indivisible, with liberty and justice for all

«last week» i was standing in line to vote.

i almost forgot. i went late. last minute. there was a long line.

everyone was having their own quiet conversations under their breath about why-this and why-that over the harsher glare of a homeless person yelling bloody murder at all of us. a classic LA scene.

and for a second, it felt like i had zoomed out above our little microcosm.

different clothes. different grievances. different very strong opinions about what matters and why.

it honestly made me a little sad. because standing there, it was impossible to miss that these were all very real, very individual experiences.

some people were most worried about the homeless. some people were still reckoning with losing their homes in the LA fires. all of us were standing there listening to someone scream at us from the street. a poetic encapsulation of 2026 LA.

everyone had arrived carrying some version of a life. and it struck me that it’s much harder to hate up close.

and standing there, waiting for over an hour to cast a vote, i had the l thought, well, democracy is a beautiful thing.

behind screens, there seems to be no end to the fight with one another. we are willing to tear each other apart over a difference of opinion. but standing in line, it felt obvious that most people are not caricatures of their politics. they’re people. people with mortgages. grocery bills. family problems. medical diagnoses. businesses. fears. priorities.

different lives create different concerns. and different concerns create different conclusions.

a few months after 2024’s election i wrote a piece called narc culture. i never sent it, for a myriad of reasons.

call it cancel culture. call it whatever you want. i call it narc culture.

NARC culture:

i define it as a culture of accusation, assumption and superiority. it thrives in environments that lack real accountability: instagram, passive aggression, behind one’s back, texts, gossip, comment sections. it is a large, gnarly-looking beast with a small heart, a closed mind and yet, ironically, a remarkable sense of urgency and audacity.

in narc culture, only one truth lives.

the thing is, i don’t actually think most people want to live this way.

under a microscope.

nervous about what they say. nervous about what they think. nervous about who they follow. nervous about being mistaken for the wrong thing.

it was inspired by election day itself. a friend i hadn’t spoken to in a while texted me:

“wait, are you MAGA???”

the answer was no.

but i remember feeling strangely claustrophobic.

not because they thought i was a Trump supporter, but because it felt like such a familiar plot line: the witch hunt for “other.” the hunt for signs. the hunt for evidence. the hunt for who belongs where.

my mum always says voting and what you believe in used to be a private matter.

whether that’s entirely true or not, i think she’s pointing at something deeper.

somewhere along the way, we’ve lost our tolerance for people arriving at different conclusions than we do.

and what strikes me is how ineffective the whole thing is.

if you’ve ever tried to persuade another human being of anything, you know that shame is a terrible strategy.

no one likes a narc. not at drinks. not in friendships. not in families. not in worship. not in bed. and they most certainly won’t want to agree with a narc.

when we narc someone out, as i like to call it, you leave no room for them to even entertain walking over to our side of the street.

judgment, couched as curiosity, builds a soundproof cage, not a bridge.

that’s the irony. for how much information we have access to, we’ve become more binary. more divisive. more loaded. more suspicious.

less capable of living in the grey. less capable of asking how someone arrived somewhere before deciding they’re wrong.

i think about a woman i overheard at FedEx a week ago talking about how she no longer drives to work because of gas prices.

it wasn’t a political conversation.it was a practical one.gas prices significantly affected her life. and i mean hello $7 in weho. a conversation that broke my heart.

the older i get, the more fascinated i become by how individual our realities really are yet how much we stress and fight one another’s.

we all have such specific experiences. such specific pressures. such specific fears.

as I often say, “insecurities are niche” and they all feel entirely real to us.

that’s the beauty and frustration of being human.

everyone thinks they’re responding rationally to the world they’re living in.

because in many ways, they are. even if we disagree with them. especially if we disagree with them.

which brings me back to the voting line.

watching people stand there for over an hour to exercise a right many of us take for granted, i found myself wondering:

can you imagine walking over to someone and screaming at them because they might disagree with you?

in line, it feels absurd. online, it feels normal.

and maybe that’s the problem. maybe we’ve simply gotten too far away from one another.

online, everyone becomes an avatar for an opinion. in line, they’re just a person.

a person with a burned-down house. a person with a grocery bill. a person worried about making rent. a person whose life led them somewhere you cannot imagine arriving yourself.

and somehow, it’s harder to hate up close.

middle east. middle america. middle class. middle part.

whatever it is, we’ve got to find a middle path.

because no one likes a narc. and if you’re going to ask the hard-hitting questions, ask because you’re genuinely interested in the answer, not because you’ve already decided what it should be.

the older i get, the less interested i am in being right and the more i’m just interested.

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

or so we said.

life is so rich. (dynamic and nuanced too)

xx mister jas