Eight Feet Deep

The idiom “Don’t judge a book by its cover” has been around in one form or another for prob­a­bly, well, let’s just say a very long time.

Nonethe­less, if the adage is cliche to one or the other then all I can do is pro­vide a response with an acronymn, delivered in the pho­netic alpha­bet, kind of like you hear fighter pilots do in movies. My pho­netic mes­sage is: “SIERRA, ALPHA, TANGO, SIERRA,” which is short for “sorry about that s**t. In other words, don’t judge a book by its cover suits my needs inso­far as this — hope­fully — short post exists.

I stopped to talk with a neigh­bor upon return­ing from the store. After a few words or so, he launched into a dis­course about how the elec­tions in Vir­ginia and New Jer­sey today should tell the tale of just how screwed up that blankety-blank Obama is doing.

Now I wrote a line or two about this yes­ter­day say­ing I don’t think these few scat­tered elec­tions are going to tell any­thing about how Obama is doing in office, the state of the Democ­rats or the future for the divi­sions within the Repub­li­can party. So, I told my neigh­bor I didn’t think the elec­tions will mat­ter one damn bit except in those states. He went just right along with his rant.

I have never dis­cussed pol­i­tics with my neigh­bor. He prob­a­bly doesn’t even know I blog or have what some refer to as a “lib­eral” blog. I don’t par­tic­u­larly see EFD that way, but what­ever works. I am a lib­eral in the good sense, but mostly a mod­er­ate and con­ser­v­a­tive on other mat­ters and even lib­er­tar­ian on still oth­ers. The neighbor’s take on mat­ters is rather obvi­ous, a “watch Fox News all-the-time ultra con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can.” This is obvi­ous because he spouts the party line every time I see him.

What puz­zles me is why he thinks I would like to hear his, mostly wrong, polit­i­cal opin­ion. Is it because I look like a red­neck? I get along with some of the red­necks who live around here. I don’t get along with some of the crack­heads. So is that why my neigh­bor tar­gets me as a Limbaugh-boostin’ Obama hater?

The same hap­pens when I am in the wait­ing room at the VA clinic. Some guy wear­ing a World War II GI-rene vet­eran ball cap — thank him for his ser­vice — comes in and starts blast­ing away at how Obama is ruin­ing this uni­verse, not to men­tion the Corps, Sem­per Fi! Of course, at the VA you’re liable to get some long-hair guy wear­ing a biker’s vest with Viet­nam vet­eran patches who either starts say­ing the same type of thing, or else he goes off on the Repub­li­cans, which he blames all the way back to Dick Nixon.

Surely it isn’t just me. My past men­tal health coun­selor labeled me as  hav­ing a nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der, so that state­ment should be a sign of progress, yes? Well, per­haps not. The point is, why do peo­ple who you really don’t know that well or at all approach you and unload upon you with their opin­ions — or the opin­ions of Glenn Beck, Sean Han­nity, Lim­baugh and Fox News?

The same goes for reli­gion. I don’t mind hav­ing a ratio­nal dis­cus­sion about reli­gion but I don’t like peo­ple who get in my face and tell me I’m going to Hell when in fact they don’t know me well enough to know where I might be going. Ned­er­land, Texas, for instance. I have had very civil dis­cus­sions about reli­gion with Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies who neatly parked their bikes out­side my place and were extremely polite. They even gave me a Book of Mor­mon, which I have somewhere.

But I am get­ting out of the octa­gon here. Peo­ple approach­ing me about reli­gion, I think, would be less likely based on how I look than pol­i­tics. The truth  is, though, I have to think that a good many peo­ple who give me their polit­i­cal out­look unso­licited do it because, well, I’m not sure why they do it. I guess the weather became to passé.

Some prob­a­bly do see in me the look of a Limbaugh-Palin con­ser­v­a­tive: Shaved head, over­weight, unhappy look­ing most of the time (although that is from chronic pain and not from fig­u­ra­tive pains in the ass), known to wear ball caps with the Hous­ton Astros logo. There you go.

If that be the case, then I wish peo­ple would cease and desist. Stop judg­ing this book by its cover, or what­ever the hell else it is that’s wrong with you!