a little reminder... on differences...

[The Consul]

You might go off the side of the road and be trapped under your car when it rolls. The trucker who pulls over and cuts you out of your seat belt and drags you out of the windshield before the flames spread might hate your guts if he knew what was in your mind. But he isn't thinking about that when he pulls over. This is essential. All the rigamarole about god and sex and country and money has clouded the air between us. We are one, really, whether we know it like MLK or can't quite conceive of it like Eichmann (or maybe he did in the most perverse way imaginable). The hell of one's life can be measured sometimes by how often they have to swallow their own hate in a single day. I know I have. In someways it's easier to understand than love because there is nothing sentimental about it. Rationality and reason are over rated. You can't reason with someone who's seeing red unless you know them. You can't stop some one from hating by proving how wrong they are. Who the fuck do we think we are, anyway? Your facts and truth mean nothing to some people. So what is the other way? Gather together as an out - in group and smarmilly chortel about what a bunch of ignorant pig weenies thos people are?

We cop to more compassion than we have the heart to excercise. A great deal of fear and terror has made ALL of us what we are. And unless you grew up in the woods without a television or any books and learned the communal sonics of meadowlarks and used that as a spiritual blueprint for your understanding of nature and the universe, brothers and sisters, you are just another fleck of gravel in the asphalt, no matter how small, or big or sharp and sparkly you might be. Like my old man said once it isn't them it's us.

He knelt before a tank with a rosary in his hand with the mayor of the village in France begging that they not destroy the entry arch to the town which was built by Charlemagne. Who hates you now? Who's the slave, who's the master? How many tanks have you stopped today, how many days did you spend behind wire for trying?

How long has it been since you have seen yourself in your brother's eyes? The love that once rose up around you like a mist - has it really disappeared, or have the demons blinded you? Imagine your own death as much as you can. Our fate is sealed. None of us have the slightest fucking clue no matter how much we can pack in our brains our how well we turn a phrase on a gray blue blog. I am collapsing under my own cynicism, what were Jack Spicer's last words?...."my vocabulary did this to me..." Political movements and historical narratives will not uncover the beauty we hope to rediscover and for most here I doubt waxen fumed sundays between priest and choir would either. Im all upside down trying to kiss the stone, but it is floating out into space. I feel the note that never ends you know. I feel it always. My greatest comfort is knowing it will not end with me. Truly, anyone with a heart knows, there is no time to waste on hate.

[Alaya]

The love that once rose up around you like a mist - has it really disappeared, or have the demons blinded you? Imagine your own death as much as you can.

Ideologies and -isms have a rather blinding effect on most. We are not open to newness in the world (Beginner's Mind) when we clogged to the eyeballs with our own opinions.

[JackRiddler]

.

It's possible to speak truths with beauty and with great spiritual awareness of the human condition, as Consul does above, but still fail to be germane to a topic. Looking back on the OP, it's about a much simpler truth than what some here have been demanding. Contemporary, committed, ideological, organized Republicans are a party of constructed hatreds, hysteria and aggression on the other.

And here come all the caveats: Such tendencies can be found elsewhere and are also expressed systemically in hidden ways. All individuals are susceptible to their own unique sets of hysterias and hatreds, but by no means equally so, and generally not in an explicit, organized, purposeful way. We're still going to hell in a handbasket under either and all parties, for systemic reasons. Corruption and failed paradigms still reign within all institutions of the society. Democrats tend to be the subtle but faithful technocratic managers (and Republicans the unapologetic champions) of a system that perpetuates economic exploitation and inequality, established oppressions, racism, imperialism, war, defoliated landscapes and the destruction of the ecological carrying capacity for life itself. No parties or national political processes are innocent, or are truly and effectively addressing the crises our species faces with the appropriate honesty, energy and urgency.

None of which changes the original point. The Republicans and the current right wing in the United States are specifically and explicitly organized around and committed to a set of hatreds, hysterias, and aggressive responses - almost all of which are directed at fabricated concerns or "the other" - but they are not any less stubborn, intractable or dangerous for focusing on fake or trivial issues. Pretending otherwise doesn't help you, or them. They are originators of these aggressive approaches and it is untruthful to construct this into a false equivalence of their hatred against your counter-hatred.

The prescription is not to suspend all communications with your fellow humans who don't think like you. The OP simply urges you not to fool yourselves about this particular faction, and the extreme political solutions that it seeks to enable. That is all.

.

[Searcher08]

The love that once rose up around you like a mist - has it really disappeared, or have the demons blinded you? Imagine your own death as much as you can.

Ideologies and -isms have a rather blinding effect on most. We are not open to newness in the world (Beginner's Mind) when we clogged to the eyeballs with our own opinions.

Precisely, Alaya
- and particularly when we treat those opinions as having the same reality as what they are describing. The Map is not the Territory. An empty head is not Empty, it is merely stuffed so full of its own thoughts there is no room for anything else .

[Allegro]

…They are originators of these aggressive approaches and it is untruthful to construct this into a false equivalence of their hatred against your counter-hatred.… [REFER.]

Thank You. And The Consul, too.

[sunny]

I then imagine I'm standing outside a building within which I know there are 2 month old babies being killed as a matter of routine. How would I feel about that? Militant? Determined? Extremist? In performing this thought exercise I gain some insight into the other that might help me understand them.


Can I count on them to do the same?

And if you want to learn more about them and yourself pretend to be one of them. Once you have their trust and confidence they'll open up and speak freely what they would otherwise censor.

It's instructive which types of people I find this easiest with. For instance I find it easy to pretend to be a racist. What does that say about me?

Do they ever ask themselves similar questions?

First of all, I accept your protest of sincerity without question.

Most right-wingers don't question their own assumptions and that's the problem. The fear of self-reflection is what makes it so easy to manipulate them into hating any convenient 'other' the m-admen have in the queue. Guilt and fear of their innate 'ickiness'---which they are taught from children in Sunday School-- is used against them so they can be aimed at manufactured scapegoats, who most often happen to be the malcontents who refuse to play along with the thinking of Empire. Compassion aside, you don't have to buy into their bullshit, not for a second. I resist it wherever I find it, which is why the conservatives I know know they can't speak a certain way around me. I won't have it. I can maintain relationships by assuming they are manipulated into holding the positions they do and can be shaken out of it. How do I know they've been brainwashed? Because the positions they hold run counter to their own self-interests. The most important thing we can do for right-wingers is help reactivate their deliberately short-circuited survival instincts.

Consul, that was beautiful. I hope you're a professional writer.

[Simulist]

Contemporary, committed, ideological, organized Republicans are a party of constructed hatreds, hysteria and aggression on the other.

No argument there.

Democrats tend to be the subtle but faithful technocratic managers (and Republicans the unapologetic champions) of a system that perpetuates economic exploitation and inequality, established oppressions, racism, imperialism, war, defoliated landscapes and the destruction of the ecological carrying capacity for life itself. No parties or national political processes are innocent, or are truly and effectively addressing the crises our species faces with the appropriate honesty, energy and urgency.

The Democratic Party is much, much worse than that. The Democratic Party has become an engineered foil, a deliberately constructed trench — into which the aspirations of the would-be-Left in America are channeled en masse and routinely.

While the wealthy 1% (the real culprits are actually far less than 1%) would probably prefer that all the common people were Republicans (in part because Republicans are so much easier to manage), they know that this is unrealistic so, over the years, the Democratic Party has been molded into a foil, and increasingly serves as the weak (and now virtually non-existent) opposition.

The Democratic Party therefore, is functionally a lie.

It is a cruel and empty promise.

It is the master's stick, disguised to look like a carrot.

The Democratic Party therefore, is beneath contempt.

None of which changes the original point. The Republicans and the current right wing in the United States are specifically and explicitly organized around and committed to a set of hatreds, hysterias, and aggressive responses, almost all of which are directed at fabricated concerns or the other, but are not any less stubborn, intractable or dangerous for being fake or trivial issues. Pretending otherwise doesn't help you, or them.

No, it doesn't. Getting caught up in the manufactured cacophony of "hatreds, hysterias, and aggressive responses" and responding in kind, doesn't help us either — it helps only the very, very wealthy who are trying to pull the strings of us all (and most often doing so).

And those who pretend that there is any credible opposition — in political party form — to any of this aren't paying attention.

They are originators of these aggressive approaches and it is untruthful to construct this into a false equivalence of their hatred against your counter-hatred.

Hatred serves only a master of slaves, not us. The master uses it to divide his slaves, and keep their rage turned against each other, and not him.

And that's a tune I consider best left unsung.

Because worrying about "equivalencies" in a scenario that is even more of a lie than the false equivalency itself! — is a misdirected concern.

[Searcher08]

[NeonLX]

Yes, The Consul...that truly was beautiful.

Sure wish I could express myself that well. You're a treasure.

On edit: All of youse are treasures!

[Sounder]

Ah don know searcher08 Frank seems a lot like his parents. It in the eyes, well and the decor also.

sunny wrote...

Most right-wingers don't question their own assumptions and that's the problem.

Lefties don't either, it's just that they have more sophisticated assumptions to begin with.

The fear of self-reflection is what makes it so easy to manipulate them into hating any convenient 'other' the m-admen have in the queue.

Yes we can work with this. A hypothesis to consider might be to begin by saying; pretty much everyone has a desire to express themselves as authentically as possible. Then consider that in terms of power dynamics, the less your opponent knows about a situation, the greater your advantage will be. My more habitual way of phrasing this is to say that the PTMB live on the gap they are able to create between our pictures of reality (nature) and reality or nature as it actually is. Then the distance between our picture and reality produces a capacitance which needs to be maintained so as to lessen the chance that this build up of psychical energy that is always seeking authenticity might arc over to reality.

Anyway, I find conservative folk to be very interested in the kind of blather that is my style. They are beautiful people that are searching just as much as progressives are. While it seems true that they often work within a crude knee-jerk mindset, still and as I mentioned before in regard to my new in-law, if they are approached with respect they can be quite open to other explanations about how their lives have been manipulated in ways that are not in their own self interest. Subconsciously they know they have been manipulated and if one speaks to that rather than speaking to their admittedly stubborn and shallow conscious models, much better success will be realized. Now think about it, what would you really prefer, being able to bitch about the stupidity of wingers, or engaging and knowing how to add new thought loops to their world? We do live here together after all and anyway.

Guilt and fear of their innate 'ickiness'---which they are taught from children in Sunday School-- is used against them so they can be aimed at manufactured scapegoats, who most often happen to be the malcontents who refuse to play along with the thinking of Empire.

True true true Then we need to do a better analysis of what is the real deal, behind the scenes thinking that has successfully shielded an elite that are guilty by all accounts of violence on an immense scale, and seemingly able to use the victims to create yet more violence.

Choose Love

[Simulist]

You might go off the side of the road and be trapped under your car when it rolls. The trucker who pulls over and cuts you out of your seat belt and drags you out of the windshield before the flames spread might hate your guts if he knew what was in your mind. But he isn't thinking about that when he pulls over. This is essential. All the rigamarole about god and sex and country and money has clouded the air between us. We are one, really, whether we know it like MLK or can't quite conceive of it like Eichmann (or maybe he did in the most perverse way imaginable). The hell of one's life can be measured sometimes by how often they have to swallow their own hate in a single day. I know I have. In someways it's easier to understand than love because there is nothing sentimental about it. Rationality and reason are over rated. You can't reason with someone who's seeing red unless you know them. You can't stop some one from hating by proving how wrong they are. Who the fuck do we think we are, anyway? Your facts and truth mean nothing to some people. So what is the other way? Gather together as an out - in group and smarmilly chortel about what a bunch of ignorant pig weenies thos people are?

We cop to more compassion than we have the heart to excercise. A great deal of fear and terror has made ALL of us what we are. And unless you grew up in the woods without a television or any books and learned the communal sonics of meadowlarks and used that as a spiritual blueprint for your understanding of nature and the universe, brothers and sisters, you are just another fleck of gravel in the asphalt, no matter how small, or big or sharp and sparkly you might be. Like my old man said once it isn't them it's us.

He knelt before a tank with a rosary in his hand with the mayor of the village in France begging that they not destroy the entry arch to the town which was built by Charlemagne. Who hates you now? Who's the slave, who's the master? How many tanks have you stopped today, how many days did you spend behind wire for trying?

How long has it been since you have seen yourself in your brother's eyes? The love that once rose up around you like a mist - has it really disappeared, or have the demons blinded you? Imagine your own death as much as you can. Our fate is sealed. None of us have the slightest fucking clue no matter how much we can pack in our brains our how well we turn a phrase on a gray blue blog. I am collapsing under my own cynicism, what were Jack Spicer's last words?...."my vocabulary did this to me..." Political movements and historical narratives will not uncover the beauty we hope to rediscover and for most here I doubt waxen fumed sundays between priest and choir would either. Im all upside down trying to kiss the stone, but it is floating out into space. I feel the note that never ends you know. I feel it always. My greatest comfort is knowing it will not end with me. Truly, anyone with a heart knows, there is no time to waste on hate.

Everything about that — the craft of the words yes, but most especially the truth conveyed by them — is gold to me.

[compared2what?]

I think this is the type of thing the author of the OP had in mind...

[wintler2]

The Republicans and the current right wing in the United States are specifically and explicitly organized around and committed to a set of hatreds, hysterias, and aggressive responses - almost all of which are directed at fabricated concerns or "the other" - but they are not any less stubborn, intractable or dangerous for focusing on fake or trivial issues. Pretending otherwise doesn't help you, or them. They are originators of these aggressive approaches and it is untruthful to construct this into a false equivalence of their hatred against your counter-hatred.

.. How do I know they've been brainwashed? Because the positions they hold run counter to their own self-interests. The most important thing we can do for right-wingers is help reactivate their deliberately short-circuited survival instincts.

Should i disconnect their electricity? (joke) Do you mean for example, drawing attention to how Republican party doesn't support their interests on small business protection, or groundwater pollution? Love to hear more on that Sunny.

Consul, that was beautiful. I hope you're a professional writer.

Same, s/he must be, gives a lovely salon feel to the place.

[The Consul]

Consul, that was beautiful. I hope you're a professional writer.

I hope I am, too, but why ruin the fun!

[brainpanhandler]

Consul, that was beautiful. I hope you're a professional writer.

I hope I am, too, but why ruin the fun!

Heh. I'll say that was thought provoking, but I hope nothing for you except what you hope for, if anything.