Friday, October 4, 2013

Political Differences and Fuddy-duddys





Political Differences and Fuddy-duddys




Other people are strange animals. They do weird things and have odd notions. They worship different gods, do incomprehensible things on vacation and all vote Democratic. Or is it Republican?

The previous thought once again flowed through my brain recently while conversing with a dear friend. Hell, I know in my heart that other people think differently than I do – I really do – and that fact shouldn't continue to surprise me. I mean, I run into it almost every day. It's like this: I'll make my mind up about something, usually political these days, and muddle it around in my head until it feels comfortable. I'll speak to others who are of a like mind and by those conversations I begin to feel as if I'm in the majority. It will become completely obvious that my viewpoint is correct, logical and unassailable.

And then I'll run into one of my other friends and, whammo, I'm again reminded that there are other viewpoints out there and that the proponents of those viewpoints are quite as assured as I am that their views are the right ones and where the hell did I get my ideas from?

That always shocks me. It shouldn't, but it does.

At that point I play the game where I weigh that particular friendship against my viewpoint. Do I want to argue with them? Is it that important to me that I might lose my friendship with that person? Am I even that much sold that my view is correct?

I then remember that, generally speaking, that the old adage of not discussing politics and religion should be your guiding principle in the continuing retention of friends and I then shut up and say something general such as “all politicians are crooks and scumbags.” And consensus is usually restored.

But in my mind I remain shocked at how one of my closest friends, some dude or chick that I'd virtually grown up with, can see things so differently. I suppose you could call me a political babe in the woods and you'd be absolutely correct.

You would also be correct to assume that my thinking more about politics these days would have been triggered by the Congress shutting down the government the other day. Of course it did. First off I guess I'll have to acknowledge that there are a lot of very smart people in Congress. People with degrees after their names and accolades from others as to their smartness and acuity. And their political acumen, for sure. But it definitely looks to me like they're a bunch of mewling third-graders who have been given bad grades on their report cards for “plays well with others.”. Most of them either don't know or don't care that the vast majority of Americans are centrists, give-or-take a little here or there, and that it's only the tiny minority of them who are the raving extremists. Of both political parties. Tea-baggers and tree-huggers I call 'em. But those extremists are quite vocal and they're the ones that you hear about the most. And most of them act as if the holy “c” word, compromise, is too vile to cross their lips. “My way or the highway,” seems to be the watchword of the day.

I'd venture to say that most Americans have a little more wiggle room in their political idealism than that. “You give me this and I'll give you that until we're both equally happy or equally sad.”

Not exactly brain surgery or rocket science, is it.

If dumb ol' me can see a middle ground, what are we paying those yahoos for anyhow?

Enough said, on to another subject.

I've often explored the topic of getting old in these pages and I'll have to ask for your indulgence as I do so again – this time for something kind of minor.

On Tuesday this week I picked up our daily newspaper and noticed something. Either my eyes were deceiving me or the son-of-a-gun had shrunk! I held it at arm's length and examined it again. Yep, it was definitely smaller. The font was different also and several long-standing ornaments on the front page, including an American flag which had graced that spot since 9/11 were gone. I did some examination of the inside of the paper and, in the editorial page they explained that, yes, the paper's format had changed and explained that the reasoning to do so was costs – printers ink, paper, yadda-yadda. They'd moved from a 6-column wide paper to a 5-column wide one.

It was, in its own small way, kind of shocking.

But I guess that's OK, I can get used to it. I can only guess at the difficulties the print media is going through at the present time with all the competition from online and broadcast journalism. I'm glad they explained themselves, though. Us oldies can sometimes be dumbfounded by a change that's not explained.

We're such fuddy-duddys that we generally think something is wrong with us.

And since we're on the subject of aging and the changes entailed in that endeavor, I must relate something else. My wife and I spent a pleasant week in California recently visiting with my brother, traveling here and there and doing various other things. For my sharp-eyed readers you might remember I wrote a bit about that journey in my past blog. Anyhow, while we were there we visited a bookstore I'd been wanting to see for ages and ages. The City Lights Bookstore. While I was there I purchased a couple books. Books which I may not have been able to procure somewhere else. One of them was Jack Kerouac's “Desolation Angels”.

I had been introduced to Jack back when I was much younger – in my 20's actually, when I had read probably his most famous book, “On the Road”. I enjoyed it immensely. I've even re-read it occasionally.

Now I was reading another of his books as an older person and... I even feel guilty for saying it... I don't like it. Here is an acknowledged genius of the literary realm and I'm reading one of his most acclaimed books and good ol' me doesn't like it.

I suppose I ought to feel ashamed. I supposed I ought to feel diminished, somehow, by not liking – hell, by not really even understanding this book. And not having the patience to read deeper to try to catch his meaning.

But I have to keep remembering, Jack Kerouac was of the Beat Generation and a lot of the literature of that period was, at least to my unlearned eyes, gobbledy-gook. Ol' Jack can run on for pages and pages with crazy-ass nonsense, sentences and paragraphs which are totally incomprehensible and then can switch and be totally lucid and quite readable. The dichotomy can be quite disconcerting.

Check out William S. Burroughs for further evidence of that generation's insanity.

I suppose I could merely state that I'm just not “hip” enough to dig his books, too middle-of-the-road or middle class to comprehend their meanings. Perhaps I'm just a child of my age, more attuned to a later style of story telling. Or perhaps Jack was using language to paint pictures or to create word symphonies which my un-hip eyes could not see or my earthbound tin-ear could not hear.

Yeah, that's probably it.

But as I rationalize my difficulties in comprehension, deep down I'm afraid it's more likely it has to do with my more – ahem – mature view of the world than my metaphorical artistic eyes or non-musical ears. Aging is a hard lesson to learn. It's sad to be reminded of it through the pages of a much-loved author from the old days.

Maybe I'll give ol' Jack a rest for the moment and dig into him sometime later in the future.

Maybe...