Acceptance V Power

I think I could write every day about the great existential struggle between Acceptance and Power.  Boy, it's like Good v Evil or Darkness v Light in the respect that it's hard to tease out the subtleties, to see any gray areas.  Sometimes it seems cut and dried: I'm accepting my powerlessness over something or I'm not, that a thought or theory or idea or action is either right or wrong, or there's some nuance.  Clearly, if I step back to gain some perspective, there are examples of terrific evil in the world that make minor evil pale in comparison so is it in my best interest to parse this evil?  Or should I reject it outright?  Is it ever understandable to lie or denigrate?  Or should I set up that perfect ideal and strive to reach it at all times?

I spoke on the phone yesterday with a couple of problematic people in my life.  One is a relative and one a long time AA buddy, a dude who came up through the sobriety ranks with me.  These are both kind, decent, loving people whose good qualities far outweigh their liabilities.  You'd like them, I think.

(Ed. Note:  In one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes one of the characters is describing a friend that Jerry doesn't know.  "You'd like her - she's nice," to which Jerry replies: "Why do people always say that to me?  I don't like anyone - why would I like her?")

Consciously I brought up politics and morality with these two people.  I knew I was doing it and I knew it was a minefield but I did it anyway.  I wasn't trying to provoke a confrontation but I can't recall why I thought I would avoid one.  Sometimes I really do want to know why people think a certain way, especially when their line of thinking is fucking absurd.  I feel like I'm missing something, some obvious, glaring fact that would cause me to say: "Oh, that's why you think that.  Here I just assumed you were a fucking idiot." Often I'll remain silent when someone is being patently absurd, preferring to move on to another topic to armed confrontation, but yesterday I pressed my point a bit, gently I hope.  True believers that these two are, they chose to just dig in, ceding not an inch of ground, even when they could provide no evidence to back up their illusory facts.

I'm a little rattled this morning.  Part of this is the isolation and anxiety of a worldwide pandemic, I know, but how big a part?  Did I bring this on myself (Ed. Note: Yes) or am I swallowing some brackish backwash of a bigger situation?