Polyglot

Warning. This is a rant about how mean we can be. But  when out Hair Product in Chief incites a crowd to chant, "Send Them Back", I get angry at our own stupidity and meanness.

I've mentioned before. This country doesn't even have its own name, but that doesn't stop some people from waving flags and taking it out on others.

Yeah, it's the United States of America. But then there is the United States of Brazil, and also the United Mexican States, but at least they have their own unique name. There's nothing unique about "America", but we throw the label around as if Canada, Mexico, Central America, and South America aren't in the Americas.

It's arrogant. That's an epithet the USA'ns earned a long time ago. The Ugly American.

Now we have crowds happily chanting, "Make America Great Again" and "Send Them Back". That's disgusting.

You are uncomfortable with dark colored skin? Deal with it. You bristle at not understanding someone talking in a foreign language. Deal with it. You don't like people wearing ethnic clothes, whether a head scarf or baggy shorts hanging off someone's butt? Deal with it. Because the problem is you, not them.

You want to blame others for your problems? Stifle the urge because you are either a hypocrite or a conspiracy theorist; probably both. Go join a religion. They cater to such weak minds.

I'm angry at the intentional ignorance and ugliness in this country. People are actually proud of being nasty, vicious, even violent. I am angry at Fox Noise for making money by inciting the meanness in people. I am angry at a Republican party that shamelessly incites and exploits its nasty, vicious and mean base. Hypocrisy doesn't begin to describe such low-lifes.

But mostly I am angry at people who vote for such low-lifes. Or don't bother to vote. It's not like any of this is news. But hatred, even if contrived, is powerful.

The world is getting smaller. Cultures, languages, and skin color are getting a lot less isolated. Deal with it. "French", "English" and "Italian" are getting new meanings. Yes, it's shaking up our cultural identities. Deal with it. Maybe it's karma: just deserts for centuries of imperial and religious exploitation. And you complain?

And who is leading the free world in this orgy of hatred against "others"? Why, one of the most polyglot societies of them all. The political collective that shamelessly cleansed a half a continent of its inhabitants, and imported slaves and the poor in order to exploit and exhaust its natural resources, a political collective that doesn't even have its own name.

We have to deal with this. We have to do better. The alternative is too ugly to imagine.