One judge to rule them all
Currently, I find myself participating in an alternate reality where the daily schedule is determined by a 2 year olds routine. I am discombobulated. If I give toddlers the attention they deserve and desire, they tend to have that affect on me, never mind their strict schedules. Theres no wiggle room in the schedule because this two year old is in perpetual motion racing toward all things unknown, whatever the schedule is. Guillermos Pinocchio depicts it perfectly. Whats this? Bam. I love it! Whats this? Crash. I love it! Whats this?! Bang. I love it!
Im taking a break from toddler time, sitting in a tiny house with over 30 networks to scroll through to find the wifi called Sunshine. Im logged in and staying out of the real sunshine because that sunshine burns hotter and brighter than I remember it. Too much exposure taps out my energy, energy fuelled by the best Tex Mex Ive ever eaten.
Im in a strange land where the motorways are roaring 24/7. I recall when they were freeways, projecting sounds in an ebb and flow of gentler rhythms. You could imagine ocean waves without much difficulty. Today the motorways are roaring, with so many drivers in perpetual motion. Looking up into the sky, patterned with strange clouds of lace, more stringy than cotton, more linear than puffy, up there is a hang glider, soaring higher than the vultures, high above the stop and go of northbound traffic. Free.
The liberals are also roaring. Well informed by the New York Times, I listen to one young leftist calling out a US president as a fraud. He roars louder than the traffic on the 101, hes a fraud! He motors on, celebrating the judge who single handedly deemed the president guilty before any trial.
Why waste my breath saying anything against the NYT? Its the roaring source for all things real and true according to the new liberal. I had nothing to say in defence of The Fraud, but I hope to learn the etiquette of remaining honest in conversation with someone who resorts to loud name calling. I did manage to quietly interject what was given a fleeting moment of consideration, by pointing to the state of justice so quickly meted out by a single human. What checks and balances have been thrown out in lieu of one persons review of what is considered The Evidence?
I put my hand to my heart and bow out. I listened. I wasnt heard. I was shouted down and dismissed. I do not take it personally but Im scratching my head over how to bridge the roaring river of information that divides us. The constant sound of tires and engines rolling on asphalt, so many tires, so many engines. I can barely think through that din, never mind imagine how to remain connected in spite of the un-mendable rent between our perspectives.
Im out of my element here. The intensity of the road roar outside and the intensity of the roaring politics indoors managed within a two year olds napping, eating, playing, bathing, sleeping schedule is one notch beyond my capacity. So lets leave it alone, ‘cause we dont see eye to eye, there are no good guys, there are no bad guys, theres only you and me and we just disagree.
Is it necessary to agree upon a world view in order to continue as family? There is the threat in the roaring river of information, undoing what is way more valuable than any world view. I remember being younger and stronger and brazen about the ideologies I understood as being paramount. For nothing but an idea, my family was forsaken and I escaped their world view at the cost of those relationships. I look back and recognize it now. I ran from the responsibility to my family, eventually chasing ideology straight into a cult.
You will get your just desserts, John once said. You will get whats coming to you, said Dad. The damning and blaming that can happen inside a family only deepens divisions that need to be bridged instead. If not bridged, then the family comes apart. The Bolsheviks win.
Family has the potential to keep our essential values engaged and integral, even when our world views are at odds. When the sources competing for cornering the market on reality, and when the river of information rushes between us, and as a result we are yelling across the dinner table at each other, all for the sake of a world view, better to bang the table with a fist and cry out, I love it! Because in spite of our disagreements, there we all are at a table together. Still together.
Without having familial support, whether you find it in blood relatives or otherwise, the New Bolsheviks get what they are aiming for. It’s one reason why the rivers and tides of competing information are loosed, to ensure that families are yelling at each other, disagreeing and then dispersing. That leaves unmoored individuals in search of any port in a storm, a sketchy community, a cult, a gang, becoming subject to control and rulership by whoever can lure those orphans into their ideologies, more like lairs than ideals, engaged to serve only the masters. Inside those systems, there is a single human, or psychopath, gavelling out a verdict from on high and no dissenting voices allowed.
I watch a beloved two year old wiggle into a rucksack and take up an umbrella as a walking stick. I hear him say he is headed for the west county to visit his friend. For a quick moment, I glimpse his future. Alone and on foot, with a clear destination, he is free and he is family to so many who love him.