We’re in the middle of an election season in Minnesota and across the USofA.  Everything is certain to become hotter, more partisan, and much louder.  I think there’s only one course of action for people who care about our state, our nation, and our planet:

Opt out.

No, I’m not calling for people to boycott elections or debates or politics in general.  I want to see something far more active bubbling under the noize.  I’d like for everyone who reads Barataria to reach out and spend at least 30 minutes talking to someone they are sure they disagree with politically.  Why?  Because I’m guessing that you’ll find something you agree with if you let it roll.

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The situations have been coming on strong for years, but they seem to be peaking.  Everywhere you visit on the internet, and sometimes even in public, we all run into someone who can take any subject and make it into a kind of right-wing rant:

“Sure is hot today!”
“That’s not evidence of global warming!”

It wasn’t long ago that characters and attitudes like this were the domain of the other side – those who were against The System, The Man, The Establishment, They.  Has everything flipped, or is this all one big phenomenon?

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Do you remember the good old days?  Yeah, there never were any good old days.  Everything has always been a struggle, leadership has never really been what the legends tell us, and people have always been just people.  Yet in narrow little areas it’s sometimes possible to look back and find that maybe we didn’t know just how good we had it. I was going to write a piece called “Where have all the good Republicans gone?” but somehow Tip O’Neill’s book “All Politics is Local” was calling to me instead.  No, I’m not going to dump on Republicans here.  We all bad.

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