Superfluous

I sit here shaking my head. It's been a while since I've sat down to type out my thoughts. It seems somewhat foreign, if I'm honest. Ha. I had a terrible manager once - at a company call TEK Systems - who would treat you like a dick if you said, 'if I'm being honest'. He thought it was disingenuous that for any reason someone wouldn't be honest. I always thought, "it's a turn of phrase, you complete asshole." So glad I left that company. Anywho...sitting down again after a respite feels odd. I've been back a time or two, and it seems like each time I tickle this keyboard, I'm giving you some version of why it's been a while, or I'm questioning why I even put fingers to keys and give you entre into my brain. Maybe I'm a glutton. Maybe I'm just searching for something other than the tediousness of life. Maybe I just pontificate to hear whatever I want to say run through my double hemisphere on the way to the page. Not sure. Don't care. I just know that at times if I don't write it down, it'll circle endlessly in my head until it's purged or expunged, whichever is more permanent. 

I was at the Y today, and I decided that I am disgusted with my friendships. Disgusted is strong. Too strong. No, that's not right. What do I want to say to characterize why I'm writing this? I think I'm...sad. I think my friendships make me a little sad. Not because the people I love are sad, or I'm disinterested in them in any way. It's that they feel suplerflous. Sometimes. I love my people, my family, my strong and solid friends. But I also wonder if I would be their friend if we hadn't met one another in college. Hmmm...I'm getting ahead of myself. I am very much a receiver and ingester and digester and absorber of politics and political news. It is extremely important to me that I stay as abreast on national and state politics as possible. Not gonna lie - local politics haven't really been something magnetic for me. And that's likely worse than the other two because I'm absolutely more impacted by local politics than what they're doing in Raleigh and DC. 

Most of the time. I say my friendships are superfluous because politics is one of the subjects we never talk about. The goings on in Washington are never ever bandied about in text or in person. It is, in fact, something of a known avoidance. Nobody says anything political. And I think it's in fear or reprisal. That reprisal would be toward my conservative friends, coming from me and the few other non-GOP-supporting folks in our group. Either way, not having political conversations and making assumptions (many of which are founded) has begun to make me sad about why I'm 51 and feeling the way I do about people I love. That sounds so fucking harsh. Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's a reality lots of people have as they age. Hell, maybe my conservative friends feel the same way about me. Ha. Wouldn't that be something? 

The older I get, the more and more I see how this country and the world are an extremely fucked up place. It's fucked up for minorities. It's fucked up for the non-Christian. It's fucked up for women. It's fucked up for anyone who isn't heterosexual. It's fucked up for the poor - or anyone who isn't rich. It's fucked up for workers and employees of many different industries. It's fucked up for the criminally alleged and the criminally convicted. I get so mad when I hear Make America Great Again. Tell me when the fuck this country was great for EVERYONE. You can't because it never was. 

I'm sad about my friendships because I know they are conservative and will, without a moment's hesitation, vote for Donald Trump. I think they're largely a group with minimal exposure to the news. Hell, what's minimal? That is more than a fair question, I suppose. I am probably considered a news junkie. I am always tuned into news programs, news sites, and news apps. I have my favorite news channel personalities. I know what time they come on, how they lean (away from GOP politics), and I can recognize many of them simply by the sound of their voices. But I put in the effort. I WANT to know what's going on. I WANT to understand the positions. I WANT to be able to discern facts from nonsense. I WANT to be able to confidently vote for someone based having been introduced to them, drinking in their positions, and knowing how they compare to their opponent. News is a daily constant for me. I recognize that it isn't that way for everyone, and I know it isn't that way for the lion's share of my friends. How they get their news is an unknown for me, other than those who are FOX News sycophants. That's another train wreck, and part of my current abjection. 

What happens when you get older and your outlook on so many integral things divests from what is supposed to be the core of friendships? So many families have been greatly harmed by the politics of 2016-today. I'm sure marriages have broken up. Parents and extended families have been cast aside after the revelation they supported abhorrent candidates and their positions. The people haven't changed. They're still the same people you grew up loving and eating with and laughing with and learning from. But now they're somehow dirty. You don't look at them the way you used to. You can't fucking believe they believe the fucking things they do. You can't allow the excuses they feed you to try and minimize their connection to suck awful people they want to put into, keep, or return to office. Their candidates say and do things that are aimed at hurting you or ones you love. Their candidates aren't supporting freedom. Their candidates are dangerous for the future of democracy and they are promising to infringe even more on your life. But you love your friends. How can any of this be made sensical? If they loved you more, are they supposed to vote in a manner that preserves YOUR interests? Are they supposed to be mindful of how YOU will be treated by the candidates on the ballot? Is there some kind of ethical responsibility to you? Or are you (am I) just being selfish because what their candidates espouse is in direct contradiction to the candidate I support? 

Freedom FROM religion. The right to choose. Appropriate taxation of the extremely wealthy. Enforceable boundaries for politicians in and out of office. Equitable legal practices, equal application of the law, fair sentencing, and the removal of qualified immunity? Universal healthcare. An honest and meaningful living wage. Removing corporate influence in politics by erasing Citizens United. Capping the amount of money utilized in political contests. Federalizing education with equal funding for all public schools in the country. More and more and more. On and on and on. What I want differs from the conservative approach. It boils down to money, really. Raise taxes on the extremely wealthy, close some loopholes, tax churches, reduce the war budget, and we can afford to keep people off of the streets, reduce the welfare rolls, improve our environments, let more people find the right kind of education for themselves - whether that's a 4-year degree or a trade school - reduce the wealth gaps, influence a broadened spectrum of the creation of generational wealth, and more. 

I don't know. I'm tired. It hurts that I'm not on the same page with my friends. Nothing I want for the country would hurt them. But the policies and candidates they support would stand to bring my world significant problems - has, and will. I am at a loss. I shouldn't be. We should be able to have adult conversations. But we don't. And I think we don't because it would be the beginning of the end of decades of laughs and travels and shared experiences and inside jokes and everything else that is the glue we've used to hold everything together, if only on the surface, for longer than we realize. Will it stay that way? Will they change? Will I? Will we all grow old together? I'd sure like to. I've just got to figure out how.