Zander's Inside Voice

I am sick. My wife has been sick all week and I’ve been less present with blogging than usual. I’m sure it’s just a cold or some weird little virus that’s not Covid. I am vaccinated and boosted last fall and now this fall. I’m not interested in debating the pros and cons of Covid vaccination; I respect everyone’s decision to make the choice that best serves them and their family. Based on my life, medical history, and the people around me, vaccination is what I need to do. I’m not out for anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, or anyone who has had to make these same difficult decisions for themselves and arrived at a different answer. There is no one right answer for everyone.

That’s my answer for everything. You and I don’t need to agree on anything and I will still love you, as long as you are a good, kind person. Hell, even if you suck, you know you suck, and you are working on not sucking, I will love you. I have no room in my life for people who want to be assholes and think it’s fun and ok to bring people down on purpose.

I know there are so many conclusions I have arrived at in my life that not everyone agrees with or even considers valid. That’s fine. I don’t need strangers to validate my conclusions, just like I don’t need to validate theirs. The difference I see in recent days is that some people feel like their opinion overrides someone else’s opinion and makes the decision to treat someone with a differing opinion badly. I really don’t care if we disagree in something, I am willing to hear you out and understand your position, assuming you can give me the same respect.

But let’s face it, people who want to scream out “Let’s Go Brandon” or “MAGA” choose to not show that respect. When your political goal is to “own the libs”, you are not being a good citizen and you are refusing to address the real problems in this world. Your entire platform cannot be “I will do everything in my power to go against the other side at all costs.” Why is that valid? Why is that considered a platform? How does that solve the problems we are dealing with today?

If you want the ability to determine to choose which vaccines go into your body, or what you can do with your body, that doesn’t give you the right to tell someone else what they can or cannot do with their body. It’s such a slippery slope once we start choosing what other people can do with their own body. You don’t have to agree with what someone does with their body. I hate Skittles. I think they are disgusting, fake fruit tasting, chemically laden candy. But I am not trying to get all Skittles removed from shelves, I even let the kids eat that foul fake fruit flavored crap, and I won’t run around knocking Skittles out of strangers’ hands in public. It would not surprise me that we discover Skittles dyes are dangerous to your health years from now or most of us have permanently dyed our livers a rainbow of Skittles colors. But I do not care if you eat Skittles. You get to make that choice for yourself and I won’t even judge you for it, but please, PLEASE do not offer me any. I will politely decline, smile, and tell you I don’t care for them. You don’t deserve my rant on how gross I think they are while you are eating them. If you asked me how I feel about Skittles randomly, I MIGHT share my extreme views with you if I feel like we are good enough friends that we can laugh about irrational hatred of Skittles.

I don’t understand when we lost the ability as a society to politely disagree. I also don’t understand how people who would have no problem with abortion in private suddenly feel very passionate publicly and POLITICALLY about it. There are people who I know have been hurt by abortion that have sincerely held beliefs and do have knowledge how it hurts women. And I don’t think those people are bad people at all. I think that their experience is valid and important for others to hear that opinion as they wrestle with their own decision. But that’s where it ends. If you believe it’s wrong because that’s what your religion tells you and you have no personal experience with it, it’s not your responsibility to “save” other people and force your beliefs on them. If you only support it to get votes to get yourself into an elected position, FUCK OFF. You are a shitty, selfish person who is just trying to fool people with sincerely held beliefs to get into a position of power. If you are running for political office and it comes out that you forced, financed, or knowingly agreed to an abortion and you refuse to acknowledge that you did that, you suck. Abortion is good enough for you in your personal life, but you want to control what other people do, and you aren’t being sincere with the people on the side you are trying to present yourself to be on. I wish this wasn’t a single issue that so many people vote on.

I do respect everyone’s position on all things controversial, as long as that same respect is returned. Politicians get no respect. They only care about getting rich, staying in power, and the rest of us don’t matter. Why we insist upon fighting each other, I will never understand. We are all fighting for this tiny piece of pie that THEY decided us little people should get, instead of voting them out and demanding term limits. Every side can agree that term limits are important but the people we are voting in refuse to pass anything that takes away their power and money. How awesome it must be to have corporate lobbyists give you all kinds of money to vote a particular way while you SELL OUT the voters who gave you your job.

Stepping off my soapbox now because I am tired and need to rest again!