Guata....Hell!

    

The right wing mentality is a challenging mentality to tolerate, and I find that left extremity to be frustratingly soft to the point of ineffectual.  As I learn more about important world dilemmas I wonder how we can remedy any of them when there seems to be such a gap between the two polarities.  

    I would describe right wing as the "convenient" way to work with these complexities. The mentality seems to be highly adolescent.  It allows a person to rationalize most inconveniences into a category of threatening or wrong, while also labeling most gratifications as liberties, especially when it comes to profits.  It might be describable with the synopsis such as saying regulations are an injustice to my prosperity and freedom until I find that the scenerio results in pain to those "I" find important, then of course those regulations are needed.  

    Or better yet, when a brown democratic country like Guatemala is reported to be in collaboration with Russians, it conveniently looks threatening.   What it looks like when a brown country puts its country first.  It is surely deviant or threatening, from a right wing perspective.  It is so deviant that we need to remove their democratically elected leader.  And when Michael Flynn wants to collaborate with Russian entities it is a liberty and conveniently in our National Interests.  

    I find that Left Wings extremities function the same way, like regulations are necessary until we have so many that I can't do anything without taking into consideration the inconvenience.  Left wingers will gradually only want to follow the regulations that ensure the safeties that reinforce the safety that seem safe enough for them.  Because when the shoe is on the other foot we get similar results.  Left wingers equally champion the subtle ways of using convenience as a tool for power.  When Bill Clinton appears to get help from a foreign country the same predators appear.  The same privileges are afforded left elites.  Again when a non-anglo country leans into unifying modalities like communism, Anglo America feels inconvenienced.  Just like Guatemala, Vietnam endured a long period of governmental angst that was adolescently approached by America.  United States of America ignored its responsibility to be principled to liberty.  Again when a non-anglo country like Vietnam puts itself first, or tries to "make itself great again", America sees it differently.

Nationalists who often times align with a stereo typical conservative ideology fit the label of "Right Wing", and it becomes more irritating how this ethnocentric bigotry is disguised as patriotism.  Fuck Flynn not because he might have talked with the Russians, but Fuck Flynn for having the privilege of being able to see communist Russia as safe.

Brown angst during COVID

I am struggling to sit in the discomfort around how dis-empowered I feel learning about different policies, decisions, platforms, and attitudes in the American arena.  I think what hit home the hardest was reading an article about how prepared the senate was to fill a supreme court vacancy that has the potential of being vacated because Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was admitted into the hospital.  This access to malevolently driven aggression is not something I am familiar with.  I get quickly worked up over how hypocritical these Republican government officials demonstrate convenient ideals.  Then I listen to how armed Anglo citizens forced their way into government buildings to protest their state's orders to stay home.  I wonder how different it would be if Chicano armed men or Black armed men attempted the same patriotic display.  If that isn't enough I read more about the former National Security Advisor and how his once guilty plea was somehow undone.  All this privilege, looking a lot like Anglo privilege, sinks in and festers in my psyche.  

Then I find myself gripping the anger, looking at a picture of Mitch McConnel, wanting to participate in the adolescences of mocking his interesting appearance.  I let myself ruminate over the apparent prejudice, blatant hypocrisy, and certain impediments to economic justice.  I fortunately haven't stayed in this condition long.  I remind myself that McConnel sees some American value in his seemingly bigoted, and if not bigoted, then surely ethnocentric, vision for America.  And despite not having any immediate or direct control over this person's views, I do have authority to minimize his effect on my joy.  I will likely never know how harmless Michael Flynn's encounters with Russian diplomats are.  And yet my desire to see justice found isn't as important as understanding how to ensure that my greed never masquerades as my principle.  My anger towards a man named Mitch that I've never met, can't be more important than my cultural requirement to understand that Mitch is valuable and precious in some way, and it is my duty to seek it out.  So I have learned to watch the American experiment with humble eyes, a moderated anger, and hopeful sadness.