I met a man today who said that it seemed like no one was interested in politics anymore. My immediate reply was "Well, we DO exist," and from there we had one of the best political discussions that I’ve had in a very long time.
It wasn’t about who we liked or didn’t like, it wasn’t about where we stand on any issue at hand; it was about researching candidates, the superficiality of the mainstream press, how far too few people are interested in history and the ramifications of past actions on the present… and the future.
We stood in the cold for at least a half hour just talking about all the things that we both often think, but don’t have enough people to discuss it with. We talked about all the candidates – pros and cons. We talked about the economy and delved deep into how it affects peoples’ perception of the political sphere. We talked about history repeating itself and what lessons we believe "the administration" (not necessarily THIS ONE, but ALL the administrations) have taken away from past actions and decisions. We talked about partisan politics and the phenomenon of opposing branches (in the majority of terms) causing a stagnation of change under the guise of checks and balances. We talked about the frog in boiling water. We talked and talked and talked and both got more and more excited as the other spoke because we both had FINALLY found someone willing to, not debate, but really DISCUSS the country, and the world around us.
He’s a good 15 years older than me and has had a much different life experience than I, but we both came away from it feeling refreshed and relieved. There was no argument because there was nothing to argue about. Neither one of us had an agenda that we felt we needed to push on the other. We were simply sharing our views on the world. I wasn’t expecting that someone who spent almost 20 years in the USAF would see quite as eye-to-eye as someone raised by traveling street musicians as we did, but whatever path we each had taken, it led us to close to the same assessment of the world we live in.
Both of us found our jaws dropping when the other would make a point that hadn’t yet been considered. We danced around everything that could possibly fall under the umbrella of "politics" and, if you’re really up on politics, it’s not hard to see that it touches almost every aspect of (our) society. We pointed out interesting tidbits that the other might not know and I do believe we were both enriched for it.
I often feel isolated, especially at work. I know that I’m perceived as "weird" because, try as I might, I don’t fit well into categories. I don’t usually allow myself to discuss politics at work because you never know what negatives that could bring from peers or superiors, especially in the corporate environment where I work, but something made me let that particular wall come down and I feel a little less isolated now.