Despair

I wrote the below to a group of friends. Seems worth posting here as well.

i’ve mostly been trying to keep from getting too affected by what’s
going on in the world of global and national human affairs, but this
morning in particular i’m feeling the *weight* of so much conflict
bearing down, crushing my soul (our souls?).

Certainly the situation in Louisville, KY is a major factor, but the
wide rifts on really important topics like abortion rights, climate
change, Black Lives Matter and more really seem like chasms that are
just deepening. Even my framing of these issues perhaps seems partisan
to those of you who don’t agree with ‘our’ lefty positions. And i
didn’t even yet bring up what i believe lies at the root of so many of
these other conflicts: economic beliefs, visions, policy, theory,
practice, and “structure”. The list goes on long beyond what i’ve so
far iterated over: literally life-threatening LGBTQIA+ concerns,
international relations, wildfires, pollution, US presidential election
fairness concerns, substance abuse — where do i stop?

It’s fucking overwhelming. And i get the sense that the people in the
center and on the right have a completely different relationship with
the world in which we all live. Are they/you in existential angst the
way i/we are? Perhaps that’s not completely accurate: likely there are
people on the left who mostly agree with my policy positions who manage
not to let this all get to them, and certainly there are probably many
Trump supporters and others to our right who are scared out of their
minds (though about completely different issues…)

It seems that the US is now two separate nations, intertwined in
complex ways. All of the following are divisions that are valid as
generalizations but yet have an awful lot of individual exceptions:
rural vs city; coastal vs. flyover; Christian vs. non-Christian;
college educated vs. those who despise academia; white collar vs.
working class.

Michelle just left for work. She’s as upset as i am about the Breonna
Taylor situation. It’s just so fucking disappointing. Yet Michelle
responded to my kvetching about the current national rift by insisting
that we keep trying to find common ground.

i don’t know though…

At what point do we dig in our heels and *insist* that compromise is
not an option due to lives literally hanging in the balance?

So hard to figure this all out. Othering is *not* the right strategy.
But how do we find common ground with people who we disagree so deeply
with on so many different, super-important issues?

with love, but not much hope at the moment,
~c