In The Grey

I’ve been failing to fit neatly into a particular box for some time now.  Political season is once more coming upon us at locomotive speed, and all I can feel about it is tired.

I am not a Republican.  I am not a Democrat.  I have been registered as both (and more recently as a Libertarian) but now I am simply Independent.  I believe that the people who run both of the big two at their highest level get together in secret to have a drink, smoke cigars, decide what the rest of us will have to live with, and laugh at the way they keep the majority of us distracted squabbling and snarling at each other on social media so that we don’t pay too much attention to what they are really doing.

Yes, I am aware that this makes me a conspiracy theorist.

I still vote.  I do this because the women who came before me fought so hard for me to have that right.  I would never dishonor their memory by failing to take advantage of it.  However, each and every time I vote I find myself longing for some real truth and wishing I had a better option than the best of uniformly bad choices.

I am too liberal for conservatives, and too conservative for liberals.  I do not identify cleanly with either group because I dislike the behavior of extremists on both sides.

I am too Christian for Atheists and too “liberal-minded” for many Christians.  I am simultaneously too Feminist and not nearly Feminist enough.  I support civil unions for all, believe evolution to be our best current working theory on the way God made the world, and think that human beings are never qualified to decide when to end the lives of other human beings.  Death comes pretty soon for all of us anyway, we don’t need to hurry it.  At the same time I would fight to preserve my life if someone tried to take it.  Or at least I hope I would find the courage to if that situation ever came upon me.

I change my mind a lot when introduced to new information.  I consider this a strength as I am able to absorb new things and adapt to them.  Particularly since I believe most people never stray too far from whatever core beliefs they acquired in adolescence.  Some people think this just makes me wishy-washy.  Truth gets buried deeper and deeper every day in an ocean of unending websites.

I refer to all of this as living perpetually in the grey.