If forced to summarize my take on our current political climate, it’s the following two words: I’m confused. Now, while I walk around at a baseline level of confusion, sometimes forgetting to breathe in air, or blink, or deliver food to the correct bodily orifice for proper delivery of nutrition, I have never been more confused, at least politically, in my life.
I don’t really know what to do with this confusion, other than express some feelings I have about it. To start, I’d like to present a hypothesis, which we will not test because that would require research and time and effort, and I’d really prefer to just ramble off my own thoughts and opinions. Anyhow, my hypothesis is that if one is open-minded, intellectually honest, and committed to hearing multiple points of view, then it is harder than ever to have a clear and confident opinion on anything.
My hunch is this is due to several factors, but most critically, the abundance of information available regarding every topic imaginable. This deluge of information comes in many forms: irrefutable facts, objective and detached analyses, biased interpretations of events still rooted somewhat in truth, blatant lies, deliberate misinformation, and every point along the spectrum between those types of information sources.
Let me describe a typical scenario where I try to make sense of some current political event while simultaneously, intermittently, painfully urinating out crumbs of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from my urethra. Wrong hole! Wrong hole! Again! I really have to remember where my mouth is… Yes, it burns! Very badly! The sugar crystals have viciously inflamed my urethral canal! Looks like I’ll be destroying my microbiome with another round of nuclear strength antibiotics, because if I get one more severe UTI, my dick and balls might just call it quits and fall off, where upon landing on the ground, my genitalia will perform a magic trick and disappear under the cloak of my tattered and wrinkled ballsack, just like Obi Wan did after Vader slashed him.
I believe I’m veering mildly off track. Where was I? Oh yeah, so I’ll read the news, probably scan some headlines. Upon doing so, I’ll commonly have an initial gut reaction to whatever political situation I’m learning about. Some may be surprised to learn I’m capable of moral or ethical judgments, but shockingly, contained within me is some rudimentary moral and ethical framework that I occasionally employ in situations like this to form a moral or ethical stance on a topic.
Next, I like to broaden the iris and see what other people and places on the internet are saying about the subject at hand. It’s typically at this point of encountering different perspectives that I realize I have no clue what I really think. In most cases on most topics, most sides of an issue have at least some valid arguments.
Personally, I don’t think I’m particularly stupid. I’m generally capable of understanding the multiple positions surrounding a complex situation. I have more trouble settling on what the correct viewpoint is, if there even is one. At risk of stating the obvious, black and white rarely exists in the world. Most issues contain at least some nuance and complexity. This calls for a nuanced perspective. Yet, rather than holding a truly nuanced perspective, most tend to only acknowledge the nuance that favors their own worldview.
Facts also don’t seem to be as useful as I once believed for the purpose of making judgments about the events in our world. That’s because different people look at the same facts and interpret them through divergent worldviews, resulting in them drawing totally contrasting conclusions.
To condense my thoughts here, in most modern political debates, I see the different sides presenting compelling, albeit incomplete and biased arguments. I’m left to reconcile the multiple points of view and draw my own conclusions, and usually, I end up confused, somewhere in the middle of things, feeling pretty unsure. Maybe that’s how one should feel about most things. Of course, in life and politics, decisions must be made, and all decisions are imperfect and compromising on some level, but a smidge of humility and the ability to acknowledge opposing but valid points of view could potentially make things less contentious.
In the meantime, I will remain confused. While I don’t like the added political confusion to my pre-existing UTI-induced delirium, I feel reassured knowing I’m at least attempting to be open-minded and intellectually honest.
Yolo 69 420 