Flotsam and Jetsam - Clearing out the Negative ... Maybe

I may have hit my limit today. I say "may" because overall I am a forgiving sort. Not naive - I am no sunshine and roses everything's peachy all the time sort of person. I don't forget but I do forgive and empathize and understand because I can get into another's head and see where they are coming from and why they say and do what they do which leads to forgiveness. But even I have my limits.

I am tired. Tired of the sniping, the negativity, the mindset that finds "evil" in the intellect, in being from the East Coast (or West Coast), in believing that caring for the less fortunate is somehow not appropriate for our culture/society, that might makes right and not might for right, that their version of religion is the only right version and that people who are different - that is: not white, not upper middle class, not Christian (their version mind you), not heterosexual, whose first language isn't English, who have piercings or tattoos etc. - have no place in America, that they aren't ... American. Excuse the actual natives didn't speak English either and most of our ancestors who came to these shores didn't either.

I am fed up. I am tired of defending my word choice when I speak or post online (excuse me for being educated). I am tired of explaining that just because I am educated and was raised with East Coast Democratic sensibilities and (gasp!) am a (mostly) practicing Catholic it does not mean that I am a whacko socialist liberal. AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING LIBERAL! OR INTELLIGENT! When did being an intellectual become something "evil" anyway?

I am tired of trying to find the upside, the positive, the sunshine and the middle ground and failing miserably. Tired of trying to be the voice of reason where reason doesn't live of looking for the logic. Yes I post about daily frustrations and can be very negative myself about my life but let's face it -- my life does often suck and there isn't anyone human at home to vent to after all. Truly though it is mostly because I am surrounded by all this other crap and it leeches in.

Today's final straw was an overheard phone conversation wherein the caller apparently said something along the lines of asking the recipient if they had the day off for the holiday. Martin Luther King Day does result in offices being closed for many folks. Not the recipient of the call however. So the recipient snipes back "what holiday? oh you mean the one where if I get shot in the head I can get a day off? that holiday?" I was/am appalled. It doesn't matter what you think of Martin Luther King personally, whether you marched with him or not (and this person was not old enough to remember Dr. King, hell I don't really remember) the fact remains, today was a day in his honor. That the man was assassinated should not be up for ridicule. Oh but wait ... he was not white, he talked about helping one's fellow man, about a dream of equality ... but then this is a person I have also heard denigrate President Kennedy and any other politician really who doesn't fit this person's notion of conservatism. 

I have come to finally realize that you can not discuss life the universe and everything in a mind wide open with curiosity and heart full of love manner with certain people. And it makes me sad. Sad for the limited view these people have of the world.

Therefore I am seriously considering "unfriending" or otherwise jettisoning the flotsam and jetsam of the social media world(s) in order to save my peace of mind. Now I enjoy a stimulating, well thought out debate where both sides have issues and evidence they can present from a multitude of sources and wide-ranging references ... yes that means more than "I heard on Fox News that _____" and it does mean more than "I read in the New York Times that _____". You have to look at more than one source people to be well informed!!! Clearly such conversations are few and far between in my life hence the impulse to sweep away the narrow darkness of negativity. 

But if I do this ... if I remove these infuriating bits of ARGH! (pick an adjective that suits you) what then? Will I have gone too far the other direction? Will I have cut myself off from other opinions, other reference points that might cause me to reconsider and dig deeper on a given topic? I don't think so because there will still be the intelligent discourse of different opinions and yet I pause ... what if? What if in so doing I make myself no better than those I find annoying now, only in the other opposite direction?

So ... maybe