The Group 'W' Bench

YouCanGetAnythingYouWant
ArloVille

There are a lot of memorable scenes in Arlo Guthrie's 'Alice's Restaurant'.

But my favorite bit of whimsy is when Arlo is banished to the Group 'W' bench with all the Mother rapers and Father stabbers who treat him like one of the gang when he lets on that his crime was littering and creating a nuisance.

Which is how I would like to be able to deal with the other side of the big wide bloggodome (ie. by acknowledging our differences and then getting on with it).

But everytime I go over to to one of those waygone right sites, like say the Free Republic down south or the Shotgun up here, I just can't do it.

Because there is just so much bile, meanness and wilful ignorance masquerading as righteousness at those places that I inevitably conclude that I would rather have sharp sticks poked in my eyes than sit on the 'W' bench with those people.

But some folks have to, regardless. Like the young guy who called into Al Franken's show yesterday and made the point that, because he lived in South Carolina he couldn't hate everyone who had a Bush/Cheney 'W' sticker on their bumper because if he did that he would have absolutely no friends.

Which I guess might be the case for me if I pulled up stakes and moved across the mountains to, say, Calgary.

So, what am I trying to say?

Not sure exactly, but I could see Kid from Carolina's point. And I also get frequent contributor lenin's ghost's point when he says that most people don't see enough of the big picture to understand what is really going on.

So, I guess ultimately, to prevail, we must strive to get along well enough with most of the people who disagree with us politically so that we can increase the understanding levels enough to make a difference.

But that's a strategy reserved for the reasonable people only.

As for the rhetorical Father Stabbers.......well, those guys will still be sent to the 'W' bench, but instead of getting to listen to somebody witty and wise like Arlo the Litterer they will instead be forced to listen to scratchy old recordings of Wacky Bennett's top 10 stump speeches from the 1950's over and over and over again, 24/7, for the duration.


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