Other

My other half wrote earlier of the wish for an end to the habit of Other-bashing, with this change of administration and hopefully of direction. Our TV-sedated acceptance of "polarization" as a social norm seems to have excused all sorts of embarassing manifestations of opposition, judgment, and petty name-calling, over the last 8 years, even among some of the most intelligent, tolerant, and peace-seeking people I know. Of course, there will always be an Other. And maybe, probably, there will always be a degree of polarization. Even in this purportedly enlightened, certainly privileged, and ideologically spacious country. It's a challenge to accept the humanity, the dignity, the motivations of those who are Other. It's hard for many, apparently, to realize that diversity actually exists. And there's almost no group or perspective that I ain't talkin' about here.

My wish today simply speaks to the same recognition that Melissa Etheridge pointed out, in that interview 2 weeks ago : now is our chance not to be them. Whoever They are. Even better, Now is our collective opportunity to stop being Us and Them. That being, quite practically, the only way we can make Them not exist. And of course I'm not talking some sappy sentiment or covering the eyes or glossing over. I'm talking having the courage to LOOK, and to accept that we share our privilege, and our now very immediate responsibility, of citizenship in this country with a whole lotta people we don't personally want a thing to do with.

But, if not everybody can do that (and of course, not everybody will): at the very least, it's an opening to be better, clearer, more free, than whatever traits we despise or despair of, in whoever we see as the Other. If we don't have it in us to be better, to act with more integrity, to speak with more purpose, to be We The People guiding this supposed democracy back into its humanity, then what have we made this change for? And if we can't come up with anything better than boos and jeers, distanced complaints and vague fears and armchair condemnations (of those who lead, of those who live here)...with what our history's just given us, with what we've just asked for, with - its and our eventual imperfections guaranteed - what as a whole we are embarking on...if we can't be more and better NOW, then when?