“How to stay sane during election year “

Despite being stripped of our voting rights, inmates remain attuned to national politics. Celibacy turns everyone into an ideologue. there’s only a few outlets for our energy as it is, and arguing about politics is one of them.

I try to refrain from engaging. Arguing is counterproductive. No one persuades another by attacking their position. Anyways, I’m indifferent to most issues and couldn’t care either way. Even being in the vicinity of a verbal altercation pisses me off.

A pair of bunkies across the hall argue every day, about every issue. One watches CNN all day, and the other Fox News. Needless to say, they don’t have a discussion as much as they wait for the other to finish speaking. I guess it’s heartening they can coexist.

While I was typing up the fantasy baseball rosters, I witnessed another argument between three old heads, all black. Two said they didn’t trust Kamala, while the other supported her because of her race. He was a Farrakhan-vict type who had been down forever.

After a tense back-and-forth, the latter walked away, cursing their skepticism and lack of racial allegiance.

Clearly, the old alliances are not what they used to be. Here’s a few things I remember to keep my cool:

1. Cable news entertains, not informs. Their viewership doesn’t like facts contrary to their preferred narratives, so they’re just omitted. truthfully, one should never watch cable news, in any year. It’s bad for your health, like cigarettes.

2. Politics is mostly an expression of tribal loyalties. Inasmuch as one’s politics evolve, it’s because of a change in status and self-identification (i.e. liberal single woman to conservative married woman). As much as we idolize our powers of reason, political beliefs are mostly ex-post-facto rationalization. No one carefully reviews all the facts and evidence, considers all arguments, weighs the pros and cons, deliberates, and then chooses a position. we choose a position and all the rest comes later. Any necessary data can be found at ImRight.com

3.In fact, there’s growing evidence that we are born into our politics. The natural personality of a person lends themselves to being a conservative or a progresssive. If their genes haven’t decided for them, childhood and traumatic experiences cement their biases. (eg “A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged” or “A liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested”.) Getting mad at another’s politics is getting mad at something they can’t quite control.

4. there’s a whole lot more important things than republicans and democrats. Who is president can only affect the quality of your life in the margins. Ultimately, you are in control.

5. Finally, there’s a concept in astronomy called parallax. it describes the phenomena where an object appears to change position in the sky, due to a change in the viewer’s position. Short version: the position of an object changes depending what angle and time you view it from.

Sometimes, I wonder if this same concept applies to politics, and every belief is “correct,” depending on which pair of eyes does the perceiving. it’s not that the other side is wrong, but that democracy determines whose viewpoint gets elevated into policy.