“It doesn’t matter how sleazy they are if they are part of your tribe you support them.” Has our politics degraded to this? Some of the pundits say it has but I think it might not be so
I was in college in the 1960’s and I can remember that the nightly news was all about campus protests and sit-ins. If you believed the reports back then every kid who was in college was a pot-smoking hippie. The reality of it, for at least Purdue University, was that the vast majority of us were just going to classes and doing what was necessary to graduate. Occasionally I came upon some kids who were carrying picket signs but that seemed like a pretty rare event to me.
Jump forward to today and if you believe the cable news reports, we are all hunkered down in our individual tribes throwing bomb across at the other tribe who is our dreaded enemy trying to destroy our way of life. As long as you distance yourself from all the rhetoric that is spewed out you realize that most of us are just going about our daily lives almost oblivious of the reported times. We have mortgages to pay, kids to feed, and jobs that demand much of our attention.
I don’t feel any like a member of a tribe. I try my best to form my own opinions about most things and remain pretty skeptical about anyone trying to seduce me to join their way of seeing the world. Maybe they are putting out that image to just gain viewers?
Walmart is trying to bring up a strong online presence but from my personal experiences, it is a pretty meager effort. Their “new” website is well (yawn) boring. It just lacks the pizzazz and speed of response of Amazon. But I have recently given them a chance. I was in need of a new twin mattress for my microRV and found that Walmart has the one I want for about the same price as Amazon, so I ordered it. They promised a 3 day delivery to my local store. When I went to pick it up I found a pretty much untrained staff to handle the transaction. I wish them luck but…
This post is in honor of the new Will Roger’s quote in the header above. For those folks who might be viewing the post from the archive in the future, I will put the words here too.
It seems that a very real reality for teenagers now is to consider the possibility that they will be shot dead before they graduate. I can’t imagine having that feeling when I was their age! But finally, they are ready to do something to stop the carnage. They want regulations on guns to quit making them so easy to be obtained by disgruntled and depresses teenagers. They want laws making those who supply guns to these assassins to be charged as an accessory to those murders, whether they be parents or just people selling guns to anyone with the dollars in hand.
I like the old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Of course, that only applies only to analog clocks as the digital ones just go blank. What brought this thought is some of the actions around #CO3 recently. I certainly enjoy making fun of some of his daily screw-ups but in the same light, I have to also give him credit for good things that may happen because of his occupancy. Let’s get on to that in this post.
The words above were written by a person like me with significant Aspie traits. They so mirror my feelings as to be almost eerie. At the present time, I have 10 days worth of posts here on RJsCorner that are scheduled for publication and another forty-five drafts waiting to be fleshed out. There are also over a hundred titles in the trash that just didn’t pan out. My usual process is the take thoughts that cross my mind and write a quick title and a few words for future expansion and edification and then let my brain stew them over in the background. I don’t know how I can keep so many things tumbling in my mind at the same time? Sometimes I get several thoughts a day and a few days go by with nothing but I am rarely blocked.
It seems that one of the strictest rules around the current White House, that is beside disagreeing with #CO3 on ANYTHING, is to say you are sorry. Even when crude and disgraceful jokes are made about a dying senator, never say you are sorry. I certainly don’t understand that kind of logic? To me, that is downright disgraceful. But, then again, that kind of stuff seems the norm for them. How they seemingly hang on to their “base” is a total wonderment to me! Maybe, come this November we will see that for the most part they don’t.
I didn’t realize how freeing it could be to disentangle myself from the political world. It used to be that I spent a good half hour every morning browsing my internet feeds for political stories. That process now takes about five minutes or less. The PBS Newshour that I watch the morning after now takes about 10 -15 minutes of my time. The rest goes by at “super fast-forward”. Especially when #CO3’s picture shows up.
I was abruptly introduced to the idea that your dreams and expectations are never as good as you hope or as bad at you dread. Marriage is a compromise between two people of different personalities and desires. It is not a “happy ever after” state as many, including myself, dreamt it to be. I and my future wife were both over forty and unmarried so we had developed our own methods of living and coping with life. After the honeymoon, we would eventually clash on many subjects. Marriage was just not what we expected. But since we have survived over thirty years now in that state I guess we are a success at least on some level and our expectation and reality are now more aligned.
Are you a worrier? Do you worry about what other people think about you? If so, it just might be preventing you from being who you were meant to be. According to many studies, people driven by worry are some of the least happy people in the world. About the only thing that does more damage to your personal life than worry is an irrational fear.
