Lament

There was a time, as recently as the 80’s, I would suppose, when people who called themselves “liberals” were fun.  They let their hair down, didn’t care about social conventions, and were willing to take risks and seek adventures.  Compared to stereotypical conservatives–who wore suits, worked hard, lived boring lives, and retired conventionally and uninterestingly–liberals were the ones out there “living life”.

All that seems to have changed.  The world has gotten darker, or so it seems to me.

No doubt most of the people in rock climbing towns–as one example–still identify as “liberal”, but there are no laughs without glances.  The only really safe laughs, I would think, now, are at the expense of conservatives and Trump  supporters.  The whole thing is very serious, humorless, puritanical, tense, and angry.

At their worst most members of the Moral Majority were not that bad.  Most of them still believed the “condemn the sin, not the sinner”, and I think most would have been happy to invite into their homes the most flamboyant homosexual for a slice of pie, if they could talk with him about Jesus.  And failing, they would still have prayed for him, which I suppose is still an attack of sorts, but far, far short of the angry condemnations which greet anyone who runs afoul of today’s crop of little Nazis.

As Robert Plant said (can I call those proto-jeggings?), when hippies were still fun, “Does anybody remember laughter?”

If there truly are grey aliens, we seem to be marching towards matching them emotionally.  Most of us, at any rate.  I’m doing my own thing (I love JT: he makes me happy.)

I suppose this sort of post adds to the problem. I ain’t laughin’ neither.  I’ll need to smoke on that.  I am going to add “buy some Marx Brothers movies to my list”.