Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. – Thoreau

I wish I could honestly say that I don’t know what happened to my country. But I can’t say that because it’s been happening for years. I watched helplessly as my old friends lost their minds. I reasoned with them. I argued with them. I brought out facts and opinions stated by people much smarter than me. All to no avail. One by one, due to their near rabid need to espouse their opinions at any time and in any place, they overstepped my boundaries. Once that happened, and they continued to overstep after being warned, I had to cut ties. Nearly every friend I kept contact with throughout the last 40 years has gone. They’ve followed a piper that led them down a different path.

Each of my friends heard a different version of the melody that drew them away. Like the children in the Pied Piper of Hamelin, they followed without sensing the danger. Unlike the children of Hamelin, they were adults and should have known better. These friends weren’t so different from me, but they had been more successful in life than I have been. They had families, careers, vacations, homes, cars, and all the things that make life what we’re told it’s supposed to be. Most of them were long-standing members of churches and civic groups and lived stable lives in a single community for decades.

It started small, the change. It was as if they had joined an MLM (multi level marketing) organization, or a new religious group. First there were the memes, simply them sharing something that someone else had made. Then came the comments on my posts, there was no room for anything to exist outside of their opinion without argument. It became open season to fight it out in public with friends and acquaintances over the smallest disagreements. Finally, the last frontier along the edge of my boundaries, they would send me unsolicited politics pics in my direct messages even after my clearly asking them not to. They were not the people I had known for decades. They became obsessed with their mission to spread the word and were unable to accept a no.

There were some commonalities in their obsessions, they were afraid, angry, and arrogant. Whether they were afraid it was the end-times (apocalypse), or that they were going to lose their freedom in some fashion, it was a fear of something happening in the future. They were angry because they were afraid of something that was nebulous and out of their control, and that anger was turned on anyone that they could tie in with their possible impending doom. The surprising part to me was the arrogance. It was the part that left no room for the ideas of others, or counter arguments. Facts became less important than the need to be right. They truly believed, all the way down to their toes, that they were right and therefore they were smarter than the rest of us. They knew that if we just understood what they were saying, we would agree. The arrogance is what started the circle and what closed it.

The racism, the cruelty, the misogyny, the denigrating of the poor, the xenophobia, are the warts that show the presence of the sickness, the fear. I watched friends who seemingly never had a cruel lock of hair on their head, revel in the sadness and despair, of those they they viewed as the opposition. They called people names and told them they were stupid. They wished others ill simply because they existed. They believed obvious lies and repeated them in order to cause upset to those they were told were their enemy. They laughed at others’ pain and when I didn’t join in they turned on me as well. But they did all of that while knowing that what they did was wrong. They created their own runaway train and now they’re on it until it stops or they get off. They can stop the train at any time.

The agents who grab and disappear the strangers that we know can choose not to at any time, it’s just a job. The people who fill comment sections with bile and hate can just stop posting and realize that their opinion doesn’t need to be aired. The citizens who think that their citizenship is more valid than someone else’s citizenship can find other ways to feel important, maybe do something positive for humanity instead. It still is a matter of their choice. They are not forced to behave this way. It may take more spine to leave than they believe they have, but there’s no excuse to continue to act against their neighbor. They’ve taken their fear and hidden it behind a lust for dominance and power. There will never be enough power to make the fear go away. Just look at any dictator, they consume their entire country in an attempt to have power even as they hire more guards so they can sleep at night.

This place and time makes me sad. My voice is too tiny, my wallet too thin, but my heart wants to make it all better anyway. I just hope and do what I can to maybe help make a better future since it looks like they’re going to wreck the current system. Be kind, it’s worth more than gold. Be generous, our generosity to others gives back to our own souls.