Whether Red or Blue I Wanna Be Friends With You

I have friends who voted for Biden and I have friends who voted for Trump. I have friends who voted for neither and friends who didn’t vote at all. The past several years the divide in this country has gotten ridiculous, families disowning other family members based on who they voted for. Fucking ridiculous. When we automatically dismiss someone because they voted for Biden or Trump, we add to the problem. Look…we all know this country is an absolute fucking mess. You and I are aware that the “system” is designed for the wealthy and not working people such as us—

We are aware of this and yet we fight each other instead of attacking the unfairness in our day to day lives.

To my Republican friends (all white) I point out that Progressives are seeking fair play for everyone including people of color and all genders and sexualities. 

To my Progressive friends, I point out that—like them—Republicans are a desperate for a better world, where working people don’t have to struggle as much. The right are so desperate they believe the mask Trump wears, of the straight shooter looking out for their interests. No, he is a fucking narcissitic sociopath.

Honestly I have issues with both sides:

I see the Progressives pulling down statues of long dead racists—would that energy be better spend finding solutions for the present and the future? My high school was rebranded; I imagine it costs a lot of money to change everything, wouldn’t that money be better spent on a food bank or a shelter for women escaping abusive relationships? And there’s all the identity politics and cancel culture, how everyone expects to be mollycoddled. Failing to understand that there are—surprise—good cops.

I see my Republican friends (all white) going on and on about how George Floyd had a criminal record as did other Blacks murdered by cops. Okay…but no one deserves to be choked to death. No one deserves to be shot twenty times because they’re holding their phone. I see how my Republican friends balk at the “welfare state” and consider all people on assistance as “freeloaders.”

See, I have issues with both sides.

“Throw Trump in jail!”

“Let’s Go Brandon!”

And no one, Red or Blue, protests how our representatives and senators—people who work for us—have the best health care in the world while you and I have $100 or more taken out of every check for mediocre medical coverage.

How is that fair? Imagine, you have employees and they have all these perks, great health care and pensions while you have this massive deductable and will have to rely on Social Security.

Why the fuck precisely aren’t we in the streets about that?

It’s easy to put a Black Lives Matter sign in your yard and use this week's appropriate term for people of color…but if you saw George Floyd being choked to death in front of you would lob a brick at the cop doing it?

When you call out “freeloaders” are you including children who go hungry and old people who freeze to death because they can’t pay the gas bill?

How you stamped your little foot when Biden got the nomination instead of Warren or Sanders; if they had Trump would have won in 2020. A lot of my Progressive friends fail to acknowledge how far to the right this country has shifted the last forty years.

No, the fucking election was not stolen. All those “ballot box stuffing videos” have been debunked. No, Biden is not a Marxist or a member of the “Radical Left,” he is a moderate hack politician who is not really any further to the left than Nixon.

And both sides keep throwing shit at each other like angry, little monkeys.

The welfare state has put us so far in debt!

Of course it has, the twenty year “War on Terror” has nothing to do with that at all.

Most of us working people understand the “system” is not set up for us. We’re all scared, we’re all worried about the future and are juggling bills and struggling with rising costs. The Republicans seems to want to go back to world that only existed in Reagan’s speeches, a good weather world of porch swings and pretty girls in cut off shorts. Progressives are patronizing and dismissive of Republicans, describing them as racists and idiots. We’re all just people, you know? For every difference we have a hundred things in common. This is why I have friends all across the political spectrum.  I just wish I could get them to band together so we could battle the real adversary, the corporate interests that actually run the first world.