I am profoundly impressed by the responses to my previous post, for two reasons:
First, because they confirmed my suspicion that you folks could riff on anything, even a miserable tautology,
And second, because, contrary to my deepest fears, you all genuinely have a sense of humor.
Bravo and Merry Christmas.
8 comments:
One of your riffers wonders, do I play at detailed investigation of ideas? Philosphy is my thing? I'm 'too' cerebral? I'm definitely more scholastically intellectual than, like, Cenk Uygur? I want someone who is always quite subtle? But I'm not asking anybody here.
Merry Christmas and all the best for the new year,
Happy Holidays and health, happiness, and love in the New Year. If one is into craft beers we can change the salutation to health and hoppiness!
Well, I just had a Christmas evening that I will never forget.
I was late getting my Christmas/New Year’s cards done, because I have been tied up writing legal briefs and submitting profound comments on this blog. So I went to my local post office to send them at 6 P.M. One large envelope contained three greetings cards, and I had to use the automated self-service postage machine to determine the postage. As I was entering the data for the package, an elderly woman walked in and asked if I thought she could use the machine to send a letter to Australia. I said I did not know, but it wouldn’t hurt to try and I offered to help her. I helped her enter the data, and yes, the machine had international postage rates. When we determined the postage, she told me she did not have a credit card, so I paid for the postage with my credit card, which she reimbursed me in cash.
Then we started talking and she told me she was a retired Middle School teacher; she loved teaching the kids and missed teaching. she took her students on various filed trips in Michigan and Canada to get them out of class; she took them to a local court to see how the legal process works. I told her I was an attorney and she asked me if I knew J. Smith, and I said I did. Her husband was also a teacher; he taught auto mechanics, but then they eliminated the curriculum and assigned him to teaching art, so he also retired. He was also a retired marine, and he served between the Korean and Vietnam wars.
Then she told me about her daughter in Australia, who had three boys and was trying to get pregnant again, since she wanted a daughter. Then the shoe dropped. She told me that she thought Americans living in foreign countries should not be allowed to vote in U.S. elections; she said her daughter in Australia votes in U.S. elections, and she is a Democrat. She then stated that she is a diehard Trump supporter; that the Democrats stole the election, assisted by the Chinese; she has been reading up on QAnon. I kept smiling, as I thought to myself, “My God, I just helped a Trump supporter.” She went on how she was a poll watcher during the last election and she refused to leave when the police tried to expel her from the polling place, and she was willing to go to jail to protect her rights. Biden is an idiot and senile; he is not pulling the strings; Kamala Harris is pulling the strings. Nor is he a Catholic, because he supports abortion. I asked her what she thought of our first Catholic President, and she said she admired him, but she was too young then to know better. She and her husband adored Reagan. She talked to me for about a full hour, jumping from one subject to another. And I kept smiling.
As we were leaving I asked her to come to my car so I could show her my bumper sticker, and asked her not to hit me when she looked at the Biden/Harris bumper sticker. She said she would not hit me and asked if I had a business card, which I gave her. As we parted, we bumped fists and I wished her wonderful New Year.
The scary thing about all this is that she was an educated woman and a delight to talk to. I saw no point in arguing with her – I would not be able to change her mind. How many more educated, delightful people are there out there like her? We may be in far more serious trouble than I have realized.
AA,
Your post got me thinking of Book Seven of Plato's Republic and his Analogy of the Cave. But who are the prisoners of that cave, us or them? Progressives and Liberals, or Conservatives and Hard Core Right Wing Traditionalists? None of us here is over 110 years of age. Can we say that just because we have any kind of degree that we're smarter or wiser than many other people out there? Before Abraham's time people lived past 200 years on Earth. Some even lived past 900 years, including Noah. Maybe during that time people had philosophy books like we have, but perhaps even better ones? Or did everyone just get drunk and puke in their tents? Hopefully, the new Matrix movie will be just as mind blowing as the very first one. Or maybe I'm being too optimistic that people can answer Decartes' fundamental questions? Like what is really going on? The first president to ask the same question, Descartes asked many years ago, was Trump. He said: "We've got to figure out, people, what is going on?" I wish more people would ask that important question these days. Nowadays people just buy a $300 telescope, look at the night sky two or three times, get bored with it, and throw away their curiosity for the rest of their lives. I guess the reason why I like to read philosophy, like Plato's, is because I'm upset with that kind of dismissive attitude.
Happy holidays to the S.Wallerstein and the Chilean people:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/24/leftist-presidential-candidates-landslide-promises-clean-sweep-of-pinochets-fascist-legacy/
Jerry Fresia,
Thank you very much. Happy holidays to you too and to all readers of this blog, including Professor Wolff.
I kept smiling, as I thought to myself, "My God, I just helped a Trump supporter."
Interesting stuff, AA. It is kind of a mind-f@#$, isn't it? I have a fair amount of family - some distant, some immediate - who identify or sympathize with the right in one way or another; attitudes range from the disingenuous and half-assed "I'm an Independent (but agree with the Republicans 98% of the time)" all the way down to, well, the fanatical and delusional, i.e. "Of course Donald Trump is Presidential material!"
But I also love my family. Consequently, I regularly have experiences like the one you described.
"If Team Trump is capable of reaching so many ordinary, well-functioning human beings, then we are f#$%ed beyond words" is one possible lesson to draw, sure. But in certain moods, I also like to entertain the idea that there are other lessons, e.g., "Politics need not completely define the person"; or, "We're all in the same boat after all - the same weird, beautiful, deeply damaged and f#$%d-up boat - and have no better option than to coexist even with those who threaten to sink it"; or, whatever secular equivalent there might be of "Love your enemy"; demonstrating by example - as you seem to have done - that you can be the Great Satan in someone else's eyes while still bringing a bit of warmth and sunshine to their day.
It all reminds me: A few years back, a friend of mine from early childhood was brutally murdered by a well-known terrorist organization. The man's parents - wonderful people - appeared on television shortly afterward to issue a statement, thanking those who expressed their support, but requesting privacy, and alluding to the long and difficult emotional/spiritual journey lying ahead of them - a task of healing "and, yes, forgiveness." Also, from what I heard a few years later, as time went on, they had been approached by several people - politicians, journalists, etc. - and, though not Trump-supporters or Republicans themselves, they found that the people "behind the scenes" were actually not what one would expect, in terms of their decency and humanity.
I don't know. It's weird and complicated, and I haven't figured out what the best outlook is, in terms of one's everyday dealings...but I don't think it's the one that says (to quote a band I like) "the Antichrist leans to the right." That just doesn't seem livable to me, though I've flirted with it before.
Happy holidays.
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