An Open Letter to America

Dear Murica:

I spend a lot of time reading the sentiments y'all post on various social media, and often find myself stepping into the cesspool that most (if not all) political discussion forums devolve into.  I am absolutely gobsmacked by the level of abject hatred I come across.  

Posters of comments, people with strong opinions, people trying to be oh-so-edgy and saying absolutely horrible things to those whose opinions differ from yours, do you really have to spew that kind of vitriol?  Even when a question, one devoid of incivility of any sort, is asked, shit always seem to go nuclear instantly.  

If I had a dollar for every instance of vile, unconscionably hateful and often personally attacking sentiments espoused by the most extreme members of either side of the (R) and (D) continuum, I'd be one rich motherfucker. What kind of a weapons-grade asshole tells anyone on the internet to "kill themselves", particularly over differences of philosophical or political ideologies?? To be frank, and I am directing this at every single one of you who fit the foregoing description of today's typical denizen of most political discussion forums, if (D)s are all pieces of shit (fuckin' Libbbrulllls!!), then so are Republicans (racist, mysogynist war-mongers!!), and vice versa.  If it's acceptable for your side to vilify and marginalize the entirety of the other side, then you'd better not get your panties in a bunch when they respond similarly.

That sounds pretty fucking stupid doesn't it? All that hate, all that anger? The REALITY is that there exist, on BOTH SIDES OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM, those who are pieces of shit AND those who are regular, decent folks - good people come from both sides and everywhere in between. My personal belief is that the absolute best people come from somewhere in the middle - let's go with like, the middle 60%.  The 20% on either end are straight up nutbags and I would hope that's at least one thing we can ALL agree on.

The polarizing rhetoric we are inundated with 24/7 by the politicians themselves and by the extreme media pundits at either end of the R-L continuum is, without a doubt, the single greatest threat to our nation and our society. It is a cancer that is destroying us from within, and people are so busy hating - literally HATING the "other side" that nothing gets done and what does get done ends up screwing us ALL in the long run. Goddamn I wish we could put the UNITED back in United States, but too many people make WAY too much money from dividing the shit out of this country.  Hooray for the Two-Party System: Forcefully, perpetually and purposefully reinforcing - ne, demanding - the "Divide" in "Divide and Conquer", like a BOSS.

 I imagine that most people who fly off the handle and rant hate and loathing for the "other" guys or "those people" on social media a) wouldn't say a fraction of the things they do and certainly not in the way they say them to the face of said "others" and b) would actually benefit a GREAT deal from being civil with and at very least gaining an understanding of what said other(s) believe and value and stand for. There is no fucking way that the entirety of any particular group of like-minded individuals are terrible, horrible pieces of crap. We need to do the polar opposite of what we've seen Congress and the opportunistic, bloviating talking heads do for FAR TOO LONG and sit the fuck down with someone whose opinions and convictions are completely opposite of our own, a 6-pack of beer and talk - TALK to one another, versus what usually happens - shouting each other down in a battle royale for the pyrrhic victory of who is "right" and who is "wrong".  What if I told you that, with the exception of straight up math and numbers, there is virtually NOTHING that is black and white.  We're dealing with humans here, humans who are incapable of being concrete, fixed, immovable things.  Where the human being is concerned, there cannot and does not exist Absolute Truth.  Fiddling with numbers?  Two plus two is always, always 4.  There is absolutely no gray area, there is absolutely no room for discussion of whether this is true or not.  It's straight up true.  In contrast, in absolutely every single human interaction or situation from the beginning of time til the end of time, we are fallible creatures whose observations and experiences are absolutely limited by our very nature. We can get very, very close to Absolute Truth sometimes; we can be completely, totally, super-duper convinced that we're right, but the reality is that we are thinking, feeling meat puppets who are capable only of observing, understanding and interpreting the world around us SOLELY through the filters of what we think and feel.  Thinking and feeling are wholly subjective actions;  they are only and absolute best tools we have at our disposal, barring some crazy advances in AI or whatever, where things like politics and Truth vs. truth are concerned.

So, Thanks, I guess, to all of you vitriolic and inflexible denizens of the internet. Your death-grip like insistence on your opinion as fact and the anger and hate you hurl via digital trebuchet on your fellow man has provided the impetus for me to gather my thoughts on this matter, and to elucidate them here.  

What a strange and disturbing thing it is to watch the extremists from either end of the political spectrum inherent in this our modern American election "dog and pony rodeo" attempt to malign, marginalize and discredit those on the opposing end of the spectrum.  Go, go go, you Keyboard Warriors!  You're making a truly selfless contribution to the process by letting the hate pump through your veins and you're definitely improving things by being wholly and steadfastly unwilling to entertain even one moment's thought that maybe, just maybe, you don't have all of the facts.  If you think any of the usual suspects (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, and on and on and on) are delivering anything even remotely resembling balanced, fair, or hell, even accurate commentary, you are absolutely delusional and I both pity you and fear for us all.  Our media is a conglomerate of corporations and every single one of them from top to bottom have an agenda - one that they are paid VERY handsomely for, and one that does absolutely nothing but foster divisiveness, fear and loathing amongst the citizenry.  Keeping us divided is big bucks, baby!  I digress.

I am no better than anyone else - I too have fallen prey to the intentional and malignant partisan hackery that surrounds us today.  These days, in my older, wiser (ha ha) years, I find myself actively seeking a better understanding of viewpoints that differ greatly from my own. I have come to realize that holding an unyielding and likely uninformed position on anything prohibits me from seeing all sides of an issue. Without the benefit of something akin to a 360 degree view on any given topic, what do I have?  Half a story - or worse, straight up bullshit. None of the aforementioned media are serving the interests of anyone but their corporate overlords and as such, none of us ever get the whole story.  

Being inflexible and unwilling to dig deeper than my own special snowflake feelings prevents me from formulating an opinion rooted in substance,versus the shaky underpinnings that feelings, propaganda, shitty, incomplete or worse, purposefully faulty, information represent.  Feelings, incomplete or false information doth not a solid, substantive foundation make.  

Do your homework.  Step outside the hug-box echo-chamber of our entire modern media and dig!! Dig deeper, harder and wider; derive your information from sources all across the board. Don't stop at the very first thing that matches your preconceived notions. If you do, your information is incomplete, at best; at worst, a steaming pile of bullshit. If you do nothing else, at all, ever, at least be open to the possibilities of other points of view, other opinions.  At least give yourself and all of us that one.  

I'm really, really tired of the knee-jerkery and manipulated hatred so distressingly prevalent  today.  I may loathe someone's ideas, but unless they're Literally Hitler(tm), what kind of an asshole does it make ME if I just blanket-hate everyone who doesn't think like I do? I don't agree with ALL of what EITHER party says; I DO agree with SOME of the things each have to say. That puts me in a far more difficult position than someone who simply hops on the (R) or (D), straight-ticket bandwagon and goes along for the ride. 

For those infrequent instances when it seems like we might have heard the "full" story from one side or the other, the other side will STILL insist that they're right and that the sources / citations / evidence relied upon by the other side are bullshit or invalid or otherwise manipulated. Merica, for the love of all that is holy, y'all mofos have GOT to get out from under the lies and deceit we're being spoon-fed BY BOTH SIDES. I have NO idea how we're going to do that, but I think a really good start would be dialing down the blind hate and ratcheting up the common decency and, dare I say, respect for each other. Give people a chance to reveal who and what they are before you decide they are not worthy of at least a modicum of civility. You'll be SHOCKED to discover how much in common we actually have, all of us, no matter what color tie you wear, what religion you do or don't practice, or what gender you prefer. Ya dig?

I want SO MUCH to believe that none of us would display in person the kind of straight up sociopath-level malice so unabashedly directed at others on the internet, social media and across the board in the media. I think we can ALL agree that people do exist who are just straight up assholes, regardless of their political leanings.  I do think that if we sat down face to face with "Those guys across the aisle", maybe over a beer or a nice single-malt Scotch, and approached each other as human beings with differing opinions, instead of as inhuman, ignorant, evil, violent, bigoted stupid-faces deserving only of our absolute worst, the tide might just start to turn and maybe we could actually get some shit done that benefits most if not ALL of us, instead of this stagnating grudge-match cage-fight fuckery we see going on day in, day out.