America, you're breaking my heart. and/or Brave New World

Dear America, we've both invested a lot into this relationship, and it's had its struggles (even going long-distance for a bit), but so far, we've held strong.  I don't always agree with your opinions, and you haven't always agreed with me, but like any relationship, it's a work in progress.  But now, you're scaring me.  You wouldn't hurt me on purpose, but you're getting overprotective.  I know that you're a wonderful person, and a big reason we've lasted this long is that we really do share a lot of values.  Hard work, integrity, respect.  But you've gotten some new friends who are kinda bad influences.  You think that you're strong, and can stand against anyone, and sure, you can pretty much take anyone in a fight, but you've let your guard down in other areas.  You've been getting your news from pretty one-sided sources lately, and I think you're losing sight of the bigger picture, and who you are.  I remember when some other guys took a couple swings at you in the dark, and they broke your nose.  It was horrible, and I never want to see you looking like that again!  You said you were in a bad part of town, and you figured you knew who it was, and you wanted to take revenge.  You went charging around the neighborhood trying to roust out the guys who hit you, but mostly ended up making a lot of noise and scaring the other folks.  You got some of the guys, including the one who said he broke your nose, but while you were looking for them, their buddies came out to see what the ruckus was about, and they saw their families' trashed homes.  And now you're feuding with them, and have been for a while.  You're worried about my safety, but you've set so many rules for me that its getting harder for me to live my life.  My friends, and our mutual friends, have been kinda backing away too, and I've been feeling lonely.  I'd like to talk to you, like we used to, but you're always so preoccupied.  If it isn't the feud, then it's money problems, and that ongoing argument with the neighbors over the utilities.  You're still here, but not really present.  I miss you, the way you were.  We used to be able to talk about anything, now you tell me not to worry, that you'll take care of everything, but it's getting harder and harder for me to believe you.  We both have a lot of growing up do to, but I was really looking forward to doing it together.  You have so much potential, you have so much to offer the world.  Please, step back and look at what you're doing to yourself.  I love you.


That part came out when I started to type.  Now for the angry part of this blog post, which is what has been mulling in my mind.

Look people, I blame you for our President-Elect and the current state of "civil society."  I'm not just talking to the people who voted for him, or who voted third-party, or who didn't vote.  I'm blaming dang near everyone in this country, including myself.
The internet is great.  We can get online, find people from all over the nation, and all over the world, who think like us, talk like us, believe like us.  It is such a welcome feeling to have a place (a safe space, if you like) where we can share ideas and develop that sense of community.  But those places are bubbles, in which we can insulate ourselves from everything and everyone outside, to the point where we don't know if other people even exist in any significance.  In a way I am grateful the election worked the way it did, because it revealed how divided the country is, and how much work we have to do to be the singular United States.
If you say it's the other guy's fault, then I blame you all the more.  Trying to blame someone else is a cop out.  I couldn't care less, now, who started it.  People on all sides are behaving despicably.  Deplorable and nasty.  This isn't to say that these people are deplorable or nasty, but their behavior has been.  If you don't like how the election turned out, that's cool.  That's fine.  Voice your disappointment.  But with our system, sometimes things don't turn out the way you want them to.  Suck it up and try harder next time.  Don't turn into a violent mob.  On the other side, if you do like how the election turned out, win generously.  Understand that a the other guys are really hurting, and don't stand by and pretend that the spurt of homophobia, racism, and xenophobia isn't happening, because it definitely is.

There has been a lot of misinformation spread around, and frankly, it's hard for me to point out all of the examples, because I get my news from generally the same places you do.  But I've heard about enough things that I know factually aren't true to easily infer that there are a great many more false ideas floating around.  The communities we build on the internet, our facebook/twitter/instagram/tumblr/pinterest/i-don't-even-know friend groups allow us to preach to the choir, and hear the other members of the choir step up and preach back (which is probably what I'm doing with this very blog post), while believing we have a much wider audience than we actually do.  Or we know the limits and embrace the bubble.
If you want to get a third party candidate elected, get your candidates elected, get your policies passed, you've got to actually connect with the other people involved.  If you want to live in an inclusive society, you've got to include people, and not just the ones who agree with you.

These days, it really seems like terrorism is winning.  I'm not talking about ISIS or any of those other groups.  I'm talking about a society here that is built on fear.  We aren't boldly and peacefully standing up for what is right (see the Civil Rights movement- imperfect, but darn good) with integrity and grace, we are striking back almost wildly.  TV programming is full of crime dramas, death, gritty "realistic" reboots, even our superheroes are dividing.  The commercials do their utmost to convince you that your home and health are in danger, and you need their product to be safe and healthy.  Video games set in post-apocalyptic universes or war zones contribute not necessarily by making kids violent, but by being part of the lowering of the collective consciousness of the consumers.
We are fed fear, of ISIS, fear of serial killers, fear of death, fear of dogs, fear of men, fear of abnormality, so much fear of so many things.  And yeah, a lot of them are legitimately scary, but they are sufficiently rare that they do not need to be a ruling force in your life.  Terror is a very strong emotion, and media producers have realized that emotion (more than sex?) really sells.  But you can choose not to buy it, and choose not to sell it.

From what I see lately, strength is defined as brawn, courage as having a gun.  Negotiation and moderation are weakness.  (One of these days I'll write the blogpost about the undervalued strengths of the Disney princesses which has been bouncing around in my mind for a while).  Manly men must take up arms to prove their worthiness to protect their women.  I saw a comment on facebook in which a guy bragged about his inability to control his violent inclination- I believe he was trying to say that he holds his values so deeply that his reaction to injustice would be instant, but I suspect that the knee-jerk reaction was not that different than the one that led to the incident to which he was responding.
While writing this, I started thinking about Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and I worry that we're getting a bit too close to that "brave," of control, complacency, and conformity.

Also, a note on safe spaces.  They've been getting a bad rap in a lot of places, because they're 'places for wussy millennials to avoid reality' or something like that.  In some cases, it seems likely, since the world can be a very difficult place to live even in the best of times, and learning to deal with that is as necessary a part of the educational process as the academics.  But if you're so offended by the existence of safe spaces that you don't think are necessary, cry me a river, suck it up, and go back to your own safe space (by whatever name you call it) of like-minded people to complain.

And a few thoughts on religion.
Question: What Arabic-speaking Christians call God?
Hint: Transliterated in to English, it starts with "All" and ends with "ah"
Christians in the US, have you loved a Samaritan today?
There's a popular hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers" which is basically an exhortation to jihad.

As always, we have choices.  So many choices.  A lot of them are easy, pretty straightforward.  Some of them seem straightforward, but require a bit more backbone.  Sometimes you make one choice, and then have to change your mind (humility is a great strength).  Sometimes you make choices for the wrong reasons (mistakes happen, you learn from them).  In the end, we make our own decisions, and our own lives.  We have to take responsibility for our successes, as well as for our mistakes.  The world is big and most of it is outside of our comfort zone, and we don't know what's coming in the future.  But we get a say in the future.  As the saying goes, if we don't change direction, we'll wind up where we're heading.

Thanks for reading! I feel better, at any rate ;-)
Pictures are from a wander I took on Theodore Roosevelt Island, in the TR Memorial itself.