Fine Lines

Mind you, I say this as a fifty-something, widowed, fat, neurodiverse, straight, white, cis, female,

culturally-but-not-actually Christian, agnostic-but-leaning-Deist, live-and-let-live parent of two... so your mileage may vary. And face it, I like people; it's why my degree is in intercultural communication. I want to like everyone (and the inverse is true) but that's neither practical nor likely. 

This picture (of Abby, at about 2 1/2 years old) is pretty much how I'm feeling these days. 

And quite a lot of that feeling is down to those fine lines. 

There's a fine line, for instance, between advocating for something you believe in and supporting that belief past all reason. 

American politics is a good example of this: there are people who will not under any circumstances vote for a Democrat because "Republicans are against abortion." It is demonstrably true that the Republican party still says that, and they'll do their damndest to overturn Roe v Wade to make you think they still believe that, but that abortion rates actually go down during Democratic administrations because the Democrats don't just forbid the behavior; they provide the tools to make it a moot point. People like this take illogic to whole new levels - they're the sort who believe that a bunch of old white men should control women's bodies but that mask mandates are government overreach.

Inversely, you have the "Democrats are too far right in this country so I'm skipping the vote/voting third party/writing in my favorite candidate" brigade. American democrats are pretty far right by world standards, it's true. They are also not trying to actively kill you as a group, whether by shooting you in the street for walking while black or beating you up for your gender or just letting everyone die from climate change. People like this are whining because they aren't getting their own way. At least, because they aren't getting it right this second. Yes, we know you've been waiting a long time. You could maybe shorten it by doing the practical thing at the upper echelons and doing the progressive thing lower down.

Of course, US politics is not the only example. There are the exciting folks who don't seem to understand that advocating for their specific circumstance - whether gender, disability, color, whatever - does not automatically make them an expert at everything even remotely related. For instance, just because you are an expert in your own child's special needs (as I am in mine) does not mean that you have special insight into what's best for even all children in that group, much less an entire school district full. You are (probably) not an epidemiologist. Would we all prefer it if it was safe to have the kids in school full time right now? Of course we would. But it's not.

And some of that is down to people taking those fine lines and turning them into big, tall, Mexican-border walls. It's no longer a topic of discussion; it's the hill you'll die on to the point that you don't even think about it anymore. Assuming you ever did.