I forgot about the housing, that was interesting to learn. I'm pretty relentlessly optimistic - also relatively young - and my area is appalachia and not the heartland, but I don't think they're irredeemable. I suffer no illusions that change will come quickly or be embraced without trouble, but my state was once deep red and now runs as a swing state, so can't help believe change is possible - if not exceptionally slow. And yeah, I've met plenty of people who don't get shared salvation - church going folk who chant that they are full of sin but still think they're on moral high ground - and I don't expect much from them. But there are all kinds of people down here who get it and so many of them are out there talking to each other, having this conversation about what it will take to create unification and understanding. I don't know, I'm just hopeful. There was a lot of anger in this thread, so if someone made it this far I just wanted to share that with them.
Believe it or not, I'm hopeful, too. This style of thinking, though, is hopeful in the wrong direction. If we all hope that the Democratic Party will somehow triangulate towards a direction that will attract the Confederate flag-waving, church-voting, outsider-hating ruralist vote despite their utter failure to do so since '68, then we will be disappointed over and over and over again. If we instead hope that those who are most impacted by the regressive policies of the Republican Party on their home states rally to defend themselves, the result is likely to be a lot more lasting. My wife was broken up on election night. She wished she could have done more. She regretted not, for example, traveling to the Midwest to speak the good fight for Clinton. I looked at her and said "You don't really think they'd listen to YOU, do you?" Hillary Clinton carpetbagger has a disturbing number of hits.
Oh sure, but that's the shared salvation thing - the "Confederate flag-waving, church-voting, outsider-hating ruralist" aren't really synonymous with the "love your neighbor" crowd so I don't think they're coming over any time soon, but there are a whole lot of people living in the grey who want to sit down and find a better way.
Thanks! My wife does this thing where she kills herself to make other people happy. She tells herself that it's worth it, that she's making someone else's day better and so I always ask her, "if you're making someone else happy at the expense of your own happiness, what's the net benefit to the world?" That's the salvation thing - if the effort of saving other people wounds you to immobilization, then is the cost of their salvation too great? To me it is and so we focus on people who understand we all must rise together - and if you have to take a step back to rise up, then that's what must be done. Sorry, that's lecture-y. I'm probably writing that more for the wife than for you. With that apology in mind I'm going to continue to lecture because I've been listening a lot, here and in my own communities, and find it easier to organize thoughts when I write them to someone. We've been talking about this stuff in a lot of my communities. These communities - which generally revolve around service, religion, or southernness - have a tendency to idealize the values of faith and hope. In these communities I'm trying to give people their time and their space to grieve and come to terms with this new reality, but the optimist in me just want to grab them and slap them and wake them up to the fact that they just got everything they've been praying for. Those that ask for faith have been given such massive doubt that the only option they have at this point is to believe in something that seems impossible. Those that ask for hope have been give such relentless despair that only hope can help to prop them up. Doubt is the fire of the forge of faith, despair the fire in the forge hope, and we need clear minded craftsmen who can pull something beautiful from all the fires burning bright. Alright, that last part was a bit over the top, but thanks for reading.