Synchronized Swimming

delete what I said, have to think about an answer more.

Remember Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels? Ever feel like you are living in a world of stubborn Lilliputs and Blefuscus?

Like an awkward sychronized swimmer, it's rough being near the middle of the political spectrum. You get smacked around from all sides and it's difficult to put up a defense because you can find benefit and folly at both ends. How do you stick up for those friends at either end of the tug-o-war when they're being both a part of the dogpile and under the dogpile?

Anyone else feel that way? How do you deal with it, do you just keep quiet and stay out of it, or do you speak up and carry a lot of bandaids? Is it possible to fit in without being a traffic cop?

I think I understand you, bfnet.


Turning to a new tent doesn't seem useful to me. I'm not a natural clique person.

On fitting in, just talk. All on a2k is not war.






This is not entirely direted to you, bfnet.

Just that I don't see conversation being a matter of pallisades or developed forts.

Yeah, "just talk" is about it. I stand up for ideas I agree with and argue with ideas I disagree with, regardless who utters them. And if my friends can't take being disagreed with, they don't stay friends long. ;-)

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, are the rest obligated to drown too?

I can only hope so.


Assuming they'll live but have their robotry zapped.

This is not against butryflynet, whom I gather identified with these athletes.





Just sayin', for me, this was the most, or vied for the most, contrived attempt at sport I'd seen or read about, me, reading sports stories from early in the twentieth century onward.

You assume incorrectly. It has nothing really to do with sport. It is a metaphor for talking about the state of our societies and this message board's political community. It is that robotry on both sides of the middle that I feel uncomfortable about. Refusing to be flexible to reach a compromise both can live with, shunning and ridiculing anyone who doesn't fall in line with their side. I find it difficult to communicate with that frame of mind. I end up feeling very hypocritical because I am willing to see and learn from both sides of the coin. Like I said earlier, I often feel like the person squeezed in the middle of a swim formation. If I lean toward either direction, I get smacked for being out of line. Who cares which is the classy end of the egg to be broken, as long as it gets broken so it can feed people.

I put the thread here, and used the synchronized swimming metaphor because I'd like to talk with some others who are feeling squeezed from both sides without it getting distracted with fights in the wings.

BBB
bm