I'm going to attempt a fresh approach to this next one; let's call it part journal entry, part zoomed-out take on our subject's current cultural standing.
I grew up in a time and ‘space’ where I learned who people were as individuals long before I ever learned their politics. You didn’t bring up money, religion, or politics in company; those had nothing to do with who you were as a person.
(The couple who plow my driveway are likely very different than me politically, I am 99.99% certain I could guess who they vote for and I don’t give a shit. They come when we need plowed out, they charge a reasonable price, and they keep their word.)
Politics is the process by which we govern our society, a means to manage the trade-offs between individual and societal flourishing; politics is not a stand in for a personality or character. When this clusterfuck of our current politics collapses into itself under its own navel-gazing weight, when it finally goes blind from mental, emotional, and identity masturbation, I fervently hope we can go back to that.
I grew up in a time and ‘space’ where I learned who people were as individuals long before I ever learned their politics. You didn’t bring up money, religion, or politics in company; those had nothing to do with who you were as a person.
(The couple who plow my driveway are likely very different than me politically, I am 99.99% certain I could guess who they vote for and I don’t give a shit. They come when we need plowed out, they charge a reasonable price, and they keep their word.)
Politics is the process by which we govern our society, a means to manage the trade-offs between individual and societal flourishing; politics is not a stand in for a personality or character. When this clusterfuck of our current politics collapses into itself under its own navel-gazing weight, when it finally goes blind from mental, emotional, and identity masturbation, I fervently hope we can go back to that.