What If I Wasn't Bad People?

From the comic movie Mars Attacks: "Can't we all just get along?"

Right after the guy poses the question, he gets massacred, as if to make the question seem humorous.

What follows in this blog is a personal lament.

Some of my best friends call themselves conservatives.

The feeling isn't mutual. I mean, they wouldn't call me a best freind, sometimes not even a friend.  Just some buddy from work.

I may never be a friend to them, because I am "Bad People"

There are a lot of us Bad People around

I am "Bad People" because I don't agree with their beliefs, or at least I think that is the way I am told that it works. They have very strong beliefs, which I am told that I do not share ( How they figured out what my beliefs are I'll never know, I don't even know myself lots of times.) To them, however, it is very obvious, and nothing that I can do anything about.

My guilt is by association, or at least that is the edges of what I hear. There is apparently a very evil group of people out there named liberals which I have been informed that I am a part of. These liberals have bee conspiring to do evil things, and apparenty already accomplished much on their list.

Sometimes it hurts enough for me to get up in my head and try to fight this problem. I explain very matter of factly what my views and observations are, and to me they seem anything but liberal. I am as fiscally conservative as it gets. My observations fit right in there with many conservative perspectives on cause and effect that I had heard for decades, for example the idea of not helping someone that won't help themselves first.

But my protestations have never worked, I am just one of those evil people, and blast it, there is nothing I can do to redeem myself.

Actually, I've been Bad People for a Really Long Time

It all started when I was 5 and showed up in Tennessee, a migrant from Minnesota. I was REALLY Bad People then, because I was a Yankee and a "nigger lover" too. Yup, that's the language that was used. Kinda nasty huh? Not at all PC now, but it was very PC in that time and place. I didn't even know what one was, but I was informed that I was one. Always helps to be told who you are, especially when you are too young to know for yourself. How would I have known that I was one of those, if they hadn't told me? Very much Bad People.

I notice now though, that there are Bad People everywhere, and seemingly have been for as long as history has been recorded. Many massacres have occurred throughout history, and really they were just "cleansing" to those doing the deed. After all, these were Bad People.

Lots of folks ready to help us identify Bad People

Lets not pick on George Bush, because he isn't the only one.  He does really well on this whole issue of helping us identify bad people. He knows what is important too, we must find them and kill them. There are lots of people who are ready to help us identify who to hate. One thing that makes George equal to Hillary, they are both very clear on the need to find and kill Bad People.

What is really funny to me is how many helpful souls are themselves on someone else's Bad People list. How do you get on George Bush's Bad People list? Easy, just have your own Bad People list. Osama Bin Laden knows a lot of Bad People and who they are, and is ready to kill them too. Presumably this will improve things, he has the same goals as George, to kill as many Bad People as he can to clean up the world. George is on Osama's list, Osama is on George's list. Dang, this is looking pretty predictable, no?

Of course I have my own Bad People list

See if you can figure this out. My Bad People list would include anyone who kills Bad People? Hmm, I'm beginning to see some problems with that approach.

1. If you ran this to it's logical conclusion, the math wouldn't work. Too many people are willing to kill Bad People, so the list would be too big.
2. If you ran it the other direction it doesn't work either. There are indeed people who are quite evil and make no bones about it. Making cute jokes and clever blogs about Bad People doesn't make these people acceptable. It's a real deal. But where to you cut off the list, and decide who is really bad?

So where does all this Bad People stuff leave ME then?

I still like to hang out with my very conservative friends because it's fun. Or at least it is when they don't joke about having to kill Bad People. That is a bit painful even when there is no action behind the words. I have one friend who genuinely believes all Muslems must eventually be killed because they will kill us if we don't kill them. No kidding here, I'm quoting.

Do you get hate mail from any of your conservative friends? I have one guy who sends me several pieces of hate mail every day, each carefully identifying and making fun of another group of Bad People. Must be a lot of different kinds of Bad People out there, that is what I am learning. Delete delete delete. Dang.

And no, I don't have any answers here. Just posing the question.

What is a conservative and a liberal then?

How does this conservative and liberal thing fit in with Bad People? Will my buddies at work ever call me a friend?

I'm pretty allergic to politics but as far as I can tell a liberal is someone who is determined to be in-effective and never identify anyone as bad. A conservative is someone who knows who Bad People are. Let me suffer from neither fate.

People identifying themselves as Conservatives in the world today are people like Osama Bin Laden who have already identified who is wrong and are ready to do something about it.  I have never seen much difference between people who call themselves conservatives except the minor details of what they are right about, because they are always right, and the rest of us are always wrong.

And I will always lust for a time when there might be a bit more intelligent observation and a bit less right/wrong good/bad black/white conservative/liberal conversation.

Because the bottom line for me is I still want my buddies to be friends, and I don't think we are nearly as far apart in beliefs as they do.