Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion

To use an American expression.

That's the feeling I have many times when participating in meetings and groups with older lefties, or 'progressives', to be more exact. The lefties know their stuff better. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It has to do with the comprehension of issues. I just ran into an article which talked about wanting to reach out to the Religious Left in America and was reminded of a strategy session where someone brought up the concept of a religious left....and it was something they'd never thought of before.

I had, ahem, been aware of it for some time.

So I just went along with it and said "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea", thinking to myself that I'd gone back in time.

This happened time and time again, this sort of thing, and I've eventually realized that the people I meet like this, who have huge gaps in their understanding of politics and of the world, are the 'typical liberal' guys who are parodied all over the place as being out of touch etc..

Well, they are---but they at least want to know more, and they make really stupid mistakes in doing so.

Me?

I have a solid understanding of politics that comes from, among other sources, going to that obscure thing, hard to get to, virtually unknown, called an "Encyclopedia Britannica" and looking up the definitions of liberal, conservative, socialist, etc... and actually having some knowledge behind my positions because of it.

But these people, big on heart, low on actually understanding, knee jerk compassionists, are really out there....and it's a good thing for lazy socialists who otherwise would have to engage in some real political dialogue with people.