Open Carry/Open Arms

Premise: Partisanship as it is confounds both legislative accomplishment in the moment and the prospect of Democratic electoral gains in the immediate future (2018 and 2020).

I guess it's possible to say in the short term that the deep offensiveness and obvious cynicism of the McConnell-Ryan legislative agenda has been something of a boon for the sometimes self-fractured progressive movement in the United States at the minute. In the absence of affection, nothing holds a group of humanoids together like a shared object of hate. This is how you get Democrats in absolute, unified lockstep in every iteration of GOP attempts to repeal and "replace" Obamacare. Sometimes it seems like nothing can bring the Hillary retrospectionals and Bernie fantasists together, but Donald Trump and the GOP, with their stated goals seemingly only existing in the service of pulling down rather than building, have found the exact right combination of words to make Dem centrists and leftists say to one another, "You know, fuck you, but fuck them more, right? Yeah, I thought so. But just so we're clear, still fuck you on principle, but fuck them in practice."

But that only works internally. Hillary isn't going to be the candidate in 2020, that we can say for certain. And Bernie, well, he's old as fuck. Sure, he'll take a swing at it maybe, but I'd guess right now it's more to maintain momentum and keep the fundraising base primed so he can hand off the baton to a handpicked successor Champeen of Economic Social Justice. Ideally someone less old as fuck. Like maybe fuck-minus-20-years.

The point is the argument between those two camps really don't matter. The Electoral College map is what it is and nothing has really changed in the eight or nine months since the election. Sure, revulsion at the GOP agenda galvanizes Democrats, but we should all be clear by now that we are not, in any circumstance, going to be able to turn to our right-leaning friends and family--well, OK, probably just family left at this point--and say "Can you believe these fucking savages?" and expect anything positive to come out of it. The bubble is real. All the bubbles are real, including the one I live in. There are about a dozen counties in the Upper Midwest that need to be swung at some point. Standing around waiting for the Trump administration to implode sounds fine, but then aren't we just like the Republicans we ostensibly abhor? It's cynical, reactive, venal.

Besides, there's nothing a conservative hates more than listening to some libtard try to talk politics at them. Once that starts, how many sentences are they away from it being implied that they are stupid? And for those of us on the left, how many sentences are we away from somehow implicitly insulting Kid Rock? For me, it's never more than three. Communication-wise, this is a problem.

Conclusion: Be charitably open-minded, while also not being condescending. Consider possibly an extended course in advanced rhetoric or, perhaps, magic.

I know it's not easy. After all, what is the matter with Kansas? It's tempting to conclude that the problem is one of logic that can be argued into submission. We've been trying this since about 1988, with widely variable levels of success. It seems we only make headway when we're led by generationally gifted orators with insanely high emotional intelligence like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. But waiting for the arrival of a white knight* is not a durable, coherent strategy. It's the political equivalent of The Process, meaning we'd have to be comfortable being the historically shitty Philadelphia 76ers for a while in the hopes that some mahdi will emerge to drive our enemies before us.

This is dumb. This is saying the only way to deal with people we perceive to be emotionally stunted anti-realists is to adopt a attitude of holding the line rhetorically while expecting (outside of all reason) some kind of douchebag eschatology to save them, us and everyone else.

Being charitable, I'll say the tone on the left since election day has been strident. Not without reason or provocation, no, but still: what's the goal? To vomit out our feelings or to win some shit? Maybe eight months is long enough to grieve and tooth-gnash and garment-rend. Maybe it's time to get really radical.

Implementation: Seriously consider the idea that the current president is not one or all of the following: a Russian agent; a fascist; a white supremacist; a moron; a lizard-person wearing a man skin.

OK, I'm not saying he isn't one of those things, but we should consider when engaging with those on the other side of the political spectrum that they most definitely do not see him that way. Consider the idea that maybe they do see him that way, but they think you and your lefty smugness is so intolerable, any element of that judgment in any conversation with you is going to be met with automatic, reflex pushback.

Also consider: if you're so sure your side is ultimately correct anyway, what does it hurt to take a few detours into open-mindedness? That's the beauty of objective fact: it doesn't need your help to stay true. Its true-ness is inherent in the object, separate from the observer/defender/self-appointed hovering nagging monitor. Go ahead, set it down, walk away. When you're ready to come back to it, it will be the same shape, size, texture that you left it.

Hear them out. I mean really hear them. Don't just show up and wait for them to stop talking so you can jump in with your smarmy two cents.

It won't be easy. You'll have to start on your own, fighting your own gag reflex, learning to converse the way aspiring porn stars learn to tamp down their automatic bodily responses in the name of unrealistic filmed sexual degradation.

I'm starting with this: hey, maybe Trump isn't the smartest guy ever, but also maybe he's surrounded by people too afraid to correct him when he obviously doesn't know something. Health care is complicated. I don't know what all the numbers on my insurance card mean, that's for sure. And he's trying to take on the whole system. So when he breaks out really shocking word soup when attempting to explain it in brief, maybe it's not him. Maybe he's always in rooms of people stifled by an undue deference more in their best interest than his or, certainly, ours.

Try that. See how it goes. I'll be honest, it's not going... great for me. The goal is to start seeing Trump (and by extension, his followers) as humans, with just as much at stake as we have.

Just keep in mind, it's possible to go too far with this empathy shit. I'm going to make an effort, sure, but I'm not throwing out the lizard-person idea entirely. It's one thing to be open, it's another to be naive.

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*Yes, fine, one was only a half-white knight. Make your jokes.