Snakes in the Garden – Op-ed
Or how even the best of intentions can fail…[Crosspost from yourhomelessblog]
Every day now is a struggle for many Americans who must cope with the prevalent surreality — if they are awake! How many of us are not awake, because we are forced into a mold that disallows us the privilege of thinking for ourselves much less with expression?
Examples of surrealism abound for those who are half-way awake. We just withdrew from a country where we have held a twenty year occupation which we really had no right to invade in the first place, but where a lot of collective punishment took place. We did get a lot of dope that helped fuel the opioid crisis which Dr. Fauci was somehow involved in, just as he is somehow involved with big pharmaceutical companies today. But Dr. Fauci is a tutelary god according to the mainstream media. He would never have any kind of conflict of interests since he is above scrutiny.
Should we take the mainstream media seriously? I haven’t wanted to broach this awful subject, afterall, it’s a well known fact, according to the establishment media, that only losers could hold a gripe. Consider that a number of alternative news channels have been yanked off the air by YouTube (Google). They include holistic medicine doctors, experts with a different take on Covid-19 than the mainstream media, news channels leaning too far right, left, and libertarian. They yanked off Corbett Report and Corbett Report Extras probably because the truthstream was too believable on false flag events such as the Oklahoma City bombing. They are biding their time to take on AE911 (Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth). Google is also manipulating and scrambling search results. They just threw in jail another British whistleblower reporter, Craig Murray, essentially because he drew attention to the wrongs against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
A private gripe about alternative news sites is well meaning as they seem, they often are a mirror image of the mainstream media or worse, particularly where fair representation of news by minority reporters are concerned. While they may seem like hipsters, more often than not, there are no news published by Asian American reporters. It’s not like we don’t try—it is more like they refuse to accommodate us. They deliberately perpetuate the stereotype that we cannot read or write, even if the Times of India, or CGTN displays plenty of evidence that Asian female journalists do exist, can ask hard questions, and are articulate.
The mixed messages by our society are crushing the will of the people on purpose. It’s like traveling along a gravelly road filled with potholes, while you are trying to drive to a destination. There is a sense of drag, of foreboding, of being intentionally weighted down, even in the midst of disaster. I’ve showed you my favorite photo, right?
1.5C to 2C of warming — between a rock and a hard place in priorities!
Most of the DC residents don’t like to talk about climate change. Especially when they see Asians, they love to herd us into their lockstep monologue about careerisms. An older well-intentioned black woman tugged at my elbow yesterday on Metro and queried me quite seriously about whether I was still at my job at McGraw-Hill. What? We are passing strangers, and I am heading down the escalator…I quickly tell her no, but not enough time to explain, never worked there! But clearly, all she identified about me was a face and title! I was not privileged with being human! I know a lot of blacks (and other people) who are like this in DC. They really don’t see Asians as humans! But when they talk to each other, they will talk the time of day, the good food places, the hum-drum of life, crack jokes, and all that other nice stuff that human beings regard as human conversation!
So these jolts, both microscopic and macroscopic, take an effort to mindfully fight off and push back. You don’t have time to say, Hey, you just interrupted me while I was chanting my mindfulness mantra! Do you really think that is all I am supposed to be to you? How about you allowing me to share with you that there are roads less travelled in life, and I have a great future, because every day, I have the chance to cultivate and learn about virtue?
There would, I imagine, be an incomprehensible look on that woman’s face. We are taught to focus, our mouths attached to the great whale of belly fat of provisions, cross-eyed like lamphreys on gorging ourselves with what we can get for ourselves. That is the measure of our success in life!
The mixed messages have only intensified whether in media, daily life, and social messaging from our well-intentioned ‘minders.’ Especially in transitional/permanent supportive housing, the minding is quite intense. This is because the bull-market really does not like the idea of housing priced at a maximum of 30% of one’s income. In fact, they hate it to death, literally! And now, with the ending of unemployment benefits, even with new buildings going up while older ones are torn down, evicted tenants will have to make do with a tent resting on the hard pavement because if they got to live inside a building, it might instill within them too many expectations!
Residents in permanent supportive housing are routinely publicly shamed! We have very class-conscious residents nearby too, people who like the lamphreys mentioned above, have that weird materialistic judgmental glaze in their eyes wherever they happen to trot by with their dogs. You even seen them inside the church, virtuously praying louder, singing in their slightly offtune soprano, and staring with hostile eyes at any identifiable misfit. Their love is like 1/4-inch thick or less. They see a yellow-person, the age, the garb, the probable socio-economic income, and like human calculators, they dole out a welcome at the presumed consumer value.
You just made my day feel a bit more surreal! I am not going to take your bait though! I am going to walk out, take a deep breath, and realize that I need to pray for you because your spiritual development is….
But you see, spirituality of the good kind no longer has much use in our society. The bad kind is definitely popular, but the good kind engenders laughs and guffaws practically. So these teenaged girls are mocking me for some reason, and it’s the same reason as once, a long time ago, I saw these teens at the National Zoo, a breaktime from Edmund Burke high school in DC, and they were seriously hating on this gurgling little Chinese baby. I never saw such flames of hate oozing from their eyes. It was because the little Chinese baby boy looked beautific, angelic, innocent, sweet, and oh my gosh, happy!
It’s a crime for Chinese people to be successful or happy in healthy ways nowadays. That’s why any good news from China is heavily censored. It’s a crime for the establishment news to report on Chinese accomplishments in a positive tone and perspective. No news about the travels of Chinese astronauts to their very own space station for a month, underreported news about China’s bullet trains, and if there is too much good news coming from China, the deep state might even order a ‘deep state hit.’ I kind of think that is what happened near Hualien in Taiwan. The connection to a deep state can be remote—it can be the orders from demons from another dimension. Our minds may not be mind-controlled, but our hearts are…
And so this is the case also close-up in our housing complex. We see these staffspersons whose official job is to care for the needs of the residents, develop programs, implement guidelines, etc. In reality, they spend a great deal of time, sort of like how we used to spend time bull-shitting at the Lion’s Club, and with a 20% efficiency at actual doing. But it’s worse than that at times, because whereas every member of the Lion’s Club sort of comes with the notion of relaxing and socializing, here we have a very strange if not perverse indoctrination taking place. All kind of hidden jargon, cues, and innuendos accompanied by intentionally insulting behaviours and mannerisms towards the residents. Staff will rarely if ever greet the residents (especially those whose 1/4″ surface is lighter toned). When they rush by, if they do happen to glance at you, it is with a very condescending look on their face. And ideally, they train any guest to behave towards us with the most patronizing, agonized stare of disgust and contempt at our piteous state of poverty. If we question their gaze, their tone, or expect them to talk to us like human co-equals, they will escalate and try to write us up!
I have tried to rationalize with the staff (there is really only one major staffperson who runs the show, even though there may be four people reporting to her) that (poor) students living in student housing will often be treated with respect and genuine positive support. I have brought up ethics and fairness. Recently I did bring up religion, but was rudely brushed off.
Read the rest at https://yourhomelessblog.blogspot.com/2021/09/snakes-in-garden.html