No Respite from the Mud-People

I was walking down a country road, deep in thought and quite minding my own business, when I heard a cacophony of voices a short distance ahead.

Within half-a-minute, ahead of me I saw a gaggle of people of a diversity of races and ages, but predominantly young and apparently ‘White,’ wallowing in a muddy mire.  They were evidently enjoying themselves.

They were yelling and shrieking in an unseemly, almost abusive, manner.  Furthermore, these people had rather a limited vocabulary: nearly half of the words they uttered were prefixed with ‘anti-’ and most of the rest were suffixed with ‘-phobe.’

As soon as they saw me, they – so generously and universalistically – invited me to their mudfest.

“Hey, guy! Come on over and get in.”

“Hiii— Why don’t you join us!”

“No, thanks,” I said, courteously, as I kept walking.

“Okay, then just hang around us – we’re among the Enlightened.”

“When we’re not chilling out, we repair the world and you can learn from us.”

So ‘enlightened’ as to want to loll about in dirty, smelly mud? ‘Repairing the world’ by incessantly throwing around labels that were dull-witted and ill-made, yet clearly meant to traduce and intimidate?  

“No, thanks,” I said, again most courteously, as I continued walking and was just passing them by.

“Why not?” someone yelled.  The tone was indignant.

“Yeah— why?” asked another, very peevish, voice. 

I did not know why they demanded my reasons but I obliged them, being as truthful as I was polite, insofar as each good-minded consideration allowed the other. “Well, I’m not into these ‘anti’ and ‘phobe’ words, and, uh, I just . . . I just don’t care for mud,” I explained in an even tone.

As I passed them by, outraged shouts and venomous epithets began to ring out behind me.  Clearly, the Mud-People did not take rejection well.

“Eff you, you Anti-Muddite!” screamed a neurotic male voice.

“Screw him – he’s a Muddo-Phobe!” growled a thuggish female one.

What?  All I had done was to refuse to partake of their mudfest, express my distaste for mud and muck, and probably signal my concomitant aversion to those who wallow in the mire.  

A moment or two later, a gob of mud shot over my head.  More muck whizzed past my shoulder.

The Muddites were trying to splatter me with their filth!

Just as well that I had not wanted anything to do with them: for had I entered their company, in time to come I might – just perhaps – have become one of them.  

I ran like the dickens and did not stop until I had run for about a mile, having kept running not only until the Muddites and their mud behind me were out of sight, but even after I was out of earshot.  It was only then that I slowed down to a walking pace.

As I strolled, trying to regain my breath, I started to ponder.  “Apart from plastering others with their slanderous labels, do they use their prefixes and suffixes to classify and identify themselves?  Do they refer to themselves as, say, ‘Anti-Cleanites’ or ‘Other-o-Phobes’?”

My thread of thought shifted to aetiological inquiry:– “Is it their predilection for using pejorative categories for those with differing opinions that causes them to be drawn to the mud?  Or is it their affinity for mud that causes them to whip up pejorative categories for those who do not share their views?”

“Or,” I wondered, “Are both the affinity and the predilection unfortunate behavioral outcomes of the same deep-rooted mental illness?” 

Before I had reached any conclusion, it happened—

—A clod of filthy mud splattered my back.  Another gob smacked me on my shoulder blade.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

There is no respite from the Mud-People.  Or from their stinking mud.