PicoBlog

Richard, the following was my experience with a person I held in high esteem in all other regards (and the regret I have for not finding a better mirror to have him reconsider his blindness) It is exactly like I sent it to another friend 3 days after the 2016 election, though it was about the trick I pulled on him 3 months after the 2012 election implying I was asking him to critique Obama’s 2009 inaugural speech.

They don't want to hear anything like what they throw at their chosen targets, or about their own whining.

I have lost a friend or two that I would rather not have by holding a mirror up to them, like one former Republican party official. 3 months after Obama's inauguration, I asked him to pause the constant criticism and accusations and review a copy of the '&9 inaugural speech to see if he would find the words at least inspirational. He carefully read the whole speech, thought about it for a bit then lit into a tirade against everything in it. I feigned being perplexed by his response, until he finally asked why I looked so puzzled. I picked up the copy of the speech, looked at the top/title and said, "Oh, there is a typo, '&9 should have been '69, this was Nixon's inaugural speech."

They really don't like being shown their reflections but they can at least see them if you can get them to look in a mirror (sometimes at the cost of a friend). Trump seems a bit more like a Vampire, reputedly unable to see their reflections in mirrors, most popularly expressed by Bram Stroker's description of mirrors being the reflection of a person's soul, which is missing in Vampires. He would not want people following through on his position back in 2012 to have the popular vote trump the electoral college (when he and Newt Gingrich thought Romney would win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote).

I have huge admiration and respect for so many things they have done outside of the political arena, that I especially do not want to get them so riled up we get stupid over what issues we can agree on (however few they are).

I'd rather remain open to everyone I can, to sometimes persuade them my way, but always ready to work out the best we can between us. Sometimes, it helps to just let them vent, then relax enough to figure out better answers for themselves (without overreacting to fights they picked, getting others to overreact to).

If you get a chance to read Bill Moyers "Listening to America" (which I have a treasured signed copy of) look for the part at the end about his frustration trying to interview Fran Buhler, a community organizer hired by the President of Wellman Industries in Johnsonville South Carolina. Buhler almost never spoke, and always had a way of listening, waiting for anyone and everyone else to talk. Moyers found the secret to his success was more due to opening a community center and getting the wives to volunteer to make curtains and do other little things to prepare it for the start of the "real" meetings. The women had casually come together with light enough work that they could talk to people they had never talked to before, forming friendships and eventually getting their husbands to come along. Buhler was a "poor" organizer, mostly "wasting" a lot of time during which the men started discussing what they thought the problems were. Buhler never seemed to offer any solutions, instead asking them to discuss what they thought would work. The man who hired him, Wellman, wouldn't offer solutions either, though he did tell his managers that they had to build their homes well distributed in the communities of their workers, they didn't offer solutions either, but did live among them and mingle enough to know what their concerns were. The community members "gave up" on waiting for solutions from the "organizer" and implemented all their own best solutions.

The book reveals a lot of problems the country was going through back then (1970) and many of the issues were not resolved well if at all, but Johnsonville did a far more acceptable job of allowing people to improve their lives more realistically and peacefully through 4 decades of Wellman's life, keeping a company viable when so many others left the communities that were more loyal to the industries than the industries were to their communities. Wellman could easily have made far more moving to Mexico, but he seemed a great answer to my daughter's favorite question, "Is he rich or does he just have money"?

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