Us VS Them... VS Us

As the November elections draw closer, there's been a disturbing trend that has been on the rise now more than previous elections, and the trend may be coming at a time where it could naturally be extending further past electoral politics. We've seen it gaining momentum for years, but November may just be the spark to really ignite the building cannon fodder. This trend I'm referring to is the obvious idea of “Us VS Them”, and for those who don't pay much mind to the world around them let me start by saying that this is a very dangerous ideology to be had.

I hadn't even thought about writing a posting about this until earlier today, when the topic of religion came up between myself and some of my fellow peers. The how and why of the origins of the conversation don't matter, but the one thing that left me rather perplexed was a remark that was made. To paraphrase, as my memory isn't the best and I don't want anyone to come back saying that this wasn't their exact words, “There's people like us and then there are others”. After asking what it was meant by others, the answer was to the effect of “People who don't fully believe in God or Jesus”. Once again, not an exact quote, but paraphrasing.

Now, I don't think that this wording in and of itself is malicious. In fact, given the known background I have of the peer I can almost guarantee it was not of malicious nature. I may not believe in a for sure God and I don't fully buy into all the stories of Jesus and the bible, but I didn't find it to be offensive. What I did find to be interesting about it though was that someone who I see multiple times a week was putting me in a category of “Other”. Before anyone stops here to comment that I may be feeling what it's like to be anyone who doesn't have the White Male Heterosexual CIS Able-Bodied Christian privileged, let me stop you right there. I know. This isn't my first rodeo on being labeled as an “Other”. What it is though is an observation of just how easy people take that view these days, of the Us VS Them mentality. To be honest though, I can't blame them so much.

Throughout the past fifteen years, a lot has happened to make such a situation appear natural. At first we had 9/11. I know there are centuries of other examples to choose from that could be designated as what started this first, but 9/11 is what I use as it's easiest for most to understand. To show my age, I was only eleven when those events took place, and the events that happened afterwards essentially shaped the world I live in today. Nine days afterwards we had our President addressing both congress and the American people, saying that “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Such a simple sentence carries big meaning though. Granted, it was in the heat of the moment still, yet when that sentiment carries on, you really start to think about both sides. For me, it clicked after a while. I obviously don't like what the terrorists are doing, but why does that mean I have to suddenly agree with everything my nation is doing? Must I approve of water-boarding and extreme interrogation techniques in order to show that I disagree with killing thousands of innocent people in the name of a religion?

As I grew older, I realized two things wrong with the mentality that was building. First is that there's almost never an idea of black or white. There are almost always various shades of gray in the argument, and sometimes even some red, green, and blue. The second thing realized is that for those who only see it in black in white, this new way of thinking can pose issues both outside and within themselves. It becomes Us VS Them VS Us. To really detail that idea, let's take a look at the current presidential elections.

At the moment, we're in the primaries season and we're still figuring out who's going to be the representative for the two big parties for the main event in November. This mean obvious infighting for the parties, but I can't recall ever having a situation like we have now. Usually there's major infighting in one party and the other seems to settle out real quick. In our case though, we're seeing massive rifts in both parties, both rifts involving outliers in several aspects. I could easily make a list a few feet long. Possible first woman president, a democratic socialist who happens to not be of Christian faith but Jewish, a very conservative and heavily baptist senator, and a brash yet surprisingly open billionaire. We have from this the ideas of if you don't vote Clinton you can't really be a feminist, if you really don't like the establishment you have to vote for Trump or Sanders, and there's no way a god fearing republican can truly vote for anyone aside from Cruz. These aren't just assumptions made up, but actual statements most of us have probably heard in the past few months.

It doesn't just stop there either. We have technologists fighting with the governments stance over encryption where the government is seemingly trying to force companies to do their bidding, as opposed to trying to come to potential compromises. We have more people feeling like when the police are involved in things it's the same ideology, when at the same time many police are not only believing it's them against the world but they are even being trained to believe that that is the case. Some people may be in the right to believe this ideology, don't get me wrong. The world sometimes can be in black and white, and I wouldn't say that it's never the case. The point is that we need to accept that it isn't the case every damn time.

I suppose now that I'm coming to a close you may be asking what my solution is. I've stated the problem, so where's the solution? If that's what you'd be asking me after reading all this, I have no answer. I see no way of magically solving this on the wide scale, or even the medium scale for that matter. Even for the small scale, I couldn't give an honest answer from myself as I'd have a hard time explaining it better than Josh Lyman from The West Wing in the episode of "ISAAC AND ISHMAEL". If you haven't seen that episode, third season and you don't even need to really watch any episodes before to catch what's going on as it's a special episode that doesn't fit into the main story. I implore you to watch it. For those who don't though, let me leave the quote here in response to terrorism, as well as a quote from Night Vale's own Cecil Palmer.

“Learn things. Be good to each other. Read the newspapers, go the movies, go to a party. Read a book. In the meantime, remember pluralism. You want to get these people? I mean, you really want to reach in and kill them where they live? Keep accepting more than one idea. Makes 'em absolutely crazy.”

-Josh Lyman, The West Wing S03E00 "ISAAC AND ISHMAEL"

“We all have our regionalisms. For instance, in many parts of the country, there is a sandwich, known as a sub sandwich, that is in other places known as a hero, a hoagie, a grinder, a longburger, a prince’s delight, or a bread burrito.

This is one example of a difference in culture. There are others.
It is in these little details that we see ourselves, that we define how we are not others, and thus how we are ourselves.

When confronted with someone whose “normal” is not our “normal,” we are forced to confront the most frightening prospect of all: that there is no such thing as “normal.” Just the accidental cultural moment we happened to be born into, a cultural happenstance that never existed before, and will never exist again.

Our idea of “normal” is a city built on sand. For instance, for us, our city is literally built on sand and this is our “normal.” We resist difference because it requires we acknowledge that the culture we grew up with as “normal” is just a momentary accident. It requires we accept that the world we were born into will never be the same as the world we die in. The longer we live, the more we become interlopers, even in our home towns. But, if we’d let it happen, also, the more we will learn. “

-Cecil Palmer, Welcome To Night Vale: Episode 83 - One Normal Town

Bonus Round! The Friendzone.

I was just telling a friend about how I was helping another friend with relationship advice, and we got into how being asked for relationship advice from the opposite sex is somewhat rare in our lives. My friend asked me if I believe in the friendzone. I answered thus.

Do I believe in the friendzone? Yes. I believe in it because it is a thing and it's been around forever. Ever since man has dated or made attempts to date, but things didn't go so well due to various reasons, yet woman still wanted to at least remain friends, there has been a friendzone. It's just that we're now popularizing the terminology.

I believe in the friendzone, but I don't think it's a bad thing though. I'm not like most guys who will be interested in a girl highly, then things go wrong and she says she wants to be friends but for me it's date or nothing. If I put such negative connotation on the friend zone, I would not be talking to you. But low and behold, here we are (Side note, I had been interested in her when we met online, but things just didn't pan out, stars didn't align, call it what you will).

So does the friend zone exist? Yes.

Can girls be friend zoned as well? Absolutely!

Is it a bad thing? Sometimes. It's more often a temporary bummer.

Overall though, It's just something that happens when feelings aren't fully returned or when life shits on at least one of the party and the relationship just can't happen

Or is this the unpopular view?

Week 53: A New Year

Well, final blog post of the year. I didn't expect to make it this far. I really didn't expect this year to turn out how it's turned out. If I have any new years resolutions, I'll post them in next weeks blog if I continue to do this. Sadly I've been sick and my medicine has been making me extra sleepy, so this is going to be short. Hope for a better new year. It's been a long December and there is reason to believe that maybe next year will be better than the last.

Week 52: Christmas Time and Chinese Food

Hello readers. It's the second to last blog post, my how time has flown. It's Christmas eve which is usually a prime time to be festive. That has not happened this year because due to all the things going on I just haven't felt festive. One thing though that has stuck with me though is having Chinese food on Christmas eve. We think we actually found a good place for Chinese food that opened recently that was open tonight. It was pretty awesome, and although it was expensive it was so much food.

As for Christmas day, all we have is a small ham, but thankfully we have leftovers. My fridge smells of it, and it is awesome. I'm also thinking of making a cake out of white cake mix and a bottle of sarsaparilla. That usually ends up coming out well. We shall see.

Week 51: Aliens

Hello world! I had a different topic I wanted to write tonight and I had it all in my head until I noticed that it's week 51. Sharing the same number though with everyone's favorite area in Groom Lake, I figured I'd decide to take this week's blog to talk about aliens, and I don't mean immigrants. I mean actual space alien dude(tte)s. As we all know, this may be the final blog I ever write if the Mayan death day predictions are right (which lets face it, they aren't), so lets focus on one of the things that could kill us theoretically. Space aliens who want to use our planet as their own.

Really though, I don't think they'd be that scary. I mean probably we'll have to make first contact, kind of like how we had to on Mass Effect or the movie First Contact from Star Trek. That was an awesome movie, I like it when the crew goes back in time. Anyways though, I'm hoping for more of the Star Trek type of aliens than any other race. Sure, the Borg want to control everything and the Romulans and Remans will always be at war it seems, but think of all the Tribbles. So many Tribbles. Not to mention, if we actually start living in a Star Trek universe, we'll be even closer to a utopian society as opposed to a dystopian society that we may be coming close to now. Utopia and Tribbles, just think about it!

You know who would like this to happen? Patrick Stewart. Don't let a knight down, let's get started on awesome space stuff!

Week 50: Geez, 50 already?

So, it's week 50 of my blog. That means you've read 50 of these if you've started with the first one. 51 actually I think, but let's keep it nice and even. So it's finals week, and I am more than prepared. By that I mean I doubt I know most of the stuff on it, but if I don't even do the final I'll have a C, so I consider that prepared for the heck of it.

In other news, I've been learning how to use this new software I recently got called RoboTask. If you ever wanted to program your computer to do a bunch of awesome things in just one or two keystrokes, this is probably for you. This or similar software I suppose, but this is the software I ended up getting. I hope to be able to use it to automatically record hockey games while I'm away from my computer.

Finally, I've found out that I'm in the running for a job as secondary correspondent for ECHL Week, so that's pretty cool. Now go forth and be awesome!

Week 49: Interview preparedness

Hello and welcome. So recently I had an interview through a job agency for a job with a major local software company. I beg of you, if you're in the business of interviewing people, be prepared. You can see how it's annoying when the interviewies are unprepared, so imagined my fun I had when I went in for an interview and you weren't prepared. Yeah, there was none. Over the phone I was told that there would be a few tests that would take 10-15 minutes overall. They actually took about 45 minutes, and that's lucky considering how buggy the software was. Afterwards, I had to sit in the lobby which was right down the hall and to the left from the break room that had no doors. By the way, someone had salmon and I guess left it on the counter for a while so the whole place reeked of it. Not an open window to be found. Waited after the test for a little over half an hour until I finally got into the interview. I think I did decently.

Now in 2 days I go for an interview for a different job, as a sports reporter, for hockey. Most people who knew me in high school wouldn't believe it if they heard it. I'm not totally big on the sports, but hockey's kind of fun and heck, it's the one sport that I actually will watch on TV if nothing else is on. We'll see how it goes... Just remember, if you're looking for a job try things you didn't think you'd be able to do. Worse comes to worse, you get hired and fake it till you make it or get fired. If it's less than a week though, I wouldn't put it on the resume. Keep your stick on the ice, we're all in this together.