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| The Essays | Wednesday, September 08, 2010 |
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 Here’s an area where the pundits and polls agree: The people are polarized. Their minds are made up and nothing can change ‘em. Why is this? I feel most would point to the bubble gum message machines – talk radio, blogs, Rupert’s news, and a documentary about Daniel Fahrenheit. This is, I think, to give them too much credit. Hell, I can’t get my friends and family to change anything. If I can’t get peeps to watch “Aqua Teen”, buy treasury bonds, eat according to their blood type, or listen to the Doves - how in the hell, really now, is some loudmouth gonna altar their political convictions? I’m not the first to say - while the political machines are potent, they reinforce rather than create. Political convictions begin with the family and end with personal experience. The son of a foreman is about as likely to read Edmund Burke after nightly dinners blasting management, as the daughter of a V.P. is to bust out Chomsky after nightly dinners denigrating the union’s foreman. (She will in college but that’s another essay.) In other words, if parents watch Fox News or CNN every night… you get it. Add in personal experience – the major personal and public events, like getting laid… off, and going to war. Pretty obvious stuff here, right? Well not so it seems, for everyday I encounter folks believing they can transform my politics via witty T-shirts and bumper stickers. I wonder if there’s a think-tank for bumper-sticker making – attracting the shallowest minds from the most expensive universities. Only the most arrogant gain acceptance. For it’s one thing to sum up a foreign policy on a sticker, but quite another to think said sticker will profoundly impact the rest of the commuting populace. In truth it says much more about the driver’s IQ and his view of fellow citizens. At least they’re driving away at some point. It’s when you get these folks one-on-one… which brings me to the water cooler (I had to get here somehow), home to the world’s worst conversations. If it’s not about the weekend, it’s about the box office, and if it’s not about the box office it’s about whatever Aaron Brown is droning about on the 13-inch community TV. One's upbringing and personal experience is obviously not so obvious to these folk, who compete to knock down in two minutes what another has acquired in twenty plus years of absorption and thought. And if you can’t relate to this feeling stop by my work one afternoon. (Note: expect more “Move On” fury than “Rush” repetition. But I’m sure the pendulum sways the other way.) My Spidey-sense tingles when I feel a Halliburton slap comin’ on, so I take the road most traveled and run away - hoping not to tip my politics in the process. I’m overtly non-combative because I refuse to relegate politics to the world of men’s tennis (all serve and no volley). And besides, I actually believe in absorbing respite in the “break” room, aka relieving stress, relaxing the mind, watching “Wild on Ibiza” uncensored on the Spanish channels… But there was one time about a year and half ago when a full-on eruption was unavoidable. The design of our production booths is to blame - picture a dorm room stacked with six or seven monitors, audio decoders, and computers; plus some movie posters and a couple Aeron chairs for the workers. And like a dorm you can’t hide your passions indefinitely. We both were news junkies. We both passionately followed politics, while a war loomed in Iraq. We both agreed on the critical nature of the time and its apocalyptic stakes - and we pretty much disagreed on everything else. At the time, David Warren wrote, “With war upon the world, we are reminded of, the many great issues that divide son from father, and daughter from mother, and friend from friend.”The contenders: She, an ex-model, traveler, art degree (self-financed), from the Bay Area, digs Chomsky. Me, high school jock, traveled the
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| Writing is arrogant. Not writing is selfish. ©The Juxtaposition |
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