Just the Way it is....

People have some deeply held convictions.

Convictions that they allow to influence all they see, know and feel.

I've said before that I live at a kind of crossroads.  People show up who need a shoulder for a little while then they make their way to whatever.

I think my last brush with so-called "romance" was the most stark example of that.

Oh lord!  We're not going there again!  No worries...

But it did show me just how deeply divided otherwise like-minded people can be.  The sin of ideology I call it. 

A sin that takes one small aspect of someone's makeup and inflates it into a lifestyle.  A insular cocoon of circular logic and prejudicial perspectives impenetrable by anything that threatens the ideology.

We are what we are no matter what...That's just the way it is...

No, that's the way you want it.

The saddest part of it all is that the world quickly goes from a wide vista of opportunity to tunnel vision.  Creative thought, compassion, insight is all framed within a narrow view.

I've looked at the other side.  Tried to understand what it was that was so different about me and them.  Spoiler alert, it aint much.

What I found wasn't a pack of rabid savages.  Just fear.  Fear of losing what never really existed.  At least not without acknowledging what the real cost of their utopian vision was.  A vision that wasn't their own by the way. 

We tend to divide ourselves into tribes based on...whatever...

Far more scholarly authorities than I have written a mountain of tomes on the subject.  You've no doubt already seen their work.  I won't bother to rehash it here.

We live in a society that recognizes that we tend to seek out only that which supports our own world view.  The dangerous part is that the media has seized on that premise and eschewed objectivity for a tantalizing revenue stream that preys not on facts but fears.

Conservatives do it.  Liberals are no better.  So long as the other guy is the boogeyman we are sufficiently distracted to cede our own power to propaganda and rhetoric.

The propaganda feeds the machine.  The machine pumps out endless rhetoric and red meat. 

There is no compromise so long as the machine is churning.

Your heroes?  Your pillars of democracy?  They're the face of the machine.  A construct to divide otherwise like-minded people.  To keep poking that sore spot until you wretch and scream in pain.

The drug?  The cure?  Throw a bone to salve the wounds they created.  Just enough relief to keep the faithful working toward their own destruction.

We are in this country literally in the grip of mass scale Stockholm Syndrome.  I don't care what color the map says your state is.  Neither side will ever do anything to upset the machine.

Examples?  Glad you asked...

Obama claimed to fix Student Loans.  Nothing really happened and millions are still indebted to a corrupt system that enslaves borrowers for debt that should never have existed in the first place.

Trump promised prosperity with protectionism the result of which has nearly bankrupted thousands of small businesses and farmers who suddenly find no markets for their goods.  Multinational corporations can care less.  But Mom and Pop?

The saddest thing is that all the time we were waving our banners and wearing our MAGA hats we were surrendering our own power in favor of a fantasy.

A fantasy that will deprive you of life, love and occupation should you identify with the wrong side.

Nothing will change so long as we continue to exist in a fog of ideology political or otherwise. 

This is the true challenge to the evolution of the human race. 

To resist the urges of the lizard brain.  We are where we are because of what we allowed to happen.

This is on me, you and those that came before you. 

But if you're committed to your ideology, have no fear.  Reason has no value and facts are malleable.  Enjoy the appearance of a civil society and the shiny chains you've made for yourself.

Some of us knew but nobody cared to do anything about it.