Good People

I was talking to a friend yesterday who reminded me of a term that's used out in the parts of the country that he and I came from -- I'm from Arizona, he's from Nebraska.

We were talking about how mean our country seems these days. Who would have imagined that America would practice torture, who would imagine the greed and corruption, the unprovoked attacks on other countries? This crazy anti-gay stuff, and the meanness of people like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, the talk-radio idiots ... the whole point is to be unkind, inconsiderate, and rude.

We were talking about how the upper-crust of the Republican Party, the greedy ones, have carefully cultured the lower level of ignorant, fearful voters, who can be manipulated by just pushing their buttons -- say the word "terrorist," for instance, or "family values," and they'll do anything you want. And the undermining of public education is all part of that; the upper-crust guys can go to Yale and fancy private universities, the voting Republicans' kids never will. It's like what is happening in Montgomery County and other parts of the country, the assault on the public schools, is part of a deliberate effort to prevent critical thinking and keep the ignorant ones ignorant, so the greedy ones can continue to exploit them and get their votes by pushing their buttons. Call me paranoid, I'm just telling you what this guy and I were discussing.

The question my friend and I were discussing was the asymmetry between the Republican and Democratic parties. The Republicans clearly have this strategy of nurturing and exploiting ignorance, and they've got it down to an art -- so who's going to vote for the Democrats?

My friend said, "It's going to be what we call back home the good people."

And that's it, isn't it? Good people. Remember in your old neighborhood, there were the nosy ones, the bossy ones, the imposing ones, the cranky ones, and gossips and nags and cheaters, and then there were good people. These were people who minded their own business, worked hard, cleaned up after themselves, cared for their families. Sometimes they were religious, but sometimes they weren't, that wasn't a requirement to be a good person. Sometimes they got in trouble, but mostly not, and when they did it was some kind of mistake or stupid thing they shouldn't have done, and they knew it, and the other good people knew it and forgave it, because they knew they might do something dumb some day, too.

I've lived and visited all over this country, I've hung out in the dime stores and bars and mom-and-pop restaurants, and the people of the United States never seemed mean to me. I find it a mystery, where the George Bushes and the Ann Coulters find their audience. The people I've met have been smart, hard-working, honest, curious. Oh, they might be broke, or they might get thrown in jail every now and then, or their marriages might fall apart -- I'm not talking about perfect people here.

Good people live and let live. They sympathize with those who are in pain, and sometimes cry out in pain themselves. And when they do, because they're good people, other people care and try to help. Good people know that you don't make it alone in this world, sometimes you need help and sometimes you are able to help other people, and when they can, they do.

Good people aren't always competing with everybody. They do their job, they laugh with and not at people, they might wander off the straight-and-narrow sometimes, or even a lot, but that's not what it's about. They aren't greedy, and they're not suspicious but they're smart enough to see when somebody's trying to take advantage of them.

I've been in nearly every state in the country, and I've seen good people everywhere I've been.

It's hard to get good people excited about political ideas, because they tend to trust other people and figure things will work out. I think a lot of good people went along with the fake justifications for attacking Iraq, for instance, actually believing that their government was being honest with them; a lot of good people don't understand what the gay thing is about, and they might believe what they've been told, but they don't hate people just for being different. Good people tend not to judge you unless you do something to them.

Now that they see that things were not what they thought they were, the good people have to figure everything out again, they need to go back and separate what was true and what was lies, and it's a little tricky if you were just going along believing everything that was said, trusting that other people were good people, too. But the country has come to a point where the good people are going to have to assert themselves. Somebody needs to step up, a leader, and speak for, and to, the good people of America. I really don't care if it's a Republican or a Democrat, but I am not very hopeful that the good people will be very well represented by the Republicans at this point, whose one-party rule has gotten us into this situation in the first place.