CARLTON FLETCHER: America a country of 50 states, not united

And yet we spend the day throwing stones at one another, ‘cause I don’t think or wear my hair the same way you do.

— Joe South

I used to think it was funny to listen to or read the comments of squawkers who, some seven months since the presidential election and almost six since our current president took office, continue to debate the election as if anything they say is going to change what has — and continues to — take place.

But their ranting and raving just isn’t funny anymore.

In addition to the obvious question of where these people find the time to sit around and listen to talk radio and then swap posts back and forth about what they’ve been told is right and wrong with this country, sane people have to wonder just what need they fill in their lives by blindly praising every action taken by the politicians whose ideology they’ve adapted as their own or spewing venom at any and all actions taken by “the other side.”

When I said it was funny to listen to and read this stuff before, I meant that in an ironic way, as in the Democrats/liberals are now accusing the Republicans/conservatives of doing the exact same things they used to do — using almost word-for-word criticisms that their dreaded foes once used — and the Republican/conservatives justify their actions by claiming the right to “pay back” their foes and also using the same terminology Democrats/liberals once used in criticizing them.

The irony loses its humorous quality, though, when you realize how deeply indoctrinated the people on both sides have allowed themselves to become.

One of the things that particularly puzzles me is how individuals can buy so completely into their side’s propaganda that they consider anyone who thinks differently an “enemy.” Without consideration, they’ll use passed-on talking points to defend their group’s actions — even if it’s something that, before they absorbed the party line all the way into their DNA, damages them and their family personally. And they’ll damn “opponents” just because they don’t bow to the gods of their ideology.

I heard from one of these true believers the other day. His point was — and I’m guessing here, because there really was no point, just ranting — because I am a liberal/Democrat (by the way, I ain’t … I hate the state and national Democratic parties just as deeply as I do their Republican counterparts) I “want to allow Muslims to come in and rape and kill and terrorize” the people in my family and my neighborhood.

Also, because I’m a liberal/Democrat (again, I ain’t) I’m just mad that Hillary Clinton is not president. Sorry, dude, I cannot foresee many circumstances in which I would vote for that woman, but, then again, I can’t see very many in which I’d vote for the current prez either.

What I try to tell people like this — as if they’d listen — is that there are a whole lot of people who don’t go overboard — sell, their freaking souls — in selecting a candidate/political party to support. I know personally that there are a number of so-called liberal policies that I back wholeheartedly, and there are others I detest as strongly as some of the zealots who are always spouting their party line. And there are so-called conservative policies that I agree with strongly and others I can’t stomach.

I know it’s hard for people like this to fathom, but I — and a lot more people I know, people who don’t, as you like to say over and over and over “drink either party’s Kool-Aid” — who make their decisions based on how these policies and issues impact them and their families. They don’t care if the person espousing said issues are of a specific party. They care about what impact it will have on their families and their children’s families.

For some reason, people like this have allowed rich politicians and their lackeys to hijack their belief and value systems and replace them with a “my party, right or wrong” ethos that makes them the perfect little minions to sing the politicians’ praises, even as they’re raping and pillaging in a manner as bad — and often worse — than the Muslims that they so fear.

No politician’s going to get it right all the time. Just doesn’t happen because these are human beings, typically human beings flawed by their lust for power and ego. And no political party is going to get things right — or wrong — all the time either. Again, we’re dealing with people here. Until we’re able to see our way through the propaganda and wake up to reality, though, our country will remain just 50 states, its people in no way united.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.