Themeattics

Assumptions are the termites of relationships.

Henry Winkler

Given the start of this week was washed out by Hurricane Beryl, I figured the most obvious topic for today’s article would turn out to be about that. About losing power, handling expectations of clients from out of state, and dealing with people’s varying statuses of back-togetherness around town pretty much throws away all the best-laid plans. Would have been a pretty calm, measured, and normal post, in the end.

Silly me, thinking a natural disaster would be the most important topic in a given week.

Now, as I’ve said repeatedly before, I do my best to avoid politics here. I don’t that world to infect this one, as stories are, by their nature, outside such a petty, back-and-forth world. I am, however, a very political human being. Most of us are, in our own ways, and while I think that can be a good thing I confess a low-grade envy of people who can go about their lives fully ignoring that world. That sounds lovely.

There’s only one thing this can be about, though, and it’s the attempted assassination of a (likely) presidential nominee. The attempt itself, the fallout after, the questions and eventual answers – those are all moot and, honestly, not something I care to deal with here. I don’t want to talk about the news. There’s something more important afoot, and it’s our inability to give “the other side” any benefit of the doubt whatsoever. This open, obvious need to Other the opposition. This roiling hate that permeates every attempt to talk to one another.

Everyone knows the idiom “backed into a corner.” We know what it means on an almost instinctual level because, well, it is instinctual. It applies to pretty much every living creature. When that creature is given no place to run, there’s nothing left to do but fight. It’s an obvious thing that, in the end, all comes down to our need to live. Everything wants to live, and often times facilitates that in the easiest way possible. Backing away from danger until it no longer can, and then bearing into it.

People also do what they can to avoid discomfort, both physical and emotional. Conflict is a big point of discomfort for most people, and there’s little we can talk about that’s more a cause of conflict that politics and religion. I know I rarely discuss either of those things with people I’m not at least generally on the same page with. Something I’m working on, but for now it is what it is. This, in turn, leads to people forming their own little pockets in which they can discuss without conflict. Our own, personal echo chambers. The internet makes this far more powerful than it was, as we can find the narrowest pockets and even there discover voices that champion our ideas. We feel insulated there. Correct. Unassailable. We build walls around those beliefs and view anything looking to challenge them as someone trying to destroy our little place of safety. There’s no longer any reason, any need, to talk to people who think otherwise. Not only no reason, but an active incentive to not do so, as our relationship with someone outside those safe walls can be seen as a threat to the integrity of the group.

So, here we find ourselves, a few decades into building these walls around our respective camps, hurling insults at people we generally do not interact with in real life whatsoever, building straw men of their positions to set aflame in a constant ritual to display our purity to those around us, making sure everyone will still accept us. The walls are think. Tall. Strong. Our own little Helm’s Deep of ideology. Inside is safe and lovely. Outside, the barbarians are at the gates. And the barbarians are always getting stronger. They’re always threatening. They have to be, or why would we have to keep fortifying the walls?

This will come as no surprise to many of you, but I’m pretty hard right in my politics. I’ve also been immersed in the political world for decades. I’m old enough to remember that George W. Bush was Hitler. Old enough to remember that Mitt Romney was Hitler. And, now, certainly old enough to see that Donald Trump is Even-More-Hitler-Than-Hitler-You-Guys. I’ve seen people I know, people who I routinely spent time with in the past, describe people who hold my positions as intrinsically evil, irredeemable monsters that shouldn’t get a voice. When I said, “Hey, you know I have that view, right,” I’d get a dismissive, “Oh, well I don’t mean you.” Why not? Is it because you know me? Because you realize this straw man you’ve erected isn’t actually alive? Isn’t a real person? That maybe, perhaps, people can have different views and not be monsters?

That’s all well and good for those of us who do have a group that consists of people with different ideas, but as I said, there are a lot of people that don’t. A lot of people who are fully online, fully invested in one specific ideology, entirely walled in, entirely focused on Those Outsiders who they only know from the description of that group’s hyperbolic rumors. They’ve never met a person who holds any of the beliefs they hate so they can’t humanize them.

Put yourself in the shoes of a young person who grew up in that world. No real friends around them, parents around (maybe) but not really involved, fully absorbed into their online community. The community that tells them this particular person, if they’re given power, will destroy their world. He’ll rally the barbarians, destroy the walls, and wipe out everyone inside, including you. He’s the Real Enemy, and there’s a chance that, if nothing is done about him, everything that is bad will come to pass. He’s the apotheosis of all the vile things you know must be true about the Enemy, those things that came from the people you trust. So, naturally, something has to be done.

Men (and boys) dream of being heroes. We do it early and often. We have little fantasies about needing to protect those we love, about some random, even outlandish, situations arising that make us need to Heed The Call. We love that shit.

Trump’s been in the limelight of politics for damn hear a decade now, and for most of that time he’s been labeled as someone who will not only destroy democracy as we know it, not only rise to become a fascist, but will shackle the country, put undesirables in camps, and basically any other monstrous thing you can imagine. The American Hitler. Tell a kid that since he’s barely an adolescent, make him believe it, and, I mean this legitimately, what do you expect will be the outcome? He’ll be really riled up to hit the polls and vote? To be one voice in a sea of 350 million? Is that where you think that’s going, or is someone going to decide to be The Hero?

This isn’t really a call to soften the rhetoric. Political rhetoric has been wild since the dawn of time, and there’s no way that’s stopping. This is a call to get out there and know the other side. To realize that people can believe something else and their reason for doing so isn’t because they hate X group or want to strip the rights of Y group, but because they fundamentally believe it will be a better outcome for everyone. In the end, most of us want the maximum number of people to thrive. We want to see the prosperity of humanity, we just disagree on how we get there. If we keep fortifying these walls, we’ll never understand that, though. We’ll keep at each others’ throats, keep pushing, until more and more people find they’re backed into a corner and have no other option but to fight.

If that starts to become the norm, I don’t see how we come back.

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With that bit of roaring optimism done, let’s see how the week played out.

• Residuum
  • Ch 10 – Considering I threw it out AGAIN, this time I’ll be finishing it off for good. No more looking back. This will be the one.
• Catalyst
  • Settle on the themes of the series as a whole.
  • Complete character interviews for each of the main four.
  • Set up the rudimentary arc/outline for one of the main four in book one.
• ThemeAttic
  • Create document with at least 10 story plans to be used in the Substack.
  • Decide on the order of this and the type (Since there will be two types)
  • Begin the outline / plan for the first one.

I lost a lot of time and opportunity from Beryl, so I’m honestly pretty pleased with this outcome. I do continue to have the problem with prioritizing everything else BUT Residuum, but I plan to work on that little issue starting tomorrow. And, speaking of, here’s the plan for this upcoming week, bearing in mind I’m going to lose most of the weekend while I engage in FULL NERD MODE and watch Evo:

• Residuum
  • Chapter 10
• Catalyst
  • Complete Kahs’ arc/outline
  • Complete Yanis’ arc/outline
  • Complete Jennen’s arc/outline
• ThemeAttic
  • Might be annoying and start posting my daily output, possibly with a little snippet. Not sure about this one, but it’s a thought.

Until next week, Dwellers. Go find someone you disagree with and have a chat. Let’s instill some humanity back in the world.