Grim Statistics

     Spent part of the weekend and this morning looking up some very grim statistics, but I'll spare you for now and just share the gist:

     The United States is a big, sprawling polyglot country, filled with people who came here from all over, for all sorts of reasons -- misfits and high achievers, people with a checkered past hoping to start over, people with a fancy pedigree in search of the next big thing, religious (and antireligious) nuts of every kind, people with big dreams and people with low ambitions.

     Politicians want to slice us and dice us and hammer us into molds -- "woke," "conservative," "liberal," "moderate," sort us by skin color, natal language, religion and so on and on and on, but we're all here.  Red state or blue state, red city or blue city -- it's really all shades of purple and we're side by side, like it or not, fixing one another's cars, cutting each other's hair, punching a timeclock at the factory or cattle on the open range, writing poems, building houses, spraying graffiti on walls or painting it over.

     A few of us -- a tiny minority -- have billions of dollars.  A sizeable minority of us are barely getting by.  Most people living in the U.S. are somewhere in the middle, a little worried over bills but on average, not missing any meals.  We're all a tiny bit special and we're all pretty ordinary.

     And they're all the same as you: they have dreams and hopes, sore spots and gripes.  Try to give 'em the benefit of the doubt.  Even the oddballs and weirdos.  You look pretty strange to someone yourself, right now, just as you are.