Conflict Resolution

Hey, did you hear about the fight over at the winery? Oh yeah. Sunday night. You know, three-day-weekend, big doings, open to the public for wine-tasting and ungenerous portions of local cuisine to go with it – in this case, fall salads and home-made bread one slice to a customer. The big room is all set up with glasses galore; guests come and go around the big table

So there were a lot of folks up from the city to sample the rural wares, and some of them were Italian. One was an angry Italian who was baiting everybody about his countryman, Columbus. Columbus is being maligned, we’re all ungrateful bigots, if we think he mistreated the Indians then why don’t we all go back where we came from, or at least leave all our worldly possessions to a tribe. That kind of stuff.

When he gets no takers, he steps it up. The Indians never amounted to anything. They didn’t have what it takes to build a civilization. They’d still be wearing feathers and loin clothes if the white man hadn’t come around to show them a thing or two. Not that they ever learned.

Everybody ignores him, even though he’s getting louder and louder and drunker and drunker on his “tastings”. Finally, he starts talking about syphilis and how the Indians gave it to the white man. From the other end of the room comes, of all things, a gen-u-ine Native American. He’s not wearing feathers; he’s in a suit. The man’s a lawyer, and he’s had about enough of this. It’s late, and he’s also had enough wine.

He’s a big, muscular guy and the Italian is his size, but a bit flabby from good living. The Indian swaggers up with a toothy grin pasted on his face. “You claiming that filthy buggerer as your own?” he asks.

The Italian stands up, as well as he can and says “Proudly!”

“Then you bear responsibility for what you just said?”

The Italian’s now taking the measure of his opponent. He pulls himself together and uses the word he’s just discovered. “Proudly.”

The Indian steps back, looks around the room at the people looking at him, and suddenly reaches out both arms and pushes the Italian hard, till he’s sitting on the floor, looking up at him through his own drunken haze.

“Why you!” He gets to his feet fast, and runs his head right into the Indian’s stomach. A couple of men rouse from their inebriation in an attempt to separate them, but instead, are pulled into the fight. It’s the wine talking. In vino veritas. Everybody’s mad at one thing or another, and at each other.

Some of these folks have been trying to get Obamacare, and are failing to get into the club because of the bad software. Others did get on and are angry at how much their premiums are going to go up. Some of the men have been fighting with their wives, who refuse to see what’s happening to the country. Others have been fighting with their colleagues, who do, and who are trying to get them to see. Nobody’s got any friends anymore. There’s something wrong with everybody. No two people think alike.

The police come. They break it up. They take away quite a few unopened bottles of wine for not hauling anybody in. Then they wait down the road with their breathalyzers to bust people on the way out of the winery. You know the spot.

Billy wasn’t at his post on Saturday, disappointing his undercover team who read his pamphlets and couldn’t agree more. He and Doreen are visiting relatives who live year-round in Martha’s Vineyard. His Aunt saw Obama with her own eyes this summer, and spent the weekend making Doreen jealous.

Wayne and Melissa were together, alone, and kept running into the news about the government shut-down over Obamacare. But it’s okay, because they have a mutual enemy: the Republicans.

She: They’ll do anything to embarrass Obama. They can’t stand to see a black man in power. They don’t give a damn about ordinary people – only the rich. They don’t want change because they want to keep what they’ve got.

He: Fucking Republicans. They refuse to represent the people who elected them. All they care about is making nice to the people in power so they’ll get invited to the cocktail parties. We’ve got to get rid of them!

Steve wasn’t around, so they even got cozy in bed. I said cozy, not sexy. Wayne was too miserable to be sexy. He sees the last vestige of his country’s freedom going down the drain. There are rumors that the Republicans are going to cave, that they can’t stand being blamed for the shut-down, and besides… and this is what’s making him sick, they don’t really want a small government that minds its own business, because government business is their business.

“We’ve got rulers,” he said. “They aren’t listening to us anymore. They’re not even pretending. We live in a police state. Closing the people’s parks and monuments, but keeping open their planning and plotting and scheming to bring down the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind.” She’s curled up against him, trying to calm him down, but instead, he turns maudlin. “The normal state of mankind is ‘animal,’ hiding in a cave, eating whatever he can bop over the head. But people in this country live like kings used to live. Even the poor.”

Melissa can afford to be magnanimous. She, too, has heard the Republicans are about to cave and let Obama get on with saving the country from the ghost of George W. Bush.

She lets him go on, as she strokes his once-long hair. “We fix our problems. We fought a war to get rid of slavery. How come we don’t get credit for that? We’ve freed half the world from despots. Why do they act like we’re the bad guy?”

She holds him close and lets him rave. She knows you can never do enough. You can never blot out crimes committed. You must repent and repent and repent. You must make it up to the descendents. Though sometimes she wonders why they aren’t glad their ancestors were captured and brought to America so they could be born here, instead of Africa, which sounds pretty awful to her.

Steve’s not here because Steve is at a party at the college. He’s not exactly with Brittany, but she still thinks he’s cute and keeps coming back to him. She can’t seem to get anywhere with him. He argues with everything she says. Little does she know it’s because she sounds so much like his father. Not that it would make any difference. If she sounded like his mother he’d argue too. But his heart never seems to be in it. It’s not. He argues on automatic pilot.

She’s had a few beers, and is in a teasing mood. She decides to be brutally aggressive. With words, that is. “Funny, isn’t it, how the liberals, who think they’re so good, are the ones who want to use force all the time? They don’t want to steal money from people themselves, but they want to sic the government on people to do it for them. And they want all these rules about how everyone should live. It’s the liberals who turn out to be the tyrants. You might even call them oppressor pigs. Funny how backwards everything is,” she muses. “Whatever happened to ‘Question authority ’? That used to be the liberal mantra.

But Steve, too, has had a few beers, and his normal instincts have taken over. Instead of playing Mom, he plays Dad, picks up a mat of her stringy hair, pulls it toward him, and kisses her. End of discussion.

That was days ago. Now the Republicans have caved. The Dems are rejoicing. They’ve saved Obamacare, though nobody can get it, and the ones who can aren’t happy. The government is going to re-open. They are unaware that there was plenty of money to run everything, and the closures were all for show. The Republicans and Democrats are in this together against the Tea Party, which threatens their lifestyles. But don’t worry, they’re on the warpath, if I may use that phrase, against these radical renegades who want to go back to the old days.