Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

When a dog is biting your hand, and won't let go, you will tend to focus 100% of your thought and energy on how to make it let go.

It is a lunatic who takes a wider perspective in the moment and asks "Why indeed, is this dog biting my hand?" or "What socio-economic or emotional problems does this dog have that has led it to bite me?" or "How can I address the wider social and political issue of dogs biting hands?"

We're a week out from an election that will apparently end American democracy if that guy wins (according to the Democrats), or end American democracy if that gal wins (according to the Republicans). Does it make any sense to try to look at things from a wider perspective right now? Shouldn't we be fighting like hell for our democracy? Shouldn't I be out on the ramparts of voting, fighting to ensure American democracy is preserved? Because the other side is a Misinformed and Evil Dog biting my hand?

Instead, with this apparent dog attached to my hand, I want ask the question that Rodney King asked in 1992 "Why can't we call just get along?"

This means I am insane. Who asks a biting dog "Why can't we call just get along?"

See, I'm asking, with the dog apparently attached to my hand, because I suspect I don't really know if dog is biting my hand. Because, what if my hand isn't actually being bitten by a dog? What if I look down, with my own eyes, and find a perfectly nice dog sitting next to me, looking up kindly?

How did I get it into my head that I was being bitten? I was told I was being bitten. I didn't look at my own hand.

Alex Hannaford offers a perspective that rings true -- that we've been set against each other to profit the political parties and business interests. So maybe we should ignore the Left and Right media screaming, and put our eyeballs on each other instead. Our eyeballs should not be on the super wealthy, or the super powerful, but on each other. Look at the guy who lives across the street with the opposing political sign spouting insanity and conspiracy theories. Yes, he's angry and afraid, but he's also not biting your hand. He wants peace, quiet, freedom and prosperity, just like you do.

This doesn't mean Joe Biden and Donald Trump aren't failing mentally, and that Trump doesn't have fascist leanings, and that Harris doesn't have our porous Southern border to account for. But if you're already foaming at the mouth and wanting to shout at me for any criticism of your side, then you're the dog biting America's hand. I want peace, quiet, freedom and prosperity, just like you do. I think the way to get it lies in being peaceful and quiet with our neighbors. When you get shouted at, don't shout back.

I know a lot of people on both sides of our current political divide, and all of them are thoughtful, lovely people. And all of them believe insane things they have been led to believe by the extremists of their tribe. I don't know any of the extremists personally, but what they say scares me. Because they don't want to get along.

Do I know what skullduggery goes on among our business-political elite, on either side? No. Nor am I able to do anything about it, as I am not part of that business-political elite. They will either damage our country with war and bad economic policy (so many countries already have been), or not. The river of history sweeps most everyone along with it. I have no pretensions to redirect it.

Me? Of course I have insane beliefs, perhaps the least mentally sound one of all: that maybe, just maybe, we can stop listening to the people who shout "FIRE" and cause stampedes, no matter how believable they may be, and all just get along.

Hope you vote your conscience and gut, and what you see with your own eyes, and experience in your own life, and not what you've been told by the screamers.

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Coda November 6, 2024

J. Jayalalithaa served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, an Indian state of 72 million people, five separate times between 1991 and 2016. In one of her campaigns, she promised to give everyone in Tamil Nadu a television set if elected. And she was elected. And the News showed her handing television sets to poor farmers.

For half a second, I thought Jayalalithaa was actually...

I asked an Indian friend about all this, and he sighed, and shook his head. "Our politicians, they all lie and steal. Really, each election comes down to the question, 'Which one do we want to lie and steal from us?'" Jayalaltihaa became fabulously wealthy as Chief Minister

Yesterday, American chose which politician's lies we prefer, apparently the one who promises to deport all illegal immigrants, end the war in Ukraine in a day, and protect women whether they like it or not. How he steals from us, and what he steals from us, we will not see at first, but in time will know.