I'm thinking about leaving politics

Hey Everyone:

I'm going to change all my hobbies, interests, and personality traits immediately if not sooner. I won't be debating any debatable matters, and anything you want to discuss is not up for discussion. Especially if it's politics.

I won't be taking any questions at this time.

I'm serious. Politics is toxic, and in the last 18 months, I've watched more relationships end based on where one buys deodorant than at any other time in my life.

The endemic reaches across all of American life. You can hardly talk to a fellow member of your HOA without property ordinances turning into a local version of identity politics. One man's patch of weeds is another man's declining property values. The Earth is on fire because you're killing weeds, but also because you are not, so no matter what side you are on, you can never win. And if it's not mine, we're cut off.

I saw what the other side looked like once. A friend once lived in a subdivision neighborhood without any HOA to deal with. No letters to toss. No unreasonable dues to pay late for spite. No rules to disagree with.

In this neighborhood, people got along. They parked their boats where they wanted. They trimmed their bushes only if they felt dirty. They laughed at other neighborhoods where residents received punitive letters about broken fence posts and missed payments. They joked like Canadians watching the US from afar.

It sounds divine. It sounds safer. If you can get past the cars parked facing the wrong direction on the street, I think you'd like it too.

In my friend's neighborhood, when someone starts complaining about your paint peeling, or that you have the wrong color mailbox, you tell them to take a long hike on a short, splintered deck that hasn't been repaired since you moved in. In this neighborhood, you can live in peace without having to argue about who's right and who's wrong – because here, everyone is.

Anyway, they moved out because the neighborhood was going to shit. They've got a really nice place, and now my friend is on the HOA board at his new home, dealing with the same politics he swore off years ago.

The same is true for mainstream politics as well. We avoid it at Thanksgiving dinner, but Black Friday always ends up blacker than intended. Then we're sucked back into the same old habits, cutting each other off because we don't educate ourselves with the same websites.

I seek a world where I can ignore people in Washington, and better yet, one where all my friends ignore them as well. If successful, I'll be able to decline to drink raw milk without being reported to the authorities. Net zero will be a math equation about the balance of energy consumed versus energy created in a commercial operation, and not a virtue signal that will get me kicked out of the family reunion because I've "become so woke."

The biggest reason why I want to free myself from this hell should be the most obvious. People are more than voters in a booth. Voting is not CrossFit. It's not one's whole identity. People, with the exception of crossfitters, are far more complex. So politics cannot be the lens through which we judge someone's character. It's unreasonable, but also, it's nonsensical.

When I go to a new restaurant, I'm evaluating their food, not whether or not they celebrated Juneteenth. I choose my vacuum cleaners because they suck. If the people who run the place suck too, that's their problem. But good on them for making a great product.

I can't bear to look at people through the lens of what channel they watch, or which podcast is in their feed. If someone is broken down on the side of the road, I can't start by checking their bumper stickers before choosing to lend a hand. If someone is drowning, I don't care whether their bracelet says "WWJD" or "Black Lives Matter" before reaching out to save their life. We look for signals through shared language, signs, and behaviors to determine if someone is on my side or not. If the signals are not right, we'll simply cut off the conversations. We assumed the signal was the whole, but it turns out, what we thought was the signal, it turns out, is the noise.

If we are only to associate with, buy from, and respect those of our kind, we'll be divided infinitely. A divided house finds new reasons to divide again with yet another signal. Before you know it, we will be on islands of our own, judging those on the other. Our philosophies will go untested, our ideas will atrophy, like muscles that refuse to be stretched.

I guess I'll be changing this newsletter to a mommy blog. You're now a Boss Babe, and I'll be telling you, girl, to wash your face.

On the other hand, we've got a lot to work out. We have to figure out where to park the boats and what to do about the weeds, and many issues much bigger than that. It's probably better if we can learn how to do it together.

So, I guess I'll see you here next week.