more deep thoughts from the Croupy guy?

(I wrote this a bit ago, but posting now, nevertheless...enjoy!)

A friend's FB post got me thinking about our country...and the complete separation with large groups of our population from others. What sparked it was this "who the f*ck is Bonnie Bear/Bon Iver?" twitter madness that happened during/after the Grammy's. I didn't watch them, I never do. I find them mostly vapid and distasteful, except for less than a handful of actual talented musicians that perform/speak. If you haven't heard of this, keep reading.

So, Bon Iver is a folk rock musician and he was up against Nicki Minaj and someone called Skrillex? You can guess what happened when Bon Iver won the best new artist...an absolute eruption of "WTF, who is Bonnie Bear!?" tweets hit the stratosphere. You see...I don't know who Skrillex is, nor do I know anything about Nicki Minaj (I just had to check to see if I was spelling her name right...I was not.) And therefore, anyone who knows those two artists do not know Bon Iver, to the extent that it was if he "came from nowhere".

Our country is so radically divided and completely polarized from the other "side"...whether it be musical or political, societal or cultural...no one even WANTS to know what the other people are thinking...we just want to keep them from saying anything and discredit whatever they're doing. The political landscape is scary! What unites us, if anything? Total and heart-wrenching tragedy. Isn't that horrible? 9/11 was the last time almost everyone in the country felt the same way. And it only took a few days before the separations started being drawn up.

Where does one start to bridge the gap? It's like walking into another country...you don't speak their language, or you don't dress the same.