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...
