walls of brick

so there are just going to be people you disagree with. people you can't reconcile with. and ideologies that people hold that can't be squared with your own.

i used to think people could work things out, if only reason and facts and fairness and the right words were introduced to the situation. but now i don't. i just think that there are some chasms that can't be bridged or crawled or swum or flown acorss. sometimes there is just no meeting in the middle.

sometimes it's people that refuse to hear you. sometimes it's that their side of things is plain repulsive to you. sometimes it's that a person can't be forgiving. sometimes it's that a person cannot be trusted.

and i have to tell you that i've got less and less respect these days for people that pretend they can bring sides together. mediators, therapists, psychologists, lawyers, politicians. i mostly think these days, that the only thing accomplished by employing one of these folks is some commerce is transacted.


anyway, i think that the best you can ever hope for is that people who you disagree with are decent folk, who won't try to hurt you if you disagree. and that you can agree to live on other sides of the fence. peaceably.

the problem comes in though when public resources must be shared or agreed upon. and i guess that is why there are laws. sad though that some people won't respect those laws either by out and out breaking them or by buying their way out of them or by bullying or manipulating their way out.

anyway, it makes me sad. for about 3 weeks now I've been trying to get something written. A letter to some of the lawmakers in my state who have decided to circumvent the laws of our state and play games with public money and our votes. and if we still used paper, i can't even tell you how many trees i'd have destroyed by now, writing and then crumpling up the paper. i can't find the right words. that would get them to see what i so wish they'd see.

and it occurs to me, that the reason i'm having so much trouble is that there really are no words for these people. no words that will help them to understand. they are brickwalls. they simply do not want to listen or understand. they are being paid to have an opposite opinion. and i can't fight money with my puny words. puny words are no match for brickwalls.

and i might as well save my breath because there aren't words. and apparently there are no numbers i can use either.

because now it appears, according to a Yale study, that numbers (unless they are connected to dollar signs, as in bribes) won't help you change anyone's mind either. did you read about this study? listen to this, "it turns out that highly numerate liberals and conservatives were even more—not less—susceptible to letting politics skew their reasoning than were those with less mathematical ability."

sigh. brickwalls. impervious to everything but money and sledgehammers.