My Political Manifesto: Turning Independent

Photo by jaybergesen on Flickr

I'm not sure I have it in me anymore to bear up against another presidential campaign of dirty political ads, of lofty rhetoric, twitchy debates and non-stop news coverage.  

More though, I don't have it in me to bear up against the anger of the citizens and screaming pundits. We blame Congress and Corporations for creating our disgust, but they are The People as WE are The People.

They’re us, we’re them.

I see all the seething and wonder when this guy or that woman on TV in the crowd at the meeting is going to drop dead of a politically charged heart attack.

When slavery existed, when women couldn't vote or work, when children were working too young and in cess pools, when the rights of humans in our history demanded angry, seething mobs get in the face of the oppressor, I would have borne up against that with all I had.

Perhaps I would have been a war protestor, but I’m quite sure, even in theory, I would have treated the returning Vietnam soldiers with kindness, empathy and respect, the thought of anything else with our brave, horrifies me.

You don’t have to agree with a particular strategy to honor the people behind the strategy who have your same ultimate goals.  

Plenty of large and small injustices exist today that need to be righted at the corporate and individual level, injustices that demand voices and votes and discussions and town halls and reconciliations and more, compromise, but seething anger against what we do not want, righteous indignation, needs to be saved, I feel, for the worst of our crimes against humans.   

Some might argue that this is happening on a theoretical or real scale already, that the “decline of the US and takeover by certain ideologies” is a crime of the highest kind against mankind.  

But my horror stays with the pedophiles, the sex trade, with hunger, animal cruelty, bride burnings, with mass and honor killings,  these rapes of human rights are worthy of my screaming, and even then, I know that through my screaming, name calling and the noise of anger, I’m not heard, so I am not effective.  Instead, voting, donations, volunteering, calls to action, writing to our congress, these acts of quiet activism, are.

Anger today, fueled by the climate of our recession, of our long brutal unemployment, our distrust of government, politicians and Wall Street combined with the idea that our entire economic and financial foundation and future stability of our country is crumbling our superpower, will NOT create the solutions we need, the resolve people want.

I’m not set to become apathetic or politically lazy, ignorant or resigned to not caring. I’m just not yelling anymore. I stopped years ago.  

I am, as of last year, an Independent for only the 2nd time in my voting life.  That decision made a few people I told start to twitch because this means I can't vote in the primaries, my betrayal enraging them because perhaps I am diluting their party, or worse say the critics of Indy's that we are schziophrenic and bend with the wind. No, not that but I won't debate why.  

People are looking for all sorts of reasons to get mad, and I wonder, why do that?

At first going Indy was my disgust with the divisiveness of the parties although a two+ party system, thank God, creates the creative dialogue necessary to evolve a6s a society.

Contrasting views spawn new ideas and great change.  One party, one thought? I shudder.

Now I’m an Indy because I don’t  want to be identified with one party over another. My social views clearly leans towards one but I share views and beliefs from both.

Our climate of seething, of escalating paranoia about what one candidate or another is doing, (or will do) to “destroy our once fine nation” feels irrational.

And when frenzy and irrational steps into the room, as it did when my daughter was a toddler and could only scream her tired and hungry needs, is when I walk away and come back when reason and civility returns.

So, please don’t try to bring me to your side, because I won’t take a side.

Please don’t try to convince me of your truth, because many truths exist.

I’ll listen to your pain, your fear, your righteous anger, to your theories about why this or that candidate is “wrong” but I will not debate. I will try to learn something I did not know before, to remain open to information and insights I never had.   

This past weekend I met a woman at a friend’s house who largely remained quiet during our easy chatter, who interjected some wise and warm insights who then, after I said in the context of talking about schools, and budgets and teachers, that generally speaking I felt “teachers were highly undervalued and underpaid,” said with a quick flash of irritation why she completely disagreed with me, that this belief was a convenient myth created by unions.

It was the intensity of her reaction in the wake of her calmness and polite demeanor that stunned me, the intensity that is brimming in people today about politics, in people who may sit back during light moments, somewhat shy, nervous or just indifferent to light banter who then launch assertively with a kind of repressed or surface anger when a political view opposed to theirs comes out.

So I listened, I heard, I genuinely learned.  

I’m not interested in convincing, converting or proving rightness and wrongness. I’m interested in sensing what issue and candidate seems right for me, not trying to pull you over to my vote.

That is my compass and the only one I follow in the midst of all the political noise, rhetoric, information (or mis), and anger.

I am guided by me, I admit, but appreciative of you.

And, how I view the destiny of our world, may not be how you view it but I will not bend, ever, towards what does not resonate with me.

The chaos, the unbalance, these are our painful tipping points but our re-balancing towards better times I feel.  I say this no matter if we are in a President of “my” choosing, or yours.

I will not see the Apocalypse because you do.

I will not be miserable because you are.

I will not dumb myself down to elevate you up.

I will not think the world is a hell hole to bolster your debate or to distract you from your pain, to commiserate as misery likes to do.

I will listen with respect, with genuine empathy. I will acknowledge your view and offer unpatronizing hope.  

I will live my own joy, my own worries, my own life.

And in that, I believe we can find where we agree, in the middle, a place where dissension finds a useful home and an unlikely friend.