Warning, slight rant ahead...

I'm a registered independent and I'm fond of playing devil's advocate with liberals and conservatives alike, especially if they are particularly adamant and/or excitable. It frustrates S to no end and I have discovered that it's an efficient way to get a nice rollicking argument started.

Fox News is invariably on when I go to the gym in the evening, and I try to watch with an objective eye, knowing full well that I'm naturally very liberal-minded. I keep the following things in mind when I do so:

1. Fox News is a conservative, republican-run TV news station. Liberal democrats don't operate a TV news network.
2. Conservatives (consisting mainly of white middle-aged and older folk, from what I can tell by watching Fox News, which indicates nothing about reality, necessarily) are in the minority right now - both in an extant sense, and in Congress.
3. Socially-conservative people (through my own experience) tend to be exclusive rather than inclusive. They tend to have their expectations easily violated and are shocked by changes and differences of any kind.

All I see is absurd, defensive posturing. They "invite" democrats and liberals to "speak" on their "shows," allow their "guests" to utter three words, and then the Fox news anchors or the pundits that the network supports launch into heated tirades while smiling condescendingly. I don't even have to listen to the exchange - the scorn is obvious in their body language, and I am offended by it.

The messages conveyed by Fox News are inherently divisive and exclusive. I feel very strongly that the station's primary goal is to promote upheaval, "us vs. them" attitudes, and mistrust. I can understand this reaction, especially because I'm aware that many conservatives are terrified of change, of losing control, of failing to win the fabricated war of "us vs. them"... Making an educated decision to ignore or disdain resulting from a desire to maintain an unsustainable status quo is so much graver than an innocent mistake. Fox News claims that the government is ignoring conservative protests, but most of their number can afford to take a few days off work and spend a few extra hundred dollars to travel and speak their minds; poor working single moms can't do this. The poor don't have the same freedom to have a voice. They often don't even have access to enough information to be able to truly have a voice.

I feel that the changes that are currently happening in our nation are perhaps messily coordinated at the moment - but nobody has attempted to do this in the past, and I understand. The process will naturally become more streamlined as time passes and as small changes are implemented. These changes are needed, and we should bear with the discomfort. There is always upheaval with massive change, there is always resistance, and there has been a power shift.

The United States is an individualist country. We are all out for ourselves, or for our children, and we are willing plow over any obstacle in our way to gain an advantageous position. We are also capitalist; the capitalist version of happiness is a dangling carrot that one will never succeed in biting. The crux of it is a rampant societal desire for change of state (a new material possession, a higher salary, a better job, to lose 20 lbs., etc.), and lusting after that change because one believes that the change or acquisition will bring one happiness and fulfillment. Once one achieves this state, one invariably discovers that there's another link up ahead to grasp at on the endless chain of wants. And if we can't acheive our desired state? We are inherently unhappy - always either in the process of "achieving happiness" or failing to do so.

If we can't become more collectivist, if we can't become concerned about the health and happiness and freedom of the entire group, if we can't tolerate a little bit of sacrifice to assist those at the bottom - those people who are truly suffering right this minute... Everybody but that .001% at the very top (who can move to the moon, or something) are doomed. By other definitions, all of us are.

People need to give it up. Give up the rat race, give up the Hummers and the Hermes heels and the flagrant consumerism. We need to be generous, to believe that suffering strangers who begin their lives without the same opportunities deserve health and love and education. There is no "them." There is only "us."

S is fond of referring to a passage at the end of Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, which concerns the necessity for all of us to build the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. We don't know what comes next and we definitely don't all agree upon what might, but we do know that people are suffering here and now.