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Blog Thread 5: A New Beginning
de_la_Nae:
(click to show/hide)There's a piece I guess in some big paper about, I think(?) at its most ideal interpretation, reconciliation?
Here's the thing though:
The Atrocity Isn't Over
I posted in some other tweet about it a bit, but I love and wanted to love and miss still my friends and family who have thrown in with Trumpism & the other related ideologies that feed into it.
I *wanted* to have a father, for example.
And he and I had a few good times, in our attempts at reconciliation after his long abandonment of us.
But in the end, it wasn't enough to pull him back from a lifetime of bigotry, hatefulness, selfishness, & rage. He went further down that spiral, & i could not stand to follow.
I could not stand to be hurt by him further. Could not stand to watch him hurt his wife. Could not quietly accept his desires to hurt even more people.
So that relationship, for the foreseeable future, is over. Probably never to live again. My father gone, again.
And I still miss him. I still wish that we could find a way forward together. That I was stronger, smarter, able to find a way forward.
But I can't. And no amount of our attempts to reconcile changed or even seemed to affect his choices of who are People and who aren't.
At least not where I could see.
And he's just one example. Other kith and kin have went down that road. Some I did not foresee, did not recognize how far they'd gone. Some I watched and waited, thinking I would just drive them further if I was not careful. But they went either way.
They *wanted* to go down that bloody path. And... it's not like I can't see some of its appeal. And I miss them. I miss loving them as the friends that we were.
But.
But I see the blood. I hear the cries of the injured, "the mournful wail of millions".
How can I not love them too?
How can *we* not love them too?
And in loving them, how can we allow these others we love to tear their bodies & spirits apart in gore and agony?
Simply, we cannot.
I do not say that you need to hate all the time, or even much of the time. There is a trap of its own, in hating too much and too long. Have we not seen it with our lost kin in the alt-right, on the Internet?
I would that you found a way to love even a little bit those murderous worshippers of chains that array themselves against the family of humanity. That you hold on to at least some small ember of hope that they come out of the night.
I wandered in that night, after all.
But I cannot, and you cannot, allow your love and desire for them, your love and desire for peace, to blot out the reality of that mournful wail, of that ocean of blood.
We cannot enslave the world to appease our kin.
We cannot throw away the refugee for the sake of a loved one's incoherent fear.
We cannot throw away the poor for the sake of a loved one's bitterness and spite.
We cannot throw away the black, the brown, the queer, or whoever for the sake of a loved one's sense of 'normalcy'.
Love your enemy. Consider carefully your enemy's grievance. Seek healing with your enemy.
But never forget why they have chosen to become an enemy, never forget who they slaughter when you fail to stop them.
When *we* failed to stop them.
When we *were* them.
War Sparrow:
I'm sorry about your dad, De_la_Nae. And the people you love, but can't support (for good reasons; that's not a criticism).
Is it cold in here?:
My friend is back on email and reports wanting to piss all the time. I have a vague impression it didn't go perfectly but it's solid good news.
I will add having two good kidneys to my daily recitation of causes for gratitude.
de_la_Nae:
WS: Thank you. It is... what it is.
IICIH: I don't have much experience, but I don't get the impression many kidney transplants go 'perfectly'. Here's hoping, though. much easier than the dialysis machine, if you can help it at all
pwhodges:
So far this week I have managed:
A refund of £130 for Duty and VAT incorrectly assessed on the return of a microphone I owned from repair in the USA;
A refund of about £1600 of overpaid income tax (they gave me an incorrect tax code at the start of the tax year);
Ordered a very rare second-hand CD I've been looking for for the past eight years;
Been sent a rip of another (even more rare) CD which I discovered that a person I once did a favour for had a copy of.
Quite a good week, I feel.
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