Been doing some thinking.

[rownesheck]

I often talk about wanting this country to go ahead and split again. I'll move to the north to be with like minded brethren. But today I was thinking about how much I love the fact that we are in the middle of North America. There is a lot of Mexican influence in the south where I currently reside, and I would guess there is some Canadian influence in our northern states.

Our neighbors' culture bleeds into ours. Not only that, but we have the luxury of people from all over the world bringing their history and culture and mixing it in. I know this isn't news, but I was just thinking about this and how frankly bad ass it is. I work in a little grocery store and at any given moment I may hear 4+ different languages spoken at once. I love that!

For anyone to be turned off by this boggles my mind. Why is the thought of different people speaking different languages so scary to some? Is it lack of education, travel, or curiosity? I don't know.

I feel sad and alone sometimes during these dark days we are in, but I keep telling myself "I am not alone in my thinking. The vast majority of my fellow countrymen feel as I do. This horror show will end. It is the final deathblow of a flailing, sad and pathetic construct of weak people with nothing but anger and hatred in their hearts."

It certainly is a struggle to wade through the perpetual vomit, but I'm going to get to the finish line. I don't want to miss what's on the other side.

I don't know. Maybe I've had too many beers.

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. There are racists and misogynists everywhere...

moving will not allow you to escape those scourges. Unless you go to some very isolated place.

[abqtommy]

3. Moving north, as in the Northwest US, will put you

in the company of the largest concentration of white supremes in the country. Even Canada isn't immune. Better to make whatever area you live in the best you can and let your little light shine!

[CaptYossarian]

5. If you pick Wisconsin, there are still a few blue counties out of 72...

Milwaukee, Dane (Madison-area), LaCrosse, and Portage (Stevens Point). The Twin Cities area is another blue zone, but check the voting records in case (Michelle Bachmann's former district is one example). If those people thought she represented them, run far and fast.

[Atticus]

2. You are definitely not "alone in your thinking". We are the majority. Your post is proof

that you are a thoughtful person and you made several valid points. Hang in there. You are needed.

[TygrBright]

4. You're not alone. I love it, too.

Where I live there is no real majority. There are immigrants from all over the world. We have a Tibetan Buddhist temple less than a mile away. There are two mosques in our not-very-large city. At any coffee shop you can hear and see four or five languages being used. (Big School for the Deaf here, so plenty of Deaf culture, too!)

There are restaurants featuring food from all over the world. There are festivals and events celebrating many styles of dance and music.

It's not always kumbayah nicey-nice. There are conflicts with old roots, plenty of snarking in the local newspaper's comments and LTE sections. But by and large, we get on. And I love it here.

It would be SO boring if we were all the same.

happily,
Bright

[Wounded Bear]

6. "Good fences make good neighbours."...

It's not about logic, it's about feelings and a mindset that is ingrained in many people around the world.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

-Robert Frost

[byronius]

7. I take polylingualism as evidence of our national health.

Better to be the marketplace, the mix, the crossroads, the center of all cultures than to be the mean little place no one really wants to go because you just can't tell when those primates will start shooting.

It should be considered our superpower, this multinational/multilingual mixing. That's what I was taught in school. How did we all not get the same American history?

Martin Gilbert once wrote about the American entry into World War I -- the most combat-ready Americans were the New York Brigade, made up of dozens of different ethnic groups. The British and the French shunned their help, barring them from combat because all knew such a motley crew could never fight together. But when Ludendorff's Spring Offensive got to within eighty miles of Paris and whole divisions of French and British soldiers were retreating at speed from the advancing 1.3 million man German spearhead, the generals had no choice.

And into the fray strode the Americans. They didn't fight fair at all, used trickery and deceit, and scandalized the front-line French officers with their unmanly tactics. They also stopped the German spearhead cold, and drove it back three miles within the first week. The Kaiser privately talked about suing for peace, and exhorted his officers to lecture their men that the Americans only 'put one pants leg on at a time', and that the Germans should not fear them.

From absolute defeat to absolute victory at the first test. The motley crew, the ragtags, the hash of New York thrown in as a desperate last gamble.

White Supremacy and Racism are un-American according to the Words, but they are also weak, stupid, and self-destructive. Our superpower is that we are the New World, where that shit doesn't matter.

I want to watch the young people lash back. For thirty years they're going to rage. I believe it. It will be big business to help scrub Trump affiliations. Racism will be hiding under the rock again, and I hope that rock gets turned over.

I hate this shit. Goddamnit.

[Collimator]

8. America's greatness comes not only from the strength of our unity. . .

But also, from the glory of our diversity.

The whole of humanity has coalesced here, how can we NOT benefit?

It's important to remember that as bad as this time seems, we have been through worse. The American Civil War was bloody and destructive. Reconstruction didn't exactly work out well for all concerned. But we got through those decades, made several steps back along the way and still somehow continued towards progress. A slow and uneven progress, but progress all the same.

We came together as a nation during two world wars, and emerged as a world leader. Civil wars in other countries have continued for decades and scarred generations of citizens.

Our country is still paying its karmic debt for declaring itself a nation of freedom while holding millions of human beings in bondage, but the tenets set forth in our founding documents remain some of the worthiest aspirations set forth by human endeavor.

Those who hate and disparage and exclude do not understand either the privilege or responsibility of being an American. That being said, it is not the "American spirit" that carries us forward, but the Human Spirit. For that is what we are and what our essential principles seek to elevate. We are human beings--clever, innovative, stubborn and striving. The desire for freedom and dignity is coded into our DNA. It is what we must support and share with one another.

Because the moment we seek to deprive our fellow human beings of their freedom or dignity, we become slaves to fear and fools with no understanding of true character and personal worth.

Margaret Thatcher spoke wisely when she stated, "America did not invent human rights. Human rights invented America."

I don't believe that America is somehow better than any other nation. America is just filled with regular people, the same as every country on earth. But virtually every country on earth has contributed some of its people to America, and we are greatly enlarged by it.