Like two roommates from hell: The Left and Right in today’s America

Imagine you move in with two roommates you hadn’t met before. You don’t know each other, so you all introduce yourselves and start going about your lives.

Within a couple of days you discover that one of the roommates is a huge slob. He’s leaving his dirty underwear in the living room, his socks in the kitchen, Cheetos crumbs between the couch cushions, and his old chewing gum on the undersides of tables and chairs. On top of that, he doesn’t shower, smells, and plays loud music at 3 am.

One day you see his dirty sneakers in the dishwasher and you’ve had enough. You approach the other roommate to see if he also thinks the situation is insufferable. The other roommate sees things the same way, and you both agree to talk to the slob to set some ground rules.

The slob is resistant at first but eventually he agrees to amend his ways and begins changing.

As a more sensible and civilized atmosphere starts to take hold in the house, you begin to notice that the other roommate has started moving towards some more unreasonable demands.

• For example, he begins by asking you all to group the silverware into separate piles for spoons, forks, etc, which makes sense. Then he starts demanding that all forks and spoons need to be very neatly stacked. Finally he starts to demand that you have to put them in the drawer in a specific order: forks first, then spoons, then finally add the knives. Any other order is unacceptable
• Or, he begins by asking that you take turns vacuuming the carpet in the living room once in a while, which makes sense. Then he starts demanding that after vacuuming, you need to align all the carpet tassels in a neat North-South direction. Finally, he starts to demand that you need to align the tassels in a particular order, starting from the top left and moving clockwise, one-by-one, until all tassels are aligned North-South. Any other approach is unacceptable.

You quickly realize that you are dealing with an obsessive-compulsive. You don’t want to go back to the ways of the past, since you didn’t like the slob’s approach, so you try talking some sense into the obsessive-compulsive. “Can we just put the silverware in their place and not worry about the order in which we do it?”, “Can we just vacuum the carpet and not worry about the tassels so much?”

When he hears this, the obsessive-compulsive starts to accuse you that you are just as bad as the slob. Essentially, to the obsessive-compulsive, not putting the silverware in exactly the right order is just like leaving dirty underwear in the living room.

You are seething with the new status quo. You’d still prefer not to go back to the slob’s ways, but both roommates are crazy.

You hate them both.

P.S. Here’s Obama’s take about people being too woke (i.e. the ‘obsessive compulsives’ in the story above)