So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[HudsonHawk]

I wear cowboy boots, too. (And Converse All-Stars.) I’m in blue jeans most every day. I’ve owned trucks and likely will again.

As an older, bald-headed, somewhat overweight lifelong American fellow of predominantly Northern European extraction, I find people — mostly younger people — making wildly erroneous assumptions about my personal history, my political views, my aesthetic preferences, etc., etc.

Call it lingering tribalism, I suppose. People see what they expect to see.

Oh people make assumptions about me all the time, assume my political thoughts, financial situation, family status, etc. These days I routinely get asked out of the blue how many grandchildren I have (for the record, I married later in life than most folks, and don't have any children at all, let alone grandchildren. And I'm not that old) A couple of years ago, I was in a jury pool for an attempted capital murder case involving a young Hispanic male. I was ultimately selected (even though I was like juror # 94 in the pool), and one of my fellow jurors said "I'm shocked the defense allowed you to be on the jury". I kind of was too, though below surficial appearances I'm exactly the kind of juror either side would have wanted.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Your tribe is better than theirs.

Exactly. What's the point of being in a club if you can't act all smug about it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"I'll join a club and beat you over the head with it."

 

[Zombie_61]

I'm with Groucho: "I would never join a club that would have me as a member."

 

[GHT]

There was a time, when wise grannies and nannies rebuked childish intolerance with, “It takes all sorts to make a world”. They might have whisked the impressionable child away from a bad influence but firmly closed the subject down. “Not everyone thinks the same, dear. Dull world if they did. Now wipe your nose and stop staring.” Bring back gruff tolerance and the non-judgmental shrug!

In a society which preaches about “diversity” and has hate-speech laws about religion, race and sexuality, we compensate by resenting small differences. Toxic politics and competitive exhibitionism are magnified by social media, and public discourse gets nastier by the day.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it's worse than that. I think the society we've built -- and I'm speaking of the US, since that's the one I know best -- is sociopathic, and is becoming more so by the minute. We don't value empathy at all anymore -- the fetishization of the "rational" has been taken to such an extreme by many that "emotional" has become an insult. To *feel* anything toward another human being is, more and more, dismissed as a sign of weakness, especially by those supersociopaths who have stomped, kicked, and gouged their way to the top the pile.

Sure, there are individuals who are an exception to the rule. But individual efforts can't cure institutional sociopathy. And there are far too many people today who don't *want* to cure it and will oppose any effort to move our society away from the live-action 4chan that it's become.

 

[GHT]

The US, from what I read and see for myself, is no different from the rest of us when it comes to a dog eat dog world.
In the UK, politics is more a battle of ideas than it is morals. Few people in politics are truly reprehensible, nearly all are seeking to make things better - they are each other's ideological opponents not enemies. They should critically engage and learn from one another, partisanship will tear them apart - it's time to relieve it from public office.

Midday, and the BBC News is blaring the churlish cacophony that rings around the House of Commons, (Britains political debating chamber,) signalling yet another pointless Wednesday lunch time in British democracy. The Prime Minister and her government, sit smugly and coax members of the opposition to riposte, whilst the opposition rises to the bait with innovative disdain each and every time.

Looking on at this often familiarly pathetic scene, is it any wonder why the sentiment of separation from power has never been greater than it is now? As the major parties spit at each other from two sword lengths apart, the rest of us roll our eyes at yet another fruitless hour spent on the juvenile one-upmanship that never ceases.

Yes indeed, tribalism is at the very heart of our, so called, civilised structure.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Tribalism, nationalism, and partisanship cannot, on the most essential level, be "moral." You can't and don't "love your neighbor as yourself" if you demand to know his political affiliation, racial background, or immigration status first.

 

[3fingers]

Tribalism, nationalism, and partisanship cannot, on the most essential level, be "moral." You can't and don't "love your neighbor as yourself" if you demand to know his political affiliation, racial background, or immigration status first.

The ability for people to be civil or even maintain friendship and just not discuss known points of disagreement has become very difficult regardless of the topic.
I may disagree strongly with another's views, and they with mine but we need not condemn each other as evil because of it.
The real issue is that people refuse to see the manipulation they are succumbing to driven by others making big money from keeping them foaming at the mouth and miserable.

 

[Fading Fast]

The ability for people to be civil or even maintain friendship and just not discuss known points of disagreement has become very difficult regardless of the topic.
I may disagree strongly with another's views, and they with mine but we need not condemn each other as evil because of it.
The real issue is that people refuse to see the manipulation they are succumbing to driven by others making big money from keeping them foaming at the mouth and miserable.

Don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but the quote ⇩ in your signature from your grandfather is wonderful.

"Being a gentleman has nothing to do with who you know, what you look like, what you paid for a suit of clothes, or anything like that. It is making everyone you come in contact with feel as comfortable as they can be for the time they are with you."
My Grandfather

 

[3fingers]

Don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but the quote ⇩ in your signature from your grandfather is wonderful.

"Being a gentleman has nothing to do with who you know, what you look like, what you paid for a suit of clothes, or anything like that. It is making everyone you come in contact with feel as comfortable as they can be for the time they are with you."
My Grandfather

Thank you. I learned more from him than anyone else in my life. I often think that I haven't lived up to the potential that he believed I had but I try.
He has been gone 37 years and I still miss him.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The ability for people to be civil or even maintain friendship and just not discuss known points of disagreement has become very difficult regardless of the topic.
I may disagree strongly with another's views, and they with mine but we need not condemn each other as evil because of it.
The real issue is that people refuse to see the manipulation they are succumbing to driven by others making big money from keeping them foaming at the mouth and miserable.

Agreed. I generally hate it when people say "some of my best friends are..." but I do make an effort to get to know people whose views are different from mine. I have friends here on the Lounge who are pretty much the opposite from me philosophically, and one of my closest friends in real life was raised in the beliefs of the John Birch Society, and was educated at a fundamentalist religious college. And I, of course, to her worldview ought to be a dirty Commie rat -- but she too is able to look past such things. She's a product of her environment as much as I'm a product of mine, but in the end we were both born human beings and that's how we're eventually going to die. Why let any of the rest of it get in the way?

 

[tonyb]

Having had daily dealings for a number of years with “politicians” — placed in quotation marks because in this telling the category isn’t limited to those holding public elective office, but includes professional advocates for various causes — I learned that a common trait among that bunch, however sharp their differences might be otherwise, was that advancing their own agendas trumped most every other consideration. They didn’t have “friends” in the way we more private people do. They had interests to advance, and if they perceived that I, a news writer and editor at the time, might aid in that effort, or at least quote them in response to their opposition, well hell, they were happy to take my call, to meet me for lunch, to ask after the wife and cat.

But after leaving that biz, they didn’t know my name.

As Harry Truman put it, if you want a friend in this town, get a dog.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. "Think Tanks" are a key element in the poisoning of society -- academics who are paid to promote a political point of view, and only that political point of view, cooking up their own brew of "facts" and statistics, not in the service of ultimate truth, but in order to sell their master's agenda to the public, who assumes that Professor Dr. So-n-so must know what he or she is talking about. Don't believe anything you read on the internet without following the money trail first.

 

[GHT]

Don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but the quote ⇩ in your signature from your grandfather is wonderful.

"Being a gentleman has nothing to do with who you know, what you look like, what you paid for a suit of clothes, or anything like that. It is making everyone you come in contact with feel as comfortable as they can be for the time they are with you."
My Grandfather

Wise words indeed, that generation fought wars and witnessed murder on an industrial scale. Yet they do seem to pass on nuggets of sound advice. My grandmother was much the same, I can't remember what she said, word for word, but a precis in paraphrase would be:
Before saying something negative about someone, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? She would then add: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

She was right, we grow too old to soon, and smart too late. In my lifetime I have learned that the simplest of things are the ones that make a difference, like: People don't care what your home looks like when they are welcomed with a hug.

 

[Fading Fast]

...Before saying something negative about someone, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? She would then add: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all....

I fall well short, but as I get older, I try harder to follow that ⇧ advice. It makes your and others' day better.

 

[tonyb]

Yep. "Think Tanks" are a key element in the poisoning of society -- academics who are paid to promote a political point of view, and only that political point of view, cooking up their own brew of "facts" and statistics, not in the service of ultimate truth, but in order to sell their master's agenda to the public, who assumes that Professor Dr. So-n-so must know what he or she is talking about. Don't believe anything you read on the internet without following the money trail first.

I know a fellow with whom I share an affinity for an organization in which we were both members in our distant youths, his more distant than mine by a couple-three years. This organization remains somewhat reliant on the largesse of its alumni, and on account of that this fellow and I have numerous friends and associates in common.

He’s retired now, but for much of his working life he was a spokesman for various politicians, a U.S. senator among them. He has become so in the habit of presenting only that information favorable to his interests, and disregarding that which isn’t, that it has become his default mode.

On more than one occasion I’ve found myself saying, “Please, young man, quit trying to spin this.”

I pity him, really. I do believe he’s so deep in the closet that even he doesn’t know that he’s actually gay. (He came up in that business when being “out” would have very likely torpedoed his career, especially in the Republican circles he ran in.) And I fear he doesn’t know how to be genuine to the extent most of us less public sorts do.

Yes, it’s so, as some old-timey limey had it, that the world is a stage, that we all perform. But I can’t imagine having no people around whom it’s safe to remove the makeup. Or at least most of it.

 

[tonyb]

Lest we get a tad too Pollyannaish here, it may serve to heed the message on the sign near the cue stick rack at the Storeroom Tavern ...

“Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.”

Attributed to one John Churton Collins, whoever the hell that was.

 

[3fingers]

“Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.”

I've never believed in doing that. My goal is not to publicly speak of all of the dirty SOBs I've run across at all.

 

[tonyb]

I've never believed in doing that. My goal is not to publicly speak of all of the dirty SOBs I've run across at all.

And that is what keeps con artists and their ilk in a steady supply of fresh victims.