No Exit

Ten years ago, maybe fifteen. Twenty. Max. Twenty? Going once? No more than that.

I had a crisis.

An existential crisis, if you will. Nothing Kafkaesque or No Exity. Sartre be damned. But in all accounts just as magnificent. Or maleficent. Or…

It was a question of who I am and why I am here.

Just that. No problem. No demand. Just a question.

What am I, exactly?

I don’t mean that metaphorically or allegorically or any other obtuse way. Just really. What do I stand for?

I stopped calling myself a liberal about ten years ago. Fifteen, maybe. I started referring to myself as a ‘1960’s liberal.’ I had to use that term last year talking to a young woman from California who was arguing for the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris. We were in a cafeteria in Kenya.

“Well,” I said. “My values have stayed the same for sixty years.” She didn’t get it.

Or maybe I should call myself a Classic Liberal, I suppose, if that’s a thing. Like Coke Classic. Or Pepsi-whatever.

Anything to distinguish myself from what pretends to be a liberal today.

I still believe in discussion.

In respect.

In the ability to find the best in every human I interact with, no matter who, what, why, or when or where they are the persons who life brought them to be today. On their paths in life. To their own destinies, as I am to all of mine. Would I like you to judge me? No? Then who am I to judge.

Who am I to judge?

Nobody.

Nobody at all. I am nobody’s judge.

And I am OK with that.

OK is the best I can expect from life.

And you?

I am starting to see YouTube videos of liberals, young people mostly, who have lost their jobs because of their vitriolic responses to the Charlie Kirk murder.

Seriously?

I am a believer in freedom of speech. No matter now deplorable or objectionable or despicable or downright just stupidable I find it. You still have the right to spout whatever you want from your face hole.

Have at it.

People are losing their jobs because of the dead-head, stupid-shit responses they are posting on whatever social media hot spot they haunt.

And they expect no consequences.

And it’s coming back to haunt them.

Karma’s a bitch.

What did they expect? That the conservative parts of the country would just lie down and die?

Part of me says, “Well, Bitch. You’ve been part of cancel culture, grown up with it as a matter of fact. That’s where you believe you have the right to run, vigilante style, across the anonymous internet and poison other people. Ruin their lives. Their careers. Their futures. Their families. Drive them to-I don’t know what! Because you feel that you are better than them?

“Let me say it again.

“Because you feel that you are better than them.

“Not that you just KNOW better than them. But that you ARE better than them.”

And that’s your fatal flaw.

I still consider myself a 1960’s Liberal. I still have some shreds of respect.

Existential crisis averted.

Not because we thought we were better than everyone else. We were assholes who thought we were something great, just like everyone else who came infinitely before us and disturbingly frequently after us.

All of us, assholes with big mouths and small minds. And a lot of conviction.

Because we were, and are, human.

Just like you.

Think of that.

Please.