Mar. 19th, 2019 11:52 am
Other people's crimes
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muckefuckI'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open today so I started a fight online just to have something stimulating to do. It's yet another round with the one remaining Trumpite on my flist, an old high-school acquaintance living out in Colorado with his guns and his dogs. After a recent exchange of barbs, someone he knows asked, "Why are you even friends?" and he gave a surprisingly lengthy and complimentary response. He doesn't seem to realise that I wouldn't respond in kind.
Ultimately, I suspect he's really lonely and just likes that someone is paying attention to him. He goes out of his way to bait me and insult my intelligence, then claims he respects me in spite of our political differences. In short, one of those douchebros who thinks friendship somehow transcends "politics". He's not a friend, though; he's just someone I keep around in the hopes of gleaning some insight into the 42% of my country who can gaze at the disaster which is Trump and somehow see a great leader.
There's not much to be gleaned there, of course, but I did have one small insight today: Conservative Christianity's vitriolic condemnation of homosexuality made a lot more sense to me when someone pointed out that it's a "sin" most preachers can safely condemn because they know they'll never be prey to it. (And of course this puts pressure on those who are prey to it to condemn it all the harder.) They're too avaricious to condemn avarice, too adulterous to condemn adultery, but homosexuality is fair game, no matter how low it was on Christ's list of priorities.
So it is with "illegal immigration". Most of the conservative criticisms I see lately seem to focus on the "illegal" aspect. Crime is crime, can't argue with that! This guy in particular even went so far as to go easy on visa-overstayers because "at least they entered legally". But these "invaders" who "sneak" across the borders are "common criminals". Yet I doubt their condemnation of illegality runs very deep. You get the feeling that these are the same good ol' boys who would brag about getting one over on the Feds and other interfering authority figures.
But they were all born here and they're never going to leave so "illegal immigration" is something they can fulminate against with impunity. I suspect that my acquaintance is willing to forgive visa-overstayers because he knows a few personally and thinks they're fine fellows. Or just possibly he's possessed of enough imagination to picture himself going abroad for some reason and hanging around a while without dotting every i down at the police office.
But one thing he obviously can't imagine is being faced with a situation serious enough to force him to flee his native country, even if this means violating the statutes of his destination and facing jail time or worse. It's the old empathy deficit that still has no solution I can see. He doesn't even have sympathy for impoverished white people in small Missouri towns (though he'll claim to if he can use that as a cudgel to bash "invaders"), how can he ever pretend to care for people with lives completely unlike his own?
Ultimately, I suspect he's really lonely and just likes that someone is paying attention to him. He goes out of his way to bait me and insult my intelligence, then claims he respects me in spite of our political differences. In short, one of those douchebros who thinks friendship somehow transcends "politics". He's not a friend, though; he's just someone I keep around in the hopes of gleaning some insight into the 42% of my country who can gaze at the disaster which is Trump and somehow see a great leader.
There's not much to be gleaned there, of course, but I did have one small insight today: Conservative Christianity's vitriolic condemnation of homosexuality made a lot more sense to me when someone pointed out that it's a "sin" most preachers can safely condemn because they know they'll never be prey to it. (And of course this puts pressure on those who are prey to it to condemn it all the harder.) They're too avaricious to condemn avarice, too adulterous to condemn adultery, but homosexuality is fair game, no matter how low it was on Christ's list of priorities.
So it is with "illegal immigration". Most of the conservative criticisms I see lately seem to focus on the "illegal" aspect. Crime is crime, can't argue with that! This guy in particular even went so far as to go easy on visa-overstayers because "at least they entered legally". But these "invaders" who "sneak" across the borders are "common criminals". Yet I doubt their condemnation of illegality runs very deep. You get the feeling that these are the same good ol' boys who would brag about getting one over on the Feds and other interfering authority figures.
But they were all born here and they're never going to leave so "illegal immigration" is something they can fulminate against with impunity. I suspect that my acquaintance is willing to forgive visa-overstayers because he knows a few personally and thinks they're fine fellows. Or just possibly he's possessed of enough imagination to picture himself going abroad for some reason and hanging around a while without dotting every i down at the police office.
But one thing he obviously can't imagine is being faced with a situation serious enough to force him to flee his native country, even if this means violating the statutes of his destination and facing jail time or worse. It's the old empathy deficit that still has no solution I can see. He doesn't even have sympathy for impoverished white people in small Missouri towns (though he'll claim to if he can use that as a cudgel to bash "invaders"), how can he ever pretend to care for people with lives completely unlike his own?