Hi folks! Instead of a numbered list of Friday Reflections, today we're doing a bit of the old-school style rant about everything in one blogpost. I promise it's worth your time. If anything, it's practice to read longer form material; a dying art these days.
Two weeks ago, the current administration barred Microsoft from sponsoring H-1B workers for Green Cards. The thing about these people is that even I, who wholeheartedly warned everyone about these people, sometimes hate how right I was about them.
The year was 2024. We begged. We wrote. We implored. We knew this man's presidency would wreck the world and we said as much. But no, folks said WE were being too much; too political, too woke. Too this. Too that. Now these people actually considered live streaming the firing squad execution of a convicted killer. Do you understand how depraved, how sick you have to be to be salivating over watching a person die in such a barbaric manner? No one in their right mind is going to defend Nidal Hassan. Yet, we can agree that as a society, we are better than the public display of such a gruesome act. The morality is so visible, so clear on this one that it makes you wonder the mind of the type of person to suggest this and the minds of the thousands (or millions?) of others who cheer it on. Never mind that you are giving the killer and his extremist ilk the same notoriety they want when they commit such senseless acts. Never mind that these are the same people who banned books for including words that scar children but someone a live execution wouldn't scar kids? Never mind that these are Bible touting Christians who supposedly ask God for mercy? Never mind all of that, this was still about the most stupid thing to come out of an administration that does purely stupid things.
We warned.
I remember that election year so vividly, clear as day. Some Nigerians in Canada (Nigerian-Canadians? Canadian-Nigerians? What do we call them?) said they were looking for "objectivity" in their coverage of Kamala v. Trump. They said those of us "Kamala supporters" didn't say much more than "trump bad" and had no objective reason for why Kamala was a better candidate. But think piece after think piece laid how exactly what made Donald Trump the most dangerous candidate in modern history. Again, I penned several essays here and on Instagram. We made a logical case for why this man must never return to that office. But sooner than admit their own bigotry, their own idiocy, their own greed and acknowledge they in fact supported the man, they hid under a thin veil of cowardice and objectivity. Thin because we saw through it. They called us "baby killers" because we dared say women's reproductive rights and matters should belong to every woman and her doctor only, and not lie in the fat-fingered hands of our perverse political leaders. Now, America is warring Canada of all places.
What do you know, even the most quiet of all, the ones who prided themselves in their absurd neutrality are now all up in the arms, penning op-eds left, right, and center. During the last general elections in Canada, a popular Nigerian influencer fixed her camera to lament about how the conservative and liberal parties were the same thing anyway, and what was the point of voting. This, again the hallmark of the coward, is stupid. Even conservatives would never claim to be the same as liberals. You are lazy if you make the claim that "they are all the same thing." Now, this year, her business hit with the deranged tariffs, she sent emails to her customers lamenting the implications for her business. Politics is personal. If you don't concern yourself with politics, it will concern itself with you. Why is that so hard for people to understand? The cloth you wear, the food you eat (ask us Americans with all the food recalls we've experienced this year), the school your child goes, the roads you travel on, the planes you fly, how businesses treat you, all of it is political. Politics is survival. So I ask, where was your op-ed in 2024? Where was your video in 2024? Now in the fog of your neutrality, you can wail, write op-eds, crash out on Instagram because it affects you?
RESPECTFULLY, WE TOLD YOU SO.
Waking up to this trauma as if it's some surprise is maddening. How do you not know the playbook of the Republicans? It has the same it's been for decades. They don't care about you and me. They know how to foment culture wars to get us to hate each other but our healthcare? The food we eat? The schools our children go? They couldn't care less. As long as nothing affects the pockets of their billionaire friends and mega donors, they are usually fine. How do you not see it?
I don't want to leave you without some good news. Two weeks ago, Karl Deisseroth won the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine (jointly awarded with another person). See this video for the moment he told his family. It was so incredibly wholesome. What a cool dude. I didn't even realize someone so young could win the Nobel prize. The point is it's too easy to become cynical, jaded in the world as it is. Too often, it feels like they only things the world wants and rewards are fluff, superficiality, dishonesty, greed. But it's not true. Here is this hardworking, impossibly brilliant person doing extremely important (and cool!) research, married to a badass neuro-oncologist (his wife is a force on her own. She develops treatments for children with brain cancer.) and he has FOUR children, who actually seem to like him. I mean. Come on. Read more about him everywhere to be inspired. You can also read his book for some understanding of how brain circuits shape human emotions.
It's important to end this by saying this world belongs to us; it's God's gift to us. We can decide to make it a better place for one another. We really can. We can decide to be better. I'm so certain we can. So why do we choose not to?
Love,
I
No comments