We are living in divisive times.
I assume this statement doesn’t catch anyone off guard. Everywhere you look, you will see one group pitted directly against another. As a country, we have been divided into two camps. There’s one very loud camp that will shout “Fake News!” while choosing to believe headlines like “Deep State throws Clinton emails and Constitution into Vitamix, shares smoothie with Putin and Pizzagate conspirators.”
No, that headline isn’t real, but it’s far more believable than it should be.
If you read that and started to feel smug, you better knock it off. The other side spends hours everyday discussing the same small slights that our president commits day in and day out while ignoring many other pressing issues. You don’t need to spend hours on these small things. Just wait for a big issue from the White House to pop up. You’ll only have to wait an extra hour or two.
It seems that now more than ever, we need some common ground. Something, anything, that we can grab ahold of. You would think sports are safe, but not so much. Just today ESPN (the world-wide leader in sports for those who don’t know) announced that they will not be showing the national anthem before their Monday Night Football broadcasts. This is because one side has chosen to exercise their first amendment rights in protest and the other side has chosen to exercise their first amendment rights to complain and protest because people are protesting.
Alright, sports are out. I’d say TV, but we seem to have been split between those who are thrilled that Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing” is coming back to TV while the others watched last season’s “American Horror Story: Trump Edition” with glee.
I thought we might be able to agree on desserts, but I heard a guy on the radio yesterday raving about gluten-free angel food cake. I will never find any common ground with a sicko who loves gluten-free angel food cake.
I even went to the most basic beliefs. Nearly everyone in the country can agree that Nazis are bad for instance. The main detractors to that thought are Nazis and, as established, we all think they’re bad so we can easily ignore their opinion.
“Eureka!” I declared, startling my cat. Cats hate declarations.
There was a small snafu, though. Neither side can quite agree on who the Nazis are. It could be either the people on the right who have decided the idea of nationalism seems like the greatest thing since sliced bread or those on the left who are constantly stepping on free speech by saying things like “That racial slur you’re using is offensive.”
It’s a pretty tough call.
Then I landed on it. There is only one thing everybody in this great land can agree on. It was so simple that I don’t know how I missed it.
It’s pizza.
No, alt-right, I’m not talking about some sort of dog whistle meaning to the word pizza. I’m talking about crust, sauce, cheese, and toppings. It often comes in a large cardboard box.
If you ask anyone how they feel about pizza, they’ll say “I like it.” It doesn’t matter their age, race, religion, political party, opinion on national anthems, etc. They will all love pizza. Sure, their might be disagreement on the particular toppings or the crust or where we should order it from, but in the end we all can agree that pizza is pretty good.
I feel like pretty good is our best bet at this point.
In these trying times, I say we all look at what unites us. We can eat pizza until we feel like we’re going to explode, then slowly drift into a carb-induced coma. No more arguments. Just pizza naps.
Just don’t bring up pineapple. That might launch us into a second civil war.
The Life and Times of Nathan Badley... 