Writer’s know all about comfort zones…we live to destroy them. We chop up our protagonists’ lives and scatter their pitiful feelings to the wind just to sweep up the pieces and solder them back together into hell-fired heroes and heroines. It’s a very messy, emotional process, and yet, it has a simple equation:

Character – Something Valuable = Fear

Fear = Conflict

Conflict = A Helluva Good Story

In today’s ego-based economy, where what we possess determines our worth on the class scale, people break into a cold sweat at the possibility that ‘Something Valuable’ might be taken away from them and diminish their social status. Especially, if that ‘Something’ is fleeting and intangible, like their comfort zones. Americans have seen a lot of change over the past sixty years. The abolition of racial segregation; equal rights for women and minorities; the legalization of same-sex marriage. All of these movements have brought about great strides to empower the oppressed. It’s hard to imagine that some view these victories as defeats. After all, when power is given to one person, it must have been taken from someone else, right?

Imagine Bobo has two bananas and Lulu has one. Bobo has the most banana power. So when Kiki comes in, holds up the newly passed Equal Rights Amendment and gives Lulu a banana raise, there’s much rejoicing. Now we’re all equal! However, despite losing nothing, Bobo feels less powerful, even threatened, because Lulu has ‘moved up to his level.’ His financial situation now improved, Lulu has inadvertently affected Bobo’s comfort zone. This might cause Bobo distress, even anger him. Lulu now becomes the unwitting target of Bobo’s misguided fear, leading to a display chest-pounding and poo-throwing. Great friction for fiction. Bad for Human Resources.

So what is this ‘Something Valuable’ that has the country at odds right now? For a self-riotous few, it is as narrow-sighted as their outdated beliefs and comfort zones of intolerance. The events in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend are a painfully accurate example. Ultra-conservatives are exhibiting the same messy, emotional symptoms of a character in conflict:

Entitled Americans (Alt-Right) – Freedoms & Rights (Power) = Displaced Fear (Discrimination)

So how do we tame the volatile stray that’s barking inside these terrified Alt-Right ideologists? How do we get them to understand the unshakable truth that nothing is being taken away from them? Their precious freedoms are as intact as they’ve ever been. The only difference is, back in the ‘good old days’ they could unethically enthrone themselves on top of the social hierarchy without raising eyebrows. It’s 2017. Now people are raising their eyebrows, their voices and their protest signs and ultra-conservatives don’t know how to handle the pushback.

The Alt-Right’s refusal to acknowledge these changes is what’s led to their own paranoid schizophrenia. Building a pillow fort with Confederate flags in their living room while chanting ‘blood and soil’ does not change the fact that the South lost the Civil War. No doubt we still have a long road ahead, but most Americans have come far enough to declare that people are not property or punching-bags or ladder rungs. The Alt-Right have padded their egos using this superiority complex to punch and fluff the minority ‘cushions’ under their derrieres. But now they are the ones under the sharp focus of (gasp) discrimination. Discrimination against inequality and violent rhetoric.

This bad behavior is being strung up as an intolerable example on social media. And the Alt-Right is feeling the acute discomfort of that mass public rejection. Evolution hard-wired humans to ‘think like the flock’. If you didn’t, you died. That’s led to rationalizations like, ‘slavery is acceptable’; ‘sexism is scientifically proven’; ‘desecration of your neighbor’s faith is honorable.’ This brain-washing machine was, unfortunately, left on the spin cycle for most of humankind’s development. And, it seems, our current POTUS’ development as well. But that’s a rant for another day.

Although intolerance is still gnashing its teeth, the ugly beast is slowly backing itself into a dead end alley. People are talking. People are coming together – just sometimes with too much force. In dealing with every aspect of this divide, the lives sacrificed are unnecessary. It is a loss felt deeper because of the senseless violence. But I hope the country will remain optimistic. The fiery conflicts we see on our television screens at night are proof that we’re squeezing in on the Alt-Right’s comfort zone.

There will be more heated exchanges, more blood, more tears, and this is why the pending years of America’s next big ‘growth spurt’ are going to take all the patience and compassion we can muster. We must continue to lead by example and breathe through those dark, infuriating moments to come; to look to the core of the problem before we become a part of it too. Because the biggest challenge is not the danger of taming a cornered, belligerent mongrel – it’s convincing the damn thing to turn around and see that there were never any walls to begin with.

By: Erica Ruhe

Photo Credit: https://jerkmag.wordpress.com/