Dorothy down the rabbit hole on the YBR…with apologies to Alice.

Those annoying paint by numbers

Had I been as enamored by Alice’s adventures in Wonderland as I was by Dorothy’s adventures in Oz, talking about falling down the rabbit hole would make more sense, but considering that for the last couple of years nothing makes sense, why should I be concerned about making sense.

Had Dorothy happened to have fallen down a rabbit hole as she traveled along the Yellow Brick Road, I contend she would have bypassed the Cheshire Cat and wandered into the paint by numbers room, the very place most of us have either visited, lived in, or still live in.

The paint by number room (PBN) is the place where we are obligated to complete a painting, not of our own design, but one we were given, or I should say, inherited. At some point in our lives, usually when we were young and very impressionable, we were told life was like a canvas and we were free to paint it.

That was a lie. We mistakenly believed we were given a blank canvas. We also believed we were free to paint it according to our whims and heart’s desires. Little did we know that the painting of our life had been prepared for us down to the smallest details. Each little space was given a number that corresponded to a color. All we had to do was paint by numbers.

When the world was simple and the rules of life were less complicated (but still very rigid), many of us had no problem with PBN. The world was really never as simple as we once believed, we were just more compliant. We were rule-followers deluxe.

The world hasn’t changed a lot. We’ve changed. We are not as compliant as we once were. We don’t want to PBN and those of us who have children and grandchildren don’t want to see them obligated to PBN.

The problem is we believe we have given our children/grandchildren a blank canvas. That is also a lie. In fact, while we have deluded ourselves into thinking there are no PBN’s, there are hundreds of different PBNs that go by brand names, such as democrat, republican, Catholic, gay, anti-gay, conservative, liberal, pro-Trump, anti-Trump, and on and on.

People who are painting a democrat PBN think their work deserves to be hanging in a museum, while people who are filling in red on a republican PBN believe their painting is the right and only painting.

The current Supreme Court Justice hearing in DC is a perfect example of the horrors of PBN. Democrats are using one PBN and Republicans are using another. Liberal or left-leaning commentators are proudly showing the world what the Supreme Court pick looks like and what the Court will look like with Ketanji Brown Jackson as a Justice. Needless to say, the painting the Republicans are holding up to the world looks a hell of a lot different.

The problem with any PBN is the finished picture is actually finished before you add the first drop of paint. The Democrat Party PBN is not about why Ketanji Brown Jackson is good for ALL AMERICANS, but all about how she is right because she will be the first black female Justice in history (and of course it goes WITHOUT question…in their PBN, that she is qualified beyond distinction). The Republican Party PBN doesn’t leave any room for painting outside the lines. Their painting is all about why she shouldn’t be appointed to the Supreme Court (and of course it goes WITHOUT question…in their PBN that she has made too many bad judicial choices in the past.)

What we are witnessing is not Paint by numbers, but HATE BY NUMBERS!

The hatred evidenced in the SC hearing is just one example of the hatred that exists on far too many levels in life today. If that isn’t enough we are all subjected to hate-filled PBN classes in the media. And we all seem to only attend those classes who are working on the same PBN that we are.

News alert. I don’t care what party you might belong to, neither of them is always right or always wrong. We are all hearing too much hate-filled rhetoric. We have lost the ability to listen with open ears, not ears stuffed with preconceived beliefs.

I think the word of the day should be: WAIT. Wait, let them speak. Wait, let’s hear them out. Wait, maybe we can work it out without destroying the world.

It’s time to tear out a blank page from the pad and draw together. It’s the only way we’ll get out of the rabbit hole.

(I never liked PBN. I got many a one for a birthday or Christmas, but I never, ever completed one.)

Note: for the curious among us, the word “draw” is interesting because while it means one thing in one situation, it has a different meaning in another. “Draw together.” It has more than one meaning.

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In our end is our beginning on the YBR.

(Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

T. S. Eliot ended his classic poem East Coker (the second poem in his Four Quartets) with the line “in the end is my beginning.” I believe it is an appropriate line to end my mini-discourse on the times we are living in. I say appropriate because the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, just two weeks after the nation’s Capitol was breached, represents an end and a beginning. Sort of.

Constitutionally it does mark the end of the Trump reign and the beginning of the Biden era, but is there…or will there ever be…a beginning because the end has not ended. I say this despite President Biden’s heartfelt words meant to bring Americans together again.

75 million voters who cast their vote for Trump did so, in my opinion, because they felt ignored. Not only that, many of the Trump voters do not see themselves reflected in the faces of those people who call themselves Democrats.

I beg the following questions. What is a Democrat? What is a Republican? I have yet to hear in all my 72 years a believable answer to those two questions. An orange is an orange. An apple is an apple. I have no problem understanding what they are. I can’t say the same about a democrat and a republican.

If we are honest we would admit that the image we conjure when we think of a democrat of a republican is cemented to stereotype.

the sophisticated city dweller (top two) and the country folk (bottom two)

Of course that’s not true…but we all seem to think in stereotypes. Many Democrats think of Republicans as country bumpkins…a “class” of people who are Bible thumpers, who don’t have a progressive thought in their heads and who would join a mob of people and trash the US Capitol. Many Republicans think of Democrats as people with low or no morals, who have permissive attitudes about everything, and who pay lip service to a God that Republicans believe in.

We have set ourselves apart and claimed allegiance, not to the United States of America, but to a political party. It appears that Democrats beget Democrats and Republicans raise Republicans.

We call us the United States of America. Is that true? Was it ever true? If you look at presidential election maps you see blue states and red states. It took a civil war to let us all know something EVERYONE knew…that we were divided. The Civil War might have ended in 1865, but has the “fighting” really ever ended? While we talk about a wall on our border with Mexico, we never talk about the walls that separate one state from another or one group of people from another. Those are the walls President Biden needs to talk about. Those are the walls that won’t come down with legislation or national guard interference. They have to dissolve because we want to dissolve those walls. And the only way they will dissolve is if people of reason from all political parties bring an end to the hatred in this country that is fostered by political partisanship.

There were many signs of hope at the inauguration. Unfortunately, politically inspired sentiments have a short expiration date.

I found the voice of Amanda Gorman to be a voice that could help dissolve our differences. Her recitation, I believe, could be the beginning that will put an end to the hatred that divides us.

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