by Sharon Goodman
When we refer to our "loved ones", it is generally interpreted as "family members".
You may argue that it includes other people. If so, write your own article; this one is mine.
These loved ones, family members, who may be younger than you are (in my case, that's every single one of them living) have known you all their lives or possibly all of your life. If one of them decides they don't like you at all, you are probably in trouble. On the other hand, you may experience great relief if they aren't speaking to you for any period of time from a week or up to your funeral. On the other hand, they may come to their senses any day now. Who knows?
(There is a perfectly good precedent for using "on the other hand" more than once for the same subject. Topol, the Papa in Fiddler on the Roof. I rest my case.)
Why should a nation's government or political system pretend that all citizens of the nation should get along fine and have no major differences? That isn't even doable in families. The founding fathers didn't believe that for a minute. That's why there are laws against murder. It's also why they set up a simple system of government, clearly described, with built-in checks and balances, also clearly described.
If the best nation on earth (that would be America, for those who were educated in the last couple of generations by government schools, liberal universities and the drive-by media - no, not as in "drive-by shooting", although it's similar) can go to war against itself, as it did in the War Between the States (that would be the "Civil" War to Northerners and The War Of Northern Aggression" to Southerners), then it's logical to assume and clear to see that groups of loved ones, though much smaller in number (with the possible exception of the Osmonds), can do the same thing. And, in fact, have been doing it since the beginning of recorded time.
People don't agree with each other, especially free people who have the freedom and choice to not agree with each other. I refer you to the first two people born in the world, brothers, Cain and Able. Did not agree. To solve the disagreement, one murdered the other. There wasn't even any law yet for it to be against. The Ten Commandments were given much later, after everybody had already broken all of them and it needed to be pointed out.
Was this a sudden thing? Yes, picking up a stone and bashing in somebody's head is rather sudden or that somebody would have moved. But that disagreement had been festering and who knows for how long? I tried out but rejected a vision of Eve telling those two from when they were toddlers, "Now you boys stop fighting and get along!" I rather imagine that, with her guilty conscience, she wouldn't have much to say.
Fast forward to the present. The Constitution of the United States, which declares itself to be the Law of the Land and still is, is as straight-forward and plain as the Ten Commandments, and is denigrated just as freely and broken just as often in the days we live in. Neither set of laws is "living", as in casting off old skin and getting new every day, neither is "open to interpretation" by whatever new generation's batch of judges is temporarily in charge of things judicial, and neither is to be changed, taken from, or added to ... in the case of our Constitution except by way of the citizens voting for the amendments they want. In the case of the Ten Commandments, not at all. Either case is very clear in the written words.
Do people have a reading problem? Well, yes. Do they have an understanding problem? Yes. But mostly they have a disagreement problem. And where does an awareness of disagreement start? Am I aware of it if I disagree with somebody named Ann in Pocatella, Idaho? Nope, I have no idea. I don't live in Pocatella, Idaho and never met Ann. Am I aware if I disagree with one or more of the loved ones I claim? Oh, yes. It's hard to miss.
We tend to like acceptance of what we do, and if it's legal, I expect it, whether other people want to do the same or not. I'll give them the same favor. Plain acceptance of our activities, habits, relationships, etc. is important to people; particularly the young, when peer pressure is at its zenith. It gets less and less important as we get older, until at least some of us in our 60s and 70s don't give a rap about what anybody thinks of what we do.
And we tend to prefer agreement with what we think. Our personal beliefs, our opinions, our political persuasions; this is important to people, too, particularly older ones. This is where younger people seem to care less, in general, about all that than older ones with a lot more experience (not necessarily akin to a lot more wisdom, but let's pretend.) This drives us old people nuts.
There are vast numbers of old, middle-aged and young people in our country as everywhere else. This kind of "diversity" is the most natural and the only inevitable kind. We have no objections to this. But it's problematic to me why so many seem to have no thoughts, beliefs, opinions, or convictions of their own that some professor or evening news reader didn't tell them to have. Why do they behave like sheep, I wonder. Weren't they taught to think for themselves? In a word, no.
This is unfortunate, but it explains a lot, doesn't it? It's a bit like that most popular group of voters, "independents", or that large group in political polls, "undecideds", who just don't know what on earth they are, what they believe, or what candidates they might be for this year, because they haven't been told yet. (Never fear, they will be.) These fence-sitters express no loyalty, fealty or connection with any group or (horrors!) any political party, keeping their "options open" lest they actually make some commitment they might want to change, just wait to be sufficiently fed with convictions because, I suppose, they don't have any.
But when we do have our own convictions, birds of a feather flock together; you've heard that one? Carrying that logic to its obvious end, birds not of a feather obviously don't. A huge cloud of hundreds, possibly thousands, of small blackbirds covered my front yard one January day. Why they hadn't had sense enough to fly South by then, I don't know. I do know I don't live in the South. I stared out the window over the head of my fascinated cat for several minutes, so I can swear there was not one bluebird or red bird among them. They were all precisely the same. I had a terrible vision of the future of my country, or maybe it was a scene from Dr. Zhivago that crossed my mind. You see, when we get old, we have a lot to draw from. And we make the connections. These connections usually involve sheep, but on that day mine was birds.
People always seek their own tribe; it's built in to us. Perhaps tribes used to all be in agreement. I doubt they are any more. Not even the smallest unit of a tribe, the family, the loved ones, are always in agreement. And in a modern election year, nobody agrees with everybody, and half of us won't get along with the other half. Country, tribe, town, family - nobody. This is not new, as the government-run media would have you believe; nor is it a bad thing, as they insidiously claim at every opportunity. We are all supposed to peacefully agree, but there's a problem. We are not a nation of sheep (granted that's arguable now); we are a free people. (So is that.)
Let's go back to that smallest unit, the loved ones. This is where we start, because we can't start with the opposite end of three hundred million people. Most of us aren't allowed to make speeches in great halls or by preempting prime time TV. We start in our own family. Even if most of my descendents are of the same persuasions I am because the first set was raised right, this is not always the case. And direct descendents are not all of the family. We have lots of others, or a few others, either in addition to or instead of, but we all have them or we wouldn't be here.
You see, we free people are very fond of our own beliefs or we wouldn't have them. They are right, or we wouldn't think so. It goes without saying that we don't like being around the ones who dislike us, or with whom we have nothing in common and nothing but disagreement. If they try to tell us what to do or what to think, we tell them to go pound sand. Put a sock in it. Goodnight, go home, get informed. What do you think Gore invented the internet for?
Disputes between people must be the most common thing in the world. Disputes are sometimes settled by murder (see above), as we find in every day's news. News agencies know they have to catch your attention with blood and gore (not to mention sex and voyeurism) if they want you to read or listen to their propaganda. Anyway, the murderer won that argument, but I don't recommend that.
In earlier days, disputes were sometimes settled by duels. Duels were honorable and legal. (they are not legal now.) The best shot won that argument, but I don't recommend that. either.
Some disputes are settled in courts by judges who don't know anybody involved in them but are wiser than all because ....... well, because they say so. This is why there are approximately three lawyers to every other person in our population. Some judge telling you the other guy won the argument probably didn't change anyone's mind; it just shut them up and possibly prevented a murder for the evening news. Otherwise, I don't recommend most of that.
And some disputes are settled by war. Wars used to be decidedly either won or lost but, in today's world, this is often not allowed, which leads to having to fight the same ones again later. Wars have often been necessary throught history to preserve freedoms or protect from invaders. In those cases, we are not supposed to make war on civilians. May I point out that our own Union unequivocally made war on civilians, also our own, in the 1860s. May I also point out that this remains in the realm of the possible, like it or not And I don't recommend that.
If people who allegedly love each other have disputes, arguments and differences, how are we conned into thinking that an entire nation of people that mostly don't know each other should not? If family members can yell and scream at each other because they disagree, how are we to accept the idea that millions of strangers, poles apart in opinion, should be "civil" about it? Quiet like sheep is what such advocates mean, while they tell us which side of the argument should be "civil". Guess what. It's your side.
That war the historians refer to as "Civil", by the way, got 600,000 Americans killed in four years, left half the country ruined for a century and its people in festering resentment that continues to this day. And nothing was settled that wouldn't have come about naturally and peaceably in a short time anyway, the way it was happening in the rest of the civilized world in the same time frame.
Americans get testy. We knew that from all the cowboy movies we've watched, and we're surprised about now? Americans don't back down. We know that from all the wars we've won, back in the days when winning was the desired outcome.
No, our disputes don't trickle down from the vast, contentious multitudes to the family; they branch outward from the family individuals to the masses. Disputers are individual people, not the rush hour traffic glut. The first dispute, remember, was between two brothers. Thus it has always been and thus it will be.
So did any of this explain how you might get along with or change the mind of some "loved one" who doesn't like your beliefs and opinions? No, and that wasn't my purpose. Is that person going to "see the light", realize you may be right, or at least seek further knowledge in order to prove or disprove their own or the opinions they are told to have? I doubt it. So the contention goes on.
How is it all to be settled? It won't be. Don't expect it to be. And if someone has something to say, one says it, but at some point an article has to be wrapped up, and even if your opinion is that it should have been long before this, my opinion is: that point is now.
Thanks for reading.
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