Make nice with your neighbors

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for November 4, 2020)

With the election now behind us, you need to find a way to live with the neighbors who supported a different candidate than you did. The neighbor who had a sign in the yard supporting the other candidate; go make up with them. Even if their sign is still there. Don't act as though you're doing them a favor-- it's as much to your benefit as it is to theirs. Don't be a sore loser or a sore winner; be a neighbor. Forget politics for a while.

I know it's difficult, in this time when everything has been politicized, but it's important to try.

This is the trouble with politics-- or at least one of many. It's why I see politics as such a negative, anti-social influence in the world. When everything has been politicized, everything is a threat; a life and death struggle-- which it shouldn't be. Government should have never been allowed to grow this powerful nor have this much effect on our lives.

It makes me sad that people have allowed politics and the government it spawns (or is it the other way around?) to infect society like a cancer. I can't make people stop being political, but I can point out how toxic it is and show them alternatives.

Speaking out against politics isn't "being political" any more than warning kids about the dangers of drug abuse is the same as selling them drugs.

I want people to get along. I would prefer if they focused on real things instead of political things. There are enough real problems in the world without being political and creating problems from nothing.

You have a right to your life, liberty, and property. No one's political opinions can change this in any way, although political opinions do cause people to violate you while imagining they are doing the right thing. They aren't.

As long as your neighbors aren't actively violating you, and you aren't actively violating them, you can find some common ground. Just remember this when the politicians you each support start calling for rights-violating legislation aimed at one of you. All legislation violates rights in some way, which is why I never support it and don't support it being enforced.

Maybe next time there's an election you can remember to put relationships ahead of politics. Society ahead of government. People ahead of groups.

Making nice with the neighbors after a contentious election could be a good beginning.

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