“I hold it to be an inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” – Robert Frost.

I’ve seen something that becomes more and more apparent to me each day with each message I get about politics.

Donald Trump is not our problem. The real problem is the system that made him inevitable and also made him our President, something he is clearly unfit to do.

The left and the right embody the worst traits of Stalinism, Communism, even fascism. It is groupthink and cult think hiding behind the name of democracy.

Soon, everybody will drink the poisoned Kool-Aid if asked by their leader.

The left and the right – two prisms through which everyone must think – has split the country, created two entities that detest each other, cannot communicate with one another, block everything the other wants to do, and that together have paralyzed and damaged our democracy.

All of us are losing, there is no way to win. This wasn’t Trump’s idea, but he did see a hole big enough for him to jump through. And the system plays to every awful instinct he possesses.

This system has taught hundreds of millions of people how to not do something essential to any democracy – think for themselves.

Some hate everything Trump does, good or bad, the others love everything Trump does, good and bad. Each side stands for different things, but in some ways, one is as bad as the other. They just take turns hurting our democracy.

For this man, our President, adulation is a fuel, it simply enables him to get worse and worse. That is that the messages I get every day are telling me. It’s not Trump. It’s a country that forgets how to listen, and a country that knows only hate and adulation.

A country founded on the principle of individual freedom for white people is now dominated by people who no longer are capable of thinking for themselves.

It isn’t the trolls and nasties I have to fight – I see most of them as weak-minded cowards – it’s the people who are always telling me who I am and who I ought to be. It’s the system that is failing us.

—

America has always prided itself on the individuality of its’ citizens, from Thomas Paine to Thoreau and Emerson, to Ayn Rand to Walt Whitman to E.B. White.

“Insist on yourself, “wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “never imitate.”

For me, identity and confidence are knowing who I am and not changing it a bit because someone’s version of reality is not my reality.

Individualism has always seemed a sacred and respected path to me. So is identity, my sense of myself, and my right to define myself.

All through American history, weird oddballs have been writing things from farms and remote places, asserting their individuality and fighting for their identity and reality.

Most of them are forgotten. Some of them had huge followings and influenced their society. Some, like Paine, sparked a revolution.

People like that launched the country. When Thoreau went to his pond, he was continuing a glorious tradition of maintaining his individuality. Nobody told him to consider other points of view.

I think the Internet has joined forces with the left and the right to destroy individuality, it is the greatest threat to all of them as well as people like me.

People are always telling me who I am, they rarely, if ever, ask me.

I am no Thoreau or Emerson, of course, but I do see myself as an individual, not defined by other people or political parties or the angry and often self-righteous mobs who fight for control of the Internet.

Our President has nothing but contempt for individuality. He insists on the right to define the people around him, even when they are gone or wounded. Many prominent politicians are the same way.

A month or so ago, I started writing about politics. I just couldn’t sit on the side and watch all this amazing stuff happening without jumping in and offering my point of view.

I’m so glad I did.

I felt I had something to offer, and judging from the response (the first piece got 300,000 shares), I was right.

I knew that I was opening myself up to the harsh world of partisan politics, something I had managed to avoid these last years on my farm.

 On a personal level, this is the battle that rages but never ends. I don’t need to be liked or agreed with, I see that I do care about my individuality, yet another reality to accept. I need to think for myself.

I am grateful that I instinctively balk at group think, it always feels creepy to me.

We are losing our grip on this long and glorious American tradition of individuality, mostly solitary people out of the mainstream who offer their distinct point of view and ask nothing of us but that we think.

We would not even have a country if not for people like that, and soon, we may be a country with none of them left. I owe them a lot.

Once upon a time, individuals were seen as heroes. Because they thought for themselves.

Yesterday, I wrote about the President and Narcissism. I make no pretense to liking our President, and I have no need of objectivity or claim to it, I write on my blog under my name. I don’t pretend I like something if I don’t.

I don’t hate him,  and I have no connections of any kind to any political party. Believe it or not, it is still possible in American to think for oneself. I don’t need a politician to tell me what to think.

I’ve voted for Democrats and Republicans when I voted at all. So what??

My blog is my identity now, home base for my lifelong struggle with individuality, the freedom to be me. I’ve always known I was alone, and am comfortable with that.

I don’t fit into any group, and no group is eager to have me. I learned early on that if I wanted to be a slave in life, I could just continue to let other people run my life and define me.

In my blog, I have found my voice, a place where I can build my identity and, when necessary, fight for it. And in our world, that is every day.

Thoreau would not survive an hour in 2020.

My blog is a monologue, not a dialogue.

I share it with no one. I accept and welcome civil comments on what I write, and civil disagreement is welcome. But I can’t say I am interested in what other people think I should write. I’m not.

No one else gets to write on my blog but me. It is my version of Walden Pond.

I’m not running for mayor, and don’t need the restraining straps of modern corporate journalism, a corporate way of hiding from the truth and ducking the hard stuff.

I put my name on everything I write and take responsibility for it.

I don’t need to hide behind a label like “left” or “right,” I don’t need them to tell me what to think since neither movement seems able to do much original thinking at all.

Look at the plague they have brought upon our country. Why would anyone with a functioning soul want to join?

I see from this experience that individuality is a dying art if it is an art at all now. Ideas don’t get a chance to breathe; they are labeled, tagged, tucked away in the cold morgue of ideas, forgotten and frozen.

The Internet, which showed so much promise as an incubator of new ideas, is fast becoming the greatest threat on the planet to original thinking. The left and the right are right alongside. When is the last time you heard anyone speak about the need for individuality?

Everyone seems to assume there are other agendas, hidden and dark. This was Big  Brother’s big idea: no individual thought.

We live in a suspicious, angry, and anxious time. We are disconnected from other humans, figuratively, literally, and spiritually. We talk all the time with people we never see and will never know. No wonder social media is such a cesspool.

When I think of the left and the right, that’s what I see in my mind: frozen minds, the death of thinking, anger, fear, and grievance.

I am a poor writer, indeed, if I draw much inspiration from either of them.

I chose a random sampling of yesterday’s comments on my post about Donald Trump because each, in its way, is interesting and tells us where we are as a country and perhaps even why Donald Trump is our President.

There is a reason for everything, and I am drawn to looking for reasons.

The comments aren’t that interesting to me in political terms, they speak to the death of individuality, and a deepening misunderstanding of what identity is.

We are being herded like cows into one mob or the other, and then told we have a choice.

It is clear to me now that hardly anyone who comments on my writing reads my pieces. A reader can always tell.

The people who tell me they are sad because they miss all those animal stories don’t seem to know that the animal stories have never gone away, or that they can just skip over things they don’t want to read.

It is their habit and instinct to complain instead, people think everyone they encounter is a corporation jumping through hoops to pretend to soothe their concerns. I don’t pretend to do that.

People are absolutely stunned or outraged to be challenged or called out.

Anybody who thinks differently in our time and in this context is simply pushed to the edges of consciousness, or marked (labeled) for dismissal. Once challenged, the idea assassins simply vanish, perhaps off to a simpler target. They are the ghosts of the new world.

The nature of the left and the right is to forbid original thinking, it is inefficient and dangerous to them. If people were free to think, they might actually do it rather than write nasty messages to one another and call it democracy.

How many original thinkers have you seen on cable news? Or in Washington?

Here is a sampling of some comments I received yesterday. Many of them deny me my individuality; they can only see me in the way they have learned to see others or have been taught to see others.

And from this, we can see how people see the world.

To me, they may deny me my identity, but many have so clearly lost theirs. This stings much more than the insults and the death threats. It feels Orwellian to me, not American.

The messages also tell me a lot about my own identity and individuality and how important it is for me to keep both and fight for them. I will never give them up again.

(I left out the death threats, they are the most boring of all the messages.)

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness but must explore it if it is goodness. Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Blog Comments, June 18th, 2020

Joni:” Unfortunately, the right people will not read this. It’s very scary; the world is scared. This man (Trump) is very quickly going off the rails. I only hope for a few casualties.

Thanks, Joni, but I challenge your assumption. I don’t think it’s unfortunate that my readers read what I write. They are the “right” people and the reason I write at all.

 I am not on the team; I don’t write to turn the election around or tell people who to support or how to vote. I write for the people who grace me by reading me. Nobody needs me to tell them what to think. 

Wendy: “Sadly, your page is becoming an echo chamber. I didn’t come here for politics, but it’s your venue and you have the right to say what you want. I just wish you’d read some alternate viewpoints occasionally. We all should broaden our thinking.”

Wendy, thanks. I express my point of view; I don’t presume to express yours or anybody else’s. And you have no idea what I read, you didn’t ask. According to the dictionary, an echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition. I’m not sure how this relates to my article on Trump and Narcissism, I have not written about it before, so I can’t be repeating it. I don’t get how broadening our thinking means not writing what I believe, but what you believe.

This is not sad for me. I get to write about politics again, and my blog traffic is going through the roof. It is my venue, thanks, and I will continue saying what I wish here, not what other people want to. You are welcome to read it. 

Donna: Jon, the problem is that you just keep on writing from your point of view.

Yes, Donna, this is true. This is what Thomas Paine did, and Henry Thoreau and E.B. White did and what Donald Trump does on Twitter. Only they all did it or do it better than me. They didn’t write to express other points of view; they wrote or wrote to express theirs. That was and is their genius. Thoreau told his own story, not other people’s. Your problem is that you don’t know how to handle disagreement,  it now seems alien to you,  like many people you just can’t accept that someone might think differently, and that’s okay, even if it’s wrong. All I need to be on my blog is me.

Tatiana: Can you explain to us why do you need to care about what he will do or not do? You sound like an old yenta. Take care of your life. You need love!

Tatiana, my grandmother, was a Yenta. I am delighted with the idea; I think it is probably true.  Do you think it’s a bad thing to be curious, something only for old Jewish ladies? I don’t feel the need to explain to you why I write what I write or what I care about. If it isn’t apparent, then you are blind, or I am incompetent. Why do you need to care about what I will do or won’t do? I do agree with you about love. I don’t see much in your post.