Asses and Elephants

What was it like that last time you walked into a party full of socializing adults who all knew one another through work, kids or whatever and you knew no one? Maybe this has not happened to you since you were a kid, but think about the feeling you had. What was it? What was the feeling you had when half of the room's eyes turned to look at you? Check you out to see if you were familiar then, as their faces tell you, they realize you are not important, turn away and continue their conversation. When did it happen and what did you want to do next? What? Stand there at the entrance alone, right at the scene of the crime. The crime where you were judged quickly and deemed unworthy. Or would you prefer to slip through the crowd to begin again but from the back. Look for a friendly eye, with an un-confrontational smile on your face and hope you see someone that you know, pray they are here somewhere, that you are not early. Why is it so much more uncomfortable to be unknown rather than known? If even one person knows you, recognizes you when you enter, how different would your reaction have been? How much different would you have felt?

Whenever I meet someone new, whether at a party, or at work, I and I suspect you too, I try to find commonalities in which to easily base the new relationship on. 'Where are you from' is a common first question. 'Where did you work before this?', 'where do you live?', 'do you have kids?', 'married?', blah, blah, blah. Small talk is what it is and how it starts. How many of the last million first dates you have been on did not begin with these questions? Okay, you back there in the corner? With the hand up? You had one? Okay well share it below. The questioning is something like an interview, but as one question gets positive response and then the next, the conversation begins to open up, acceptance has been given by both parties. Common ground is being discovered. The questions flow from here on. Again, why? What is it about commonalities that bind us together and how? Is it just because it's easier to talk about things you already know about? Is it really just that shallow, and lazy? Or is there a more human nature issue at work here? A basic human trait? Like trying to be happier during a depressing time, can we manipulate this emotion too? Can we influence others with it, either positively like smiling at someone, or negatively like jumping out and scaring them?

Often when I travel for business, which is just about too often, I get a roommate wherever I am staying. Company policy. For the last several years, just about every event I have attended I requested the same roommate. His name is Mike. If I may give you a quick picture of Mike I would begin by saying he is smart. Mike is a hair over sixty, a Mormon and has kids that are just a bit younger than me. We had nothing in common except work when we first met some 13 years ago, but today we room together often and look forward to it. I thoroughly enjoy his company and I think he gets a kick of out mine too. We are just so different. He does not drink, I of course do (hic), he does not swear or sleep with women he is not married to. He is a republican and I am a democrat. I think he likes it because he knows that by rooming with me he will get the room to himself most of the night because I will be out drinking with colleagues from around the country, and I know that with him I am getting a quiet roommate who isn't a complete idiot, where they come from I don't know, but I have had them. And he has never passed gas on my head like my last roommate. Anyway, I have been raised Christian and although my aunt is Mormon I don't believe in the tenets of his religion so I have a hard time relating to him on that level.

These two roommates have nothing at all in common, but still we like each other very much. We have had many conversations about business, economics, history of religions and often about politics. Oddly, unlike anyone else I have 'argued' with over politics, he does not get so emotional he can't hear a dissenting view and really listen. We have had many arguments(discussion with points is all an argument is), where we disagreed with one other, were tossing factoids back and forth trying to gain a foothold against the others points, to knock the legs out from under the others argument. But after all was said and done, sometimes we convinced one another (because we always left our minds open), and sometimes we didn't. But we always left the room together and went down for dinner together. Never would it get too heated. We always came together and found common ground. Well unless the Bush administration were brought up. Then we both begin to lose it. I of course, like all well-read people across the planet, think that the Bush administration is the most deceitful and damaging administration in history. Never before has my distrust for lawyers and the hair splitting been matched by any other one group of people. Never before have I distrusted my government as much as I do today. Never before have I heard spokespeople from the White House speaking like lawyers in court trying to wiggle out of a technicality, about my future, my money, my life and the lives of kids around me, and unfortunately around the world. I am hearing more lawyer speak in every speech. Saying what it takes to give impressions about issues to us that are only technically true. Legally not lies, but lies nonetheless. "Within the letter of the law" Tony Snow said yesterday. Maybe you don't really pay attention, or maybe you have already realized it's too late to try to listen, its does not matter anyway. Maybe your trust has worn so thin, you don't even care anymore. If you are not paying attention, it is worse than you guess and I bet you call yourself a democrat.

So I wonder, now with a Presidential approval rating of only 29 points and dropping, maybe 27 by the time you read this, who knows the 4th lowest in history. With a republican congress recently kicked out, and a democratic one replacing it, with more and more republicans who, not so long ago, chanted and shouted "PRO WAR", find themselves backing out. The disgust of the administrations action over seas too much for them to bare. Four more turned this month, again if you are not paying attention, I wonder how and why do the republican voters stay behind the party right now. Well it's a rhetorical question really, I don't mind the party itself really this current one I do, I don't think that democrats are good and republicans are bad. No, there are equal numbers of "evil-doers" in both parties. But what is it that binds these republicans together when their party is crumbling in front of them with deceptions, law breaking and secrecy? When things look so bad why stay in lock step? Christianity has been, as I see it, the main core value that they believe separated them from us, but what if Mitt Romney is elected? He is Mormon. What then? What else would hold them together?

In the last sixty years there has only been one democratic President re-elected. Just one. It doesn't matter so much that it was Bill Clinton, just that it is a fact. Somehow regardless of how the party did, the republicans won back the presidency. Each time after only one 4 year term. How? How was it done? It was not the ebb and flow of the voters, it was not an accident. It would not have happened had this not have happened each time. So what was it?

Democrats are a loose bunch. Some believe in god, some in tree fairies. Some make six digits, some wear burlap. Some are models and some don't shave their armpits. I am a democrat and I care about…. She is a democrat and she cares about…They are all democrats and all they care about are owls. Nothing else. Just freakin owls. No jobs, no relationships, just the owls. It's true some of us democrats are NUTS. Some drive Mercedes and some ride scooters running on bio-diesel which makes the neighborhood smell like French fries. Nothing is the same in this group. There are no common bonds in the democratic party. None. We don't all care about any one issue, many of us disagree on all issues. Their team is made up of blue-suits, red ties, polished shoes. Chiseled farmers faced etched with honesty. Our team is made up of a hodge podge of what is left. Honestly I don't want some of these people on my team. Red-Rover, red rover, send the smelly girl, who doesn't shave her armpits and is covered in tree bark right over. FINE! Take TWO of them! My team does not all look like me and some of them embarrass me. I don't want to look at a bumper sticker of a point that I agree with on the back of a 1972 Volkswagon bus, with a 45 year old out of work hippie driving.

Republicans do have something in common. A belief about us. It's a You vs. Us scenario and nowhere is it more vicious than with the right wingers. Religion and money are the two basic tenants of the republican party. Neither of which I have anything against, in fact I am pro god and pro money. I like them both. In fact I like them both so much I often wonder why I claim them to be on my team? Why do I feel guilty around a severe right winger, just like when I walk out of a store without buying anything. You know that feeling like you think everyone thinks you stole something? Heh. Yeah I like that one. Why do I feel like they are innately more spiritual? And if I do, then they must believe I am less. Why? I am going to guess that both of us are wrong. So why the feeling?

Turn on a right wing radio station and what you will hear besides lots of emotional 'facts' is the spewing of hatred towards "The Left". Unifying their subordinates under the flag of war. Preaching fear of what "the Democrats will do to 'Our' businesses, 'our' country, 'our' borders if we don't stay strong and united. The Democrat's want the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America you know and love to die. They want the borders gone, want Mexican nationals, and Canadian healthcare to pour on top of our perfect Christian nation mix together and create hell on earth. Oops, I forgot, they don't believe in hell, they are all heritics so I guess they just want it to all look like San Francisco during Mardi gras.." This is how they do it each year. They will lose the white house this next election. They will have lost both the Legislative, and Executive branch in one fell swoop. They had all of the power to do all of their agendas to help the country become stronger, locally, nationally and internationally. They had control of everything. They were unopposed the last 8 years by any meaningful threat to their power, to their decisions and yet look around you. Go ahead, look. How are things looking to you? Ask yourself; Would state of the Nation today be worse had a democrat been in office? I don't know honestly, I am not trying to promote the Democrats, just hating on the current administration and their current loyalists. Maybe things, had a democratic president been in office right now, would be as bad as they were under Clintons 8 years…oh wait. Things were pretty good then. I don't know then. No way to tell I guess. I know, I know, Clinton lied too. Fine. Both sides do bad things. People do bad things, I get that. It's not about tit-for-tat comparing history who was worse, its all about today. I am still amazed at the right wing radio and their use of Bill Clinton as a rallying cry, still today. It is so old news. What about today??

But, you may ask, how are the republicans going to get the power back? And they will too, because they know what the democrats don't. Democrats think that their constituents are so smart all they want is to be lectured to. Knowledge does not lock people together, statistics and flow charts showing ice ages, graphs showing 17 point plans to make the economy better. These things make people like me listen. I like graphs, I like proven facts, but most people don't really care that much. Most people want all that just taken care of. Run the country, its your job. Do it well on your own or you will hear from me. It's like going to the dentist. You just expect it to be perfect. Anything less, and you will complain. This is the democratic mantra. Quiet till you don't like something, then real loud for such a short period of time it does nothing.

The republicans however will use emotion to bind. They will use our human natures desire to belong, which forms gangs, which makes us sit at the same table on lunch break, or to desperately find a familiar face at a party to keep republicans all marching in lock step. The democrats don't know how to use this emotion. Don't know how to insult the right in order to gather the left to battle. I suppose they know how to, it's just that the left is so fractured that the only thing we hate in common is that they hate us. The only thing we share in common is the letter D on our voter cards. We don't have radio shows that broadcast from ocean to ocean because there is not one person who so represents the left as Rush does the right. He is you if you are the right. His show has one goal each day and that is to divide the left from the right, and to make the right fear and hate the left. He talks about nothing but division. Only that. Division. "You my friends, are different" he says. The left however speaks about issues. About this or that, arguing among themselves as to who is more right. Issues that many don't care a whit about. Trying to 'understand' one another. Forming non partisan discussions that go nowhere. The whole time hoping the right will once the correct argument has been made, will jump ship and come aboard our leaking ship.

I think that the democratic party fits me better because I like to include people. I like to bring them together. I like to share thoughts, and become stronger with the thoughts of many. I don't like to belong to a team for the sake of being on a team. I am okay on my own.

The point of this piece was not to fight with you about political parties, we can discuss individual issues if you like, and I don't care what your voter card says, its that we need to recognize that human emotion is all powerful. The feeling you felt by walking into that house all alone, fearful of rejection and desperately needing support is powerful enough to elect Presidents.