We were able to complete one of our bucket list items this past week when the family and I took an Alaskan cruise and were gone nearly ten days total. There are a few things we all learned along the way. The first thing we learned is that relocating to avoid the current state of our politics would be more difficult than we imagined. The cost of living in British Columbia (Victoria) was a little out of our price range and probably that of most people. The same is likely true for Alaska.

We saw the impacts of climate change first hand. The ship was able to go further and faster than in past decades due to the erosion of glaciers and icebergs. We went to the Mendenhall Glacier where we saw the dramatic effects of global warming first hand. People were able to walk on that glacier just 20 years ago. Now, we could see it from a distance. Additionally, there were all kinds of markers on the trails to denote where the ice had been in years past.

Yet, this screed is not about any of this. This is stuff we already know and really hasn’t changed. When you share a boat with 3000 other people you learn a few sobering ideas about yourself and others. There are just some really not nice people in the world. They are rude. They are mean. They are petty and the very sad thing is that I’m describing people I know in addition to strangers. So, I have to provide a shout out to people in that industry. They have to deal with the worst of us when we are at our worst and they do it with a smile on their face.

There are real things that divide us. These real things are ultimately discounted when we frame the world into a left vs. right world. We have honest people and dishonest people. We have nice people and mean people. We have caring people and we have narcissists. We have humanitarians and we have grifters. The most sobering (because this hits so very close to home) thing is that we have snipers and we have fixers.

Snipers are people that would rather complain about a problem than actually do anything about it. Mind you we aren’t even talking politics right now. It could be something as simple as not having any dinner rolls or being out of water or tea. Snipers will just complain. Fixers will take steps to fix the problem. They will talk to wait staff to get more water or a refill on rolls. Their immediate focus is just on fixing the problem and moving on.

In this world, we are led to believe that the main fault line is between left and right. I learned something very valuable this week. Granted, this is something we all instinctively knew before. The main divide isn’t left vs. right. What makes MAGA so dangerous and so disheartening is that it has given people on the opposite side of every other divide cover to behave badly. More than left vs. right, they are the dishonest, they are the rude, they are the not nice, and they are the petty. MAGA just gave them a cover to be the self-actualized versions of themselves. Ultimately, the decent and considerate people of this world have to bound together against the indecent and inconsiderate people. We have to find a way to form coalitions on specific issues where we naturally agree. We have to ignore the fact that we might disagree on 100 other issues. We have to cobble those coalitions together on the fly to make our world a better place to live. The alternative is to watch it all melt away.