Not a whacko Kumbaya rant

I’ve been trying to write horoscopes for a few days, well, not very hard, but a little bit.  I’m just so frustrated and annoyed about the stupid angry debt ceiling debate, if you can even call it a debate when one side is reasonable and willing to listen and give a little, and the other side is all about taking their marbles and going home.  Can you call that a debate, or is it bullying?

The horoscopes were like, “Aries:  Jesus, Boehner is a jerk, right?  Taurus:  I’m serious.  That guy shouldn’t even have a job."

I decided I should be more direct with my rant, and not infuse it into fakey horoscopes.  I had that idea earlier this evening on my way to yoga, and now, I get home with the plan to write this little rant, but first, I crack open an ESB.  I try to read the little saying on the bottle cap, but it’s all fuzzy, because there’s plastic goo covering the words.  I can barely tell that words are under there, and for a second I think I’m going blind, but then realize, no, I’m only blind when I’m looking at this bottle cap; everything else looks normal, so if it is blindness, it’s some weird form that I can probably live with, the selective blindness where I just can’t read the saying on the bottle cap.  


I’m pretty sure that plastic covering the words means I won a prize.  That’s normal, right?  Because the cap usually says something like, “washes down whatever the world serves up,” and it’s easy to read.  But my message tonight was so secret that they had to put a special plastic covering on it, which, and I’m sure you’re with me here, probably means I won a car or a million dollars, right?  So I spend 15 minutes using a combination of sharp kitchen tools and heat to try to get it off, and there’s really only a little blood and one band-aid involved.  Eventually, I read the hidden message: Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  Which leads me to Wikipedia and a few other places.  Twenty minutes later, after I’ve learned a little bit about this most useful little yeast, I’m back here, trying to remember my very important points about the debt ceiling.  


I’m not even going to mention the things that are so annoying. Like it was Bush who drove up the deficit – Clinton left things in pretty good order.  Remember when Gore won the election but Bush became president, and then did that phony WMD thing, invaded Iraq, spent billions? Yeah.  I’m not going to get into that.  At all. 

I’m also not going to bring up the fact that  Boehner passed out checks from lobbyists on the House floor before a vote, or the fact that he voted for all the military spending that got us into this mess.  No, I’m not even going to mention the fact that he doesn’t “believe” in human-induced climate change, and he received a rating of zero from the Human Rights Campaign for his voting record. 


And I’m not going to bring up the most obvious point about, um, really?  You think we can fix this without an increase in revenue?

Because this rant is about the way he’s modeling the most immature bullying behavior ever for the whole world to see. When did compromising get such a bad name? When did just taking the ball and going home become a thing that adults do?  I think we would find this a little easier to take if the GOP weren't acting like a bunch of swaggering frat boys. 

I read Sometimes a Great Notion when I was in college, and thought, yeah, ‘never give a inch’.  I’m writing that on my mirror too! That lasted for about 10 minutes, and then I remembered that there are other people on the planet who care about different things than I do, and maybe it’s all about giving an inch.

Maybe that’s what maturity is, to be able to not get your exact way every time, and do that with grace and integrity, and work hard to inject your beliefs and sense of right and wrong into things without being an asshole.  And maybe that requires listening, and assuming the person on the other end of the conversation is a caring human with legitimate points, and maybe if you treat them that way, they'll start to act that way.  Maybe it’s not about bullying and storming out of meetings. 

Maybe, when you tangle with other people, you need to have the capacity to compromise. Isn’t that what defines being a grown-up?  Yeah, the three year old crowd isn’t so great at sharing or seeing another point of view, but I expect more of people past about age seven.

I’m not saying this from some whacko kumbaya mom point of view, either.  (Okay, maybe just a little.)  But I deal with crazy angry people every day, and if I’ve learned nothing else, I have learned that I need to listen and try to understand where they’re coming from, and try to see where we have common ground, and move from that point.  That, and the thing about not visiting the guy with the guns by myself. Two things.