I swear I don't wanna get political

But honestly, I cannot help it. I'm not gonna make this a political space, but I'm an American in an election year, and these days that's become so much more than it once was.

I am a Lyft driver. I have just recently surpassed 1000 rides. That's a thousand strangers in my car. For anyone who doesn't know, my car is my sanctuary. It's one of the few places I'm alone. It's where I hear the most music, where I can be with my thoughts. The times I've spent with friends in my car probably get overlooked by the friends but it's what I remember the most. (There's a reason for this, the politics come, but bear with me.) 

I have shared one of my intimate spaces with a thousand strangers. A lot of them are just like me. But the majority are not. Some don't even speak my language, but most do. They haven't lived my life. They don't know my experience. And I in return know little about them. But sometimes I get the chance to connect. Many people are happy to chat. And it's surprising how deep a stranger will let a conversation go sometimes, maybe the lack of ever having to see me again makes it feel like a chance to shoot those shots, maybe my vibes are comfortable, maybe they're a terrified captive audience, possibly and most likely a bit of all three. But those conversations are the best part of my job and provide a lot of mental clarity, due to perspective.

But I'm dancing around my point, and perspective brings me back to it. I'm surrounded by so many different perspectives. I've seen and spoken to more of them than I think many people get the chance to, and even more just don't care to. These perspectives have impacted me like asteroids, and reshaped my understanding of the world and the people in it. The United States of America (told you I was getting there), it's supposed to be built on this concept. We are all better in harmony, not discord, and understanding people face to face is one of the strongest ways to tune up the band and get all the instruments on key. I live in Pittsburgh, it's a city built on immigrants and unions, forged from steel but even more so from solidarity.

Now more than ever, people are expressing their identities. I love it, it brings me joy to see authenticity. Weird is a compliment in my household and I encourage it from my kids. I've heard people thank me purely for just letting them be weird, and like honestly that's sad to me. America is the home of weird. We made hippies here. Weird Al is from here. Pittsburgh was where Andy Warhol grew up before he became a big fancy New Yorker, it's why we have a museum dedicated to him.

The world has forever had a problem with women. I was putting a happy spin on all of the various points before I went into the hard stuff, but this one, there ain't no spin my male gaze can or should apply. Forever, women have been relegated to some weird subservient box, but I'm not the voice for that story, listen to the women around you about it, they know. America is the home of strong women though also, one of them put us in space. And don't get me started on Pittsburgh women specifically. The steel is not the strongest nor the most unbending substance we produce, that honor belongs to the strong fucking women that raised families while their husbands were in the mills and mines and factories, and then put on their fancy pants and worked their eight straight. Sure, that's traditional and outdated, but it wasn't then, and fuckin kudos to them for holding it down, truly underrated.

But listen, I pointed out three big things to me, let me summarize.

-I find strength and fulfillment in diversity
-I believe in people's right to the identity they feel
-I fully embrace the validity and value of women

NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE POLITICAL ISSUES

That's the thing about all of this that makes me ill. Politics, these are things about national defense, international trade, economic growth... Not fucking humanity.

If you read any of the things I had to say up there, and you really, really want to offer a counterpoint, I would propose that you go fuck yourself. I mean, you're welcome to come back and offer it. But do that part first.

It just makes me sad. People really want to blame every goddamn problem on "others" when it's literally all of us. The world is and always has been a shit show. The people different from you, yeah some probably have something to do with it, just like the people the same as you. I don't know when we got so lost and so scared as a country that we had to put all the evils of the world on minorities. Racial, sexual, religious, pick a minority, we'll blame something on it. But WHY? Why are we so scared now. The world has always been terrifying. Acceptance doesn't make it more so, it just gives us more troops in the fight to stand against the actual crazy and terrible shit.

And listen, yinz can go on and on about tarrifs and budgets and solvency and foreign aid and global posturing, all damn day. I encourage it. That's real politics. Leave your fears of humanity out of the fucking ballot box, and do the right thing, and maybe one day we'll get back to that.


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