I fear I’ve fallen off the boat of forgiveness or excuses. Or hope. I hate discussions of “us” and “them” but today I’m lost. Unfortunately, the entire problem with dividing the world like that is the “us” gets smaller and smaller and smaller as we truly understand how tenuous our understanding of one another is. We realize that there are other nations and that must be THEM. Other religions are DEFINITELY them. THEY look different and are CLEARLY a THEM. Other politics. That must be THEM. Other states, cities, neighbourhoods, families. Other people. And IF we are self-aware enough to realize that sometimes misunderstandings are the result of people simply not thinking alike, not maliciously, but because we’re different – some people just muddle their way forward and try to communicate better, and others decide that difference is WRONG. And the Them gets bigger and bigger until the entire world is just something horrible to hate and fear. It leaves you looking for a saviour.
Those who stand the Trump line have whatever the opposite if empathy is. They can’t imagine being in another person’s shoes. They can’t imagine the feeling of being someone else. They can only imagine what they would DO in those shoes. They thought “we’d come for their guns” because it’s what THEY would do in our place. They think DEI must be about giving someone an unfair advantage because it’s what they’d do.
What they’ve done.
Trump blames Ukraine literally or metaphorically for “starting the war” through the same logic that “dressed like that she was asking for it “. Blaming the victim for being victimizable. Bullies beget bullies and they respect only bullies. Not understanding that government is not a business… a government is for protecting people and a business is for enriching people….not comprehending that even using the metaphor is to so fundamentally misunderstand what an elected official should be concerned with that I fear they literally CAN NOT understand anything other than self interest and therefore CAN NOT see the actions of everyone else around them through any other lens.
They would make mistakes that effect others and cover them up. They would lie about anything to justify themselves. They are withdrawing from the concept of society in favour of capitalistic self-interest and dragging us all back to might makes right. And I see no way of winning the argument anymore because when it comes down to it cheating wins… you have to care that its wrong.
And they don’t.
They simply do not care.
Sorry. 5.52am rob sees no light there.
We have friends moving back to America soon.
Sorry, I should specify.
We have two friends moving back to the United States soon. I don’t completely get it. There are a lot of worse places to be than the U.S., even now, but where those two friends are coming is not one of them by any stretch. But they JUST got their visas okayed. After years of immigration battle, including a letter from myself that may have actually pushed the needle, I hate knowing that it probably only went through because a huge backlog of immigration files were summarily deleted for not being the right skin colour.
I asked them why they wanted to still come here and they said they still believe in the dream of America and if they become citizens, one day they’ll have a vote on the inside of this country and be part of saving it.
I’m trying to hold that in my head and heart.
10.51am rob still feels that online engagement of these people probably does us no good, but that the correcting of their typos (and wondering why it’s generally always THEM that’s making typos) falls under the heading of us being “elitist”… somehow they never do grasp that poor education or poor grammar actually does NOT lend credence to their arguments.
Tavair Dominique said it well Tuesday night. I am full of hateful thoughts and it is HARD to be thankful.
