast majority of us are decent caring human beings. Most of us follow the law of reciprocity, doing unto others as we would do unto ourselves. There is no deep individual desire to heap harm onto others. That is antithetical to our nature. Division is fostered by those who seek power. They're very good at it. They have managed to reach deep into the roots of our families and communities to sow that division. They continue to do so. We have fallen for it. I don't believe it goes much deeper than that. Hatred fueled by anger that is sown with lies embedded with a grain of truth is a powerful drug of division. The powerful, our "leaders", use that drug to great affect. I will not swallow it. I will not be moved from the path of living my life with boundless friendliness towards all as my guiding intention.
Thanks for sharing your experience and opinion. I appreciate what you have to say.
Moved by your sincerity and sharing of your working on this puzzle. I too wonder about this and how to best become a bridge accross divides without endangering my family nor losing contact with my chosen people. I am sensing something has to be risked and sacrificed. Perhaps to lay my own comforts and ideological righteousness on the altar to be burned… so I can show up more curious and less sanctimonious. More willing to validate the deeper concerns, values and needs of people whose politics are a threat to mine. Hmm. You have a way of laying out your journey that disarms me into considering a better way… one which I am nervous about yet called to. Thank you. 🙏🏻
Your comments regarding we are not the same people, suggests we ever were. That I believe is a dangerous nastalgia for a unity that never was. Looing back to an idealized past to return to, is a tactic of some conservatives.
Do you think the early 1950s when Senator Macarthey was accusing and investigating people suspected to be communists, that our communities were not hiding in silos? Or when FDR wanted to increase the supreme court to counter the republican majority? Or when states anywhere had to allow slave catchers to enter their boundaries and recapture escaped slaves? Those times were opposed strongly by people.
The norm is to have opposing oppinions., not to sacrifice them. The norm is to witness to what you see to be the truth and argue for it, not to sacrifice your views. I don't think liberals who support unions, and rights for workers and the poor, should have to sacrifice their relatively nice house to oppose oppression by owners and managers and the rights of corporations to function as persons.
Opposing opinions is one thing. What I am arguing against is our opposing lives. We no longer share a common table, so to speak. And, no, there has never been unity. That is a fiction.
I live in Huntsville Alabama. It’s sort of blue. Ish. My neighborhood has way more Trump signs than Harris Walz signs. There are people here who drive by in trucks with Trump flags. We eat and shop and work with people who I know would support bloody deportations, the end of gay marriage, and Trump’s punishment of his enemies. I know this because these people say these things on social media and IRL to me. We’ve talked with them gently about what Christianity does or has meant to us. We’ve talked about where they get their facts. We’ve talked to them about our friends who are gay or in some cases introduced them if that felt safe. The nurses among us described how Covid looked on the frontlines. In one case, a nurse I knew, a Southern Baptist woman, went to an encampment of kids taken from their parents at the border and came back saying it was WORSE than the news portrayed it. She left the church after no one budged at the news. We’ve tried facts, we’ve tried emotions. And these people still act confused when someone tells them so they don’t want to hear. I’m not in a silo but I’m beginning to think there are some cult like aspects to all this. We’re tired bordering on despair. We are afraid of what will happen on election day and afterwards. I sometimes long for a “safe place.” I wish I had an answer.
Looking at your mention of "one person" taking care of the various silos.
Our country is supposed to be taken care of by a government that is able to look at those silos and decide what is best for all of them, knowing that some people in every silo will not be happy, but the majority will look after the disappointed anyway.
I share your vision. I think we long to fix it all. And maybe someone will in some big ways. But for most, we must do our best at what is around is. As is attributed to Mother Teresa: I cannot do great things, only small things with great love.💗
Transmitting from one liberal enclave to another, I see liberals as masons working in chicken shit.
Socially liberal yes, but clutching the privilege that comes from our separation, we covetously cling to our modest means because we fear fiscally liberal policies will erode the mud wall around us and make us just another corpuscle in a community.
Instead we point to marble walls of our own betters up the hill and suggest they could be just as inspiring if they were more affordable brick. We fear giving itself. We are happy to share our castoffs and used coats, to give leftover food from the office party to the shelter, or send a few bucks here or there, but to seek real means for those without walls at all, well it bothers us.
We leveraged our privilege to get this fuggin’ mud fence and be dammed if we want to live where just anyone can have one.
Until we are willing to work as hard as we can to provide real change for everyone, rich, poor, old, young, urban, rural, red, blue—cradle to grave health care, education, freedom from poverty, food, housing, and retirement security—we will continue to muck our own wall with the dirt we have.
Yet, if we did succeed at change, we might find no need for walls at all. And, at that point, who cares anyway, go ahead and sculpt away…
I don't live in the USA. I don't follow a religion. I have faith in my fellow man. The vast majority of us are decent caring human beings. Most of us follow the law of reciprocity, doing unto others as we would do unto ourselves. There is no deep individual desire to heap harm onto others. That is antithetical to our nature. Division is fostered by those who seek power. They're very good at it. They have managed to reach deep into the roots of our families and communities to sow that division. They continue to do so. We have fallen for it. I don't believe it goes much deeper than that. Hatred fueled by anger that is sown with lies embedded with a grain of truth is a powerful drug of division. The powerful, our "leaders", use that drug to great affect. I will not swallow it. I will not be moved from the path of living my life with boundless friendliness towards all as my guiding intention.
Thanks for sharing your experience and opinion. I appreciate what you have to say.
Moved by your sincerity and sharing of your working on this puzzle. I too wonder about this and how to best become a bridge accross divides without endangering my family nor losing contact with my chosen people. I am sensing something has to be risked and sacrificed. Perhaps to lay my own comforts and ideological righteousness on the altar to be burned… so I can show up more curious and less sanctimonious. More willing to validate the deeper concerns, values and needs of people whose politics are a threat to mine. Hmm. You have a way of laying out your journey that disarms me into considering a better way… one which I am nervous about yet called to. Thank you. 🙏🏻
Tripp;
Your comments regarding we are not the same people, suggests we ever were. That I believe is a dangerous nastalgia for a unity that never was. Looing back to an idealized past to return to, is a tactic of some conservatives.
Do you think the early 1950s when Senator Macarthey was accusing and investigating people suspected to be communists, that our communities were not hiding in silos? Or when FDR wanted to increase the supreme court to counter the republican majority? Or when states anywhere had to allow slave catchers to enter their boundaries and recapture escaped slaves? Those times were opposed strongly by people.
The norm is to have opposing oppinions., not to sacrifice them. The norm is to witness to what you see to be the truth and argue for it, not to sacrifice your views. I don't think liberals who support unions, and rights for workers and the poor, should have to sacrifice their relatively nice house to oppose oppression by owners and managers and the rights of corporations to function as persons.
Opposing opinions is one thing. What I am arguing against is our opposing lives. We no longer share a common table, so to speak. And, no, there has never been unity. That is a fiction.
I live in Huntsville Alabama. It’s sort of blue. Ish. My neighborhood has way more Trump signs than Harris Walz signs. There are people here who drive by in trucks with Trump flags. We eat and shop and work with people who I know would support bloody deportations, the end of gay marriage, and Trump’s punishment of his enemies. I know this because these people say these things on social media and IRL to me. We’ve talked with them gently about what Christianity does or has meant to us. We’ve talked about where they get their facts. We’ve talked to them about our friends who are gay or in some cases introduced them if that felt safe. The nurses among us described how Covid looked on the frontlines. In one case, a nurse I knew, a Southern Baptist woman, went to an encampment of kids taken from their parents at the border and came back saying it was WORSE than the news portrayed it. She left the church after no one budged at the news. We’ve tried facts, we’ve tried emotions. And these people still act confused when someone tells them so they don’t want to hear. I’m not in a silo but I’m beginning to think there are some cult like aspects to all this. We’re tired bordering on despair. We are afraid of what will happen on election day and afterwards. I sometimes long for a “safe place.” I wish I had an answer.
Looking at your mention of "one person" taking care of the various silos.
Our country is supposed to be taken care of by a government that is able to look at those silos and decide what is best for all of them, knowing that some people in every silo will not be happy, but the majority will look after the disappointed anyway.
I share your vision. I think we long to fix it all. And maybe someone will in some big ways. But for most, we must do our best at what is around is. As is attributed to Mother Teresa: I cannot do great things, only small things with great love.💗