No, they had never talked to me before. But I always wanted to talk to them. Tell them how ridiculous I think they are. Tell them how highly I think of the man in the House. Tell them how my dad listens to their radio station for comedic relief after his day at work. Negative brain waves are as far as I have gotten and with the stern, solid super hero capes strapped so tightly around their necks, I’m not positive the negativity registered. They’re still desperately trying to save the world.
“Hello!” one of them said to me, cheering and hopeful as I turned the corner to walk into the Husky Union Building. Our president’s enlarged face was blowing in the bitingly chilled Seattle wind and he likely felt it moving the artificial tiny black moustache they placed on him as a “political statement.” Their shifting feet moved across bricks that blanketed a school which suggested Dreams From My Father as summer reading. I wonder if they read.
“No thank you.” It was the first thing that came to mind and thus forced itself through the bit between my lips as I walked past them with the most distance attainable, refusing to make eye contact with the people who I think are so mislead, with whom I entirely disagree. As I jetted through the liberal and conservative faces of the University’s students lunching in the cafeteria-like basement of the HUB, I experienced that joyful “hello” resounding on a reel of guilt through my consciousness. He got up today to the same Seattle I did. Put on his clothes as I did: one leg at a time, right? He walked to work, to volunteer behind that table probably thinking, I’m going to change some minds today, enlighten some people. Get them educated, you know? He must anticipate rejection. He has to in a city like this, and with such a bold statement as the sign hanging from his sad empty table, he must experience it often. But he pushes through. That’s commendable.
“Hello!” There it was, in my head.
After the shuffle of getting a dissatisfactory lunch as I always do at the HUB and eating it, miscommunications with a barista, and a disagreement with a pastry bag, I was still haunted by the rude remark I handed to the optimistic Obama-hater. I returned with the mismade latte and an apology.
“I just completely blew you guys off,” I said, looking at them directly in their ice-cold eyes, trying to reach any substance and pull it to the surface. “You said hello to me and I just totally ignored you.” Their lips pursed while they blinked. I offered them my mistake latte. Shifting feet over red bricks. They felt awkward. I pressed on: “You know, just because I don’t—” I had to stop for a moment. The idea of three souls staring right into me, hardly listening to me, seriously judging me, scared me more than anything else in the world. But that’s the Republic of Discomfort they step into every time they move behind that table. It was suddenly the most important thing I could possibly say to them. So I continued. “Just because I don’t see the world as you do doesn’t mean I don’t recognize you as people.”
If we were cartoons, the high-pitched “boink-boink” noise would have accompanied their stark blinks. There wasn’t even a hint of thought indicated by their one-layer, wide-open eyes and pale faces. Did they know what that was, dehumanization? The term doesn’t exactly fit comfortably with their agenda. I wondered what kind of shapes their hands made inside their pockets.
The evening before, I had coffee with my good friend Erich. He and I met in the summer of 2008 and he has since been, and will continue to be, one of my favorite people on this planet to be in the presence of. We walk a finely comfortable line with the clashing of our political views, Erich having voted against Obama and continuously voting for any interaction between myself and anyone who looks like Mr. President. We find honest humor in it all. I have yet to have a serious conversation with him about his down-to-earth political views (if Erich has that serious level).
That night at our two-hour table, long past the bottoms of our lattes, Erich explained to me the four levels of conservativism. Erich dwells in the smallest sector, the top of the moderate pyramid: Jedi conservative. A few of our friends he named to be in the next tier amongst the “oh I guess I’ll be conservative” bunch, who I named passive. Then come the Christians, the extremists. Scary shit, homie. The bottom tier I have since forgotten and am still not sure if we discussed for as our conversations are already streamline, the upbringing of radical Republicans has serious subject-changing power, especially between the Jedi and me.
I’ll place my weighty, no-nonsense new ally friends in the Christian category. It’s just scary enough to work.
And they still hadn’t said anything. Not a sound except for the cartoon “boink-boink” of their opening and shutting eyelids resonated in that vast brick-covered space. Not an idea of what they were thinking (did they have thoughts?). No energy at all. Not a single inkling.
“Okay well. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” Boink-boink. Compassion?, they may have been thinking, what’s that? Now my feet were shifting. “Alright—” I turned to walk away then turned back, “have a nice day!” The cold wind hit me and felt warm. I laughed to myself then was stopped by a voice from the table, the first voice I’d heard from LaRouche since the initiating hello that started this entire fiasco.
“Would you like something to read?”
I turned around. “No thank you, I’m pretty set in my ways. Thank you though!” My smile followed me all the way to work, where I entered a building to find the boss who makes fun of me for recycling absent. Figures. My latte was likely still untouched on that ugly table, getting colder faster than any latte had ever chilled. I got now why they’re always so bundled up.
An hour into things, a paper got slapped down on my desk. It was wrinkled and had writing in two columns. A diagonal crease ran down its body like it had been carried for a while. I turned immediately around. “Hi, by the way.” And looked back at the paper. First Steps in the LaRouche Plan, it read. How had it stalked me across campus? It, like my friendship with Erich, tight-roped between politically strange and personally hilarious. After all, personal is political right?
Boink-boink.
“I’m just surprised that these people are on a college campus,” my likely conservative (Jedi, of course) boss said.
“I know, what is this, 1980?” Shaking it off, I left brewing for a later hour.
When I got home, I read the last paragraph of the flyer:
And that’s what we have to make clear now. So, don’t waste our time, bringing up subjects that are not worth discussing! Because, either we’re going to do what I just indicated, or we’re not going to exist. So there’s no point in discussing anything different!
I read it a second time and a third.
I felt the soil beneath my feet from Sachenhausen in Germany and closed my eyes to see the baracks and the ovens.
I saw the Jewish museum in Berlin.
I read it a fourth time. And I wondered why they don’t call themselves dictators with such a demanding message. What kind of training had those extremists gone through? If Obama is Hitler, who are they?
Boink-boink.
