| profile entries archives refresh |
 �what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux "i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes note random entry image credit design by : ilazarn ikmal powered by : diaryland |
no idea.
2019-06-24 @ 11:05 a.m.
the only things i like about the summer are the longer days and the fact that my garbage skin has a little easier time staying moisturized. that's about it. it just officially started a couple of days ago but i'm already over it. the bugs, the heat, the humidity, the sky high electric bills, the absolutely insane traffic from everyone in the tri-state area and beyond driving through to use our beaches. i get it, tourism money and everything, but it really blows if you're a person who lives here because we already have too fucking many people in too small an area. oh well. i'm just writing today because i had a conversation with my stepdad over the weekend that was so fucking depressing and disappointing and i just need to get it out of my system. i'm sorry, i never talk about politics but this really bothered me. i've said before that my parents are just horrible people, but my fucking stepdad starts talking about immigration this weekend. i can't remember how it started, but he made some offhand comment about something that he couldn't believe people are accusing the administration of doing, and i said well i can't believe the administration is letting these poor people get sick and starve and languish in these subhuman conditions. he starts arguing with me that they're not being mistreated at all, and what are we supposed to do, put them in 5 star hotels? and i was like ... are you serious? have you been reading the news? they are separating children from their parents. they are now, and they have been. in some cases they're putting like 4x+ more people in cells designed for a fraction of that. the overcrowding has been reported as dangerous, and the conditions squalid. and he's like nope, it's not really like that. and i was like ... okay? like people have gone there and seen it and reported it. and he's like well i don't believe it. alright. then he says the administration has said they want to do mass deportations and he totally supports that, because that's what this country needs. i said it will be devastating for a lot of industries that rely on illegal workers, and might fuck up the economy in some places. some employers already tried recruiting americans for the kind of grueling farm work that immigrants do and either no one would do it for the pay, or they'd start and the productivity was a fraction of what the immigrants were able to complete. i said you know, there are restaurants that would lose their entire kitchen staff were this to occur. and he's just like, nope, that's not true. "these people" just come here to soak up our government benefits. most of them don't even work. THEN this fucking guy seriously says, "just drive through lakewood and you'll see." i said that place is a terrible example to give (it is notorious in our state for being largely populated by a certain religious sect that has for years been known to contain a number of individuals who abuse state benefits and game the system for like, millions of dollars). he's like no, i drive through there on any given day for work and "those people" are just sitting around outside on milk crates playing dominoes. i was like ... yeah i'm sure there are some people doing that, but that's fucking anywhere. you mean to tell me every single person who crosses the border into this country comes here to collect welfare and not do any work? you really think that? he says, most of them do. i was like holy shit, okay man. and he's like well you love them so much, why don't you let them move into your house? i don't see you liberals lining up for that. when they suggested bussing "those people" into liberal cities and letting them deal with them, then all of a sudden no one wanted them there. i said actually, there were a number of communities who stepped up and said okay, if they do send them in, we'll accept them and help them. and he says nope, no one said that. once again, i was like okay .....??? you can read the newspaper and see where this literally happened. i said furthermore, it's not an issue of me loving "them" or hating "them," agreeing with immigration or not. what i take issue with is that they have people caged up, their children taken away, some living in squalid conditions, awaiting hearings for months, in some cases years. that's fucked up to me. it's inhumane. a child who is born to a parent who enters this country, illegal or not, should not be treated this way. neither should the parent. it's cruel and wrong. and he's like well they shouldn't come here illegally then if they don't want to be locked up. i said the children have no choice in the matter! they're not being fed well, they're sleeping on the floor, they're getting sick. and he says "well they live in filth in their country, then they come HERE all diseased up (that was literally his line, "all diseased up."), statistically some are just going to die anyway." at this point my blood is just boiling, and after another few comments that i can't remember accurately, the subject was changed. but i sat there and realized after this conversation, and on my two hour drive back home, wow. i always knew that he was a terrible person, but this talk has shone an even brighter light on his bigotry and inhumanity. i consider myself progressive, politically, so a good portion of what i read has left-leaning comments attached. and i would see so often people saying that there's no way to talk to the far right because we're on fundamentally different levels. they don't even see these people as people. they lack empathy and thus can't even imagine how terrifying it must be for someone to pack up what little they own and hope for the best in a country where a sizeable group of people see them as nothing more than roaches to be gotten rid of. grown, adult people who could look on a crying baby and think that it is okay and right to punish it for its parents trying to find them a better life by any means necessary. whatever your feelings on immigration, it doesn't matter. like i said, forget all of the politics and bullshit. forget whether they're coming legally or illegally. i don't want to argue about that. i even said that at one point during this conversation with my stepdad, right before he said the "all diseased up" thing. i said, we're arguing two completely different things. what i am upset about is that these are people. they are people! they are no different from us, they just had the misfortune of being born in a different place. i absolutely refuse to talk politics with anyone because of this. if we disagree on this - to me, extremely important!! - point, then you and i will never be able to see eye to eye. it's like these fucking maniacs who think war with iran is a good idea. there are millions of innocent people who have nothing to do with this. we got all bent out of shape when ~3000 people were killed as a result of 9/11. what if the tables were turned and iran was threatening war on us? what about when? are these same people going to be cool with that? they just start dropping bombs on us? oh well, statistically people are just going to die ...? i guess what terrifies me is that people just have such a disregard for human life. and to think that one of the people who raised me, and with whom i still have to spend so much time in my life, could be such a ...... i don't know what to say. he is white and i am not, and this has always been a "thing" in my family, and in my life in general, so on some level to hear that he feels this way about these poor brown people makes me so sad. i mean, it was never a secret throughout our childhood that he's super racist. my mother is too, and she is also not white. one of those self-hating ones. we're not like "them." they've always been pretty open about it, and after talking with my brother a few months ago, and during the election, i realized that he is also just like my parents. not as bad, a little less racist due to him actually having exposure to a diverse group of people and some wild experiences in his life. but for him, it is also fundamentally "us vs. them." and it's not really a big deal if "they" just die. i love my parents because they are my parents, but holy fucking shit they are not people i would ever want to have anything do with if i weren't related to them. i imagine my cousin taking her 1 and 4 year olds and trying to escape the country for whatever reason, because it's become so bad she'd rather risk their lives in pursuit of something better, and she gets to her destination and they rip her crying children from her arms and keep them away from her for two years in actual cages or on dirt floors. freezing at night and boiling hot during the day. i want to say to my stepdad, picture those little nephews that you love so much laying there, alone, scared, crying, hungry, losing weight, getting sick, and no one fucking cares. and even worse, people are saying "no, that's not happening," and "good, those babies deserve it because their mom shouldn't have tried to come here." i think that's fucking insane but that's just me, man. i'm sorry for this rant but it bothered me all day the day it happened, then this actual monster wanted to hug me goodbye, then i drove home and it bothered me the entire way. i was thinking about how, if my mom dies first, i'm going to be stuck with this guy out of obligation. because i am a human being who values all other humans, and because i know that this person does have some positive traits, and i believe a lot in the value of family, i won't just leave him to die alone. maybe my parents will make some friends when they move from here to the south, so they won't rely so much on us. maybe, like they've always wanted, they'll move and leave my brother and i behind and forget about us. then i won't have to worry about any of this. when i arrived at my parents' on friday night, they were outside talking to the neighbor from across the street. she laughed and said wow, you actually exist? your parents talk about you but we've never seen you, we were starting to think they were just making you up. and i laughed but i knew she was probably serious. we're never invited to come and when we actually do spend a weekend once a year, my mom complains the whole time. the other thing the neighbor said was, how on earth did you come from these people? again, like a joke, but i knew it was another real question. and i answered honestly, "i have NO idea." |