How Much Are You Willing To Swallow (not porn)

 

I'm not being paid.

I would love to be paid to do what I am going to do anyway.  It could be George Soros or a polka dotted pig from two galaxies over.  I don't care.  If such an entity would like to add to my bank account, everything from a penny to the GDP of the planet can go right into my account with no bitching from me.  Of course, that seems horribly unlikely since most of us would not understand the idea of paying for that which would be free and is going to happen regardless of payment status.  There was a time when I was regularly paid to write my essays.  I certainly accepted that money but when the pay quit, I kept writing.  No one has ever paid me to protest.  I protest anyway.  

I do not hate America.

I am a multi-enlistment veteran of the USN that joined voluntarily though I had some scholarship opportunities right out of high school.  The Vietnam war was still killing humans, even humans related to me.  Though I like to think I am reasonably familiar with history, I generally attribute hostile acts to specific individuals  or specific (relatively) small groups rather than declaring the USA as a place to hate.

I have no desire for everyone to be Trans.

I am not Trans and I am quite happy with my heterosexuality.  I probably know more Trans folk than come immediately to mind but I don't ask because as a general rule, I don't care.  So far, I have never identified someone's gender claim as a basis for negativity in my life.  The same could be said about any consensual sex. Any 2 or 20 folk in any mix of genders can sex the hell out of each other without affecting me at all. 

I don't want open borders.

A couple of decades or more ago I first observed that to be a nation, you had to have defensible and defended borders.  At the first mention of the idiotic border wall, I suggested that we could do better than relying on 10k year old technology especially since the first time the tech was defeated was probably also 10k years ago.

I have been hired for reasons other than my Blackness.

Some jobs I have had I was better at than damn near anyone else doing the job.  Other jobs found me being competent but having the distinction of showing up most every time I was expected to be there.  Not one time in my life nor, if they are to be believed, the lives of my siblings, has anyone ever suggested within range of my perception that I was hired solely because I am Black.

For as long as I can remember, I have heard stereotypical descriptions of the desires or habits of  Black people, poor people, Democrats, Southerners, etc etc.  Somehow, no matter how many of the groups I happened to fall into, the stereotypes were unlikely to apply to me.  Sometimes I would be hard pressed to find anyone that fit the descriptions.  Generally, the frequency of the stereotypes being true or accurate were about the same as for individuals not in whatever group being allegedly described.

There is a traditional term for those who make claims that are demonstrably, verifiably false.  Those people are liars.  You might attempt to be charitable towards them and explain away their misconstruals as mistakes or misunderstanding.  Nope, they are lying and for the most part, they know they are lying.  They are simply more concerned with "winning" the argument or discussion than they are with accuracy or fairness.

But in truth, those folks don't matter.  What matters is you and the titular question of this essay.  Those folks are knowingly and openly lying to you (and possibly about you).  I'm curious as to just how much of it you are willing to swallow along with the social and economic abuses that affect you negatively even though they are supposedly targeting the "others".  How long will you continue to beg to be lied to?  How long will you pretend there is anything to the obviously false statements?  What will it take for you American-up and start siding with your neighbors who demonstrate the falsity in the statements of those who would attempt to spread hate?

They are not lying because they expect to convince anyone.  They are certainly not expecting to convince me.  I have presented sufficient written evidence to identify that as a non-starter.  They are lying because they can.  Because you will not hold them to account.  Because they hope to convince you to hate the people they irrationally hate.  As long as you will continue to swallow it, they will continue to feed it to you.  It will never be more true or reasonable or fair or right.  It will never be justifiable.  It will only ever be a naked power grab.  The irony is that those who have more power than you will use those same exact tactics on you as soon as they are more worried about you than they are about me - regardless of the reason.