Tag: no rebogs please

clatterbane:

Having good intentions doesn’t mean that you can’t also get intrusive where it’s not welcome. Maybe especially where it involves situations you don’t have enough information about to reasonably draw conclusions

There are also reasons I do try to stay vague where it involves other people’s personal business. No matter how close they are, or how hard that is sometimes. It’s not my place to spread that around. Especially having been on the wrong end of that way too much growing up.

Having good intentions doesn’t mean that you can’t also get intrusive where it’s not welcome. Maybe especially where it involves situations you don’t have enough information about to reasonably draw conclusions

I’m trying not to flip out too much tonight, because that’s really not going to help anything. Much easier said than done, of course.

Not long before he went to bed, Mr. C decided to spring on me that he’d gotten a tentative recruiting offer while he was on that Worldcon trip recently–and he’s thinking of telling them he’s interested. When I asked, turns out the company is in Amsterdam 😳 He did add that he was going to say that he couldn’t start immediately, but that didn’t make me feel better about any of it.

I didn’t want to say anything I couldn’t take back right then, while I was that upset.

But, there’s just no fucking way that is going to work anytime in the foreseeable future. I really do want out of this place, but I am in absolutely no shape to even try to get my passport replaced. I’ve been practically housebound for coming up on a year now, just looking it up. And the health situation is not looking to improve anytime soon, as things stand; rather the reverse. With no obvious good way out. I also have some specific concerns about leaving the UK (or Ireland) with the pain situation as it is, but yeah.

Besides not necessarily wanting to move somewhere that neither of us has any ties and I have never even visited, just to get the hell out of Dodge.

I don’t need to get ranting about any of that more right now. I did tell him that I’m sorry I’ve been dead weight for a while now. He didn’t reply, and I can only hope it was because he didn’t know what to say. Really didn’t want to say much more after that.

Basically, I hope the whole damned thing is down to his not totally understanding the situation (and that weird style of denial), rather than not caring. Especially when I have barely been hanging on lately, and don’t really have any great options right now on my own.

Hopefully I can get settled down enough to be able to sleep before long. (Part of the reason for venting some.) But yeah, as uncomfortable as it makes me, particularly as the household dead weight now? I think I am just going to have to tell him no, there’s just no way I see that working at all.

Another case where no matter how many scrupulosity problems I have (or how carefully instilled in the past), I am really not the only one with a responsibility to avoid causing extra problems for the people around me. It’s not all on me. That’s just not reasonable. And it’s not like I’m purposely and maliciously sick, just to throw a wrench in other people’s plans.

I’m just kind of stunned again, with the reminder that Loving v. Virginia wasn’t even decided until less than 10 years before I was born. (But all the bad stuff happened in the far distant past, right? 😩)

Then there is some of the unfortunately continuing politics behind Mildred Loving’s family being Rappahannock only for official purposes. (Still miscegenation, of course. Besides eugenics targets, within her lifetime.)

Things were and are a little different on our end of the state, but yeah. I get aggravated sometimes, and so did my mother–but, some of our older relatives do have actual reasons which still seem compelling to them for some of their own continuing decisions there. Including flat out lying for public purposes if white people start getting too nosy. And sometimes turning pretty nasty when the younger ones just won’t do that anymore, now that being honest is as safe as it’s ever been in centuries. Some awful ideologies that just won’t die, of course, but putting things into some perspective here.

That obviously doesn’t make throwing other people under the bus OK, and yeah too many are still willing to do that if it comes down to it. Not just in my family either. I almost wish it were.

This is an important thread on Twitter, looking at some of the history of collective racial violence in the US. And why racist mobs aren’t harmless–which shouldn’t really need to be pointed out, but here we are.

I can’t help but get kind of frustrated and disappointed again, though, at the absolute lack of mention some other recorded instances get.

Including things like the Paxton Boys mess (which is still getting described there as vigilante retaliation). There’s plenty more, but I was reminded of that specific example because of the murderous mob marching on Philadelphia. Plenty more recent than that too, of course.

Definitely not interested in getting into some kind of gross one-upsmanship game, or suggesting that the history talked about there is somehow less important. Not at all. There’s plenty of ugly history to go around, unfortunately.

But, it doesn’t seem helpful to ignore other large chunks of ugliness. Especially with a view to recognizing some worrying patterns.

My stepdad is a white guy with an engineering degree who grew up firmly middle-class in NOVA. He was one of the people who ended up moving back near Virginia Tech later on, when he needed a change. And a number of people in similar positions were really surprised to find out he’d married one of the local hicks (not to mention one who was obviously not white), as an indication of some ongoing politics there.

(He’s also an autistic misfit who didn’t do nearly as well for himself in general as basically anyone expected, and wound up under heavy medical debt. Still, I got to watch some interesting dynamics in action there.)

His sister and her husband are still in the DC suburban sprawl, on the Maryland side. And they’ve been doing more what expected of them. Visiting them up there was always an experience. They’re at least not in a gated community, but it was one of the developments with a pretty intrusive neighborhood association, etc.–which I had never encountered before. I’m surprised some of the neighbors never called the cops over our car parked there, at least that we ever knew of.

One visit when I was maybe 12 was also where I got my only exposure to the suburban Evangelical megachurch phenomenon, because of course we had to join them since we were there on a Sunday. (And my parents made sure not to be, after that.) At least half the neighbors were there too, not to mention people they worked with.

(It was also absolutely devastating when their older kid turned out to be bipolar, to the point that Sis kept calling my mother for emotional support. We were 95% sure the younger kid was not straight, and he was obviously having about the level of conflict you might expect. I really hope both of them are doing OK, because they really couldn’t help their family situation and I always kinda liked them both.)

I haven’t talked to them at all since like 2008, when the hubby felt a need to complain about Obama before the election. But yeah, I really doubt those political leanings have changed much in the meantime.

But sure, let’s focus on some lower hanging fruit.

Honestly, there are also things to be said about some of the types of people that (Jefferson’s baby) UVA has attracted from the get-go. I would be surprised if Richard Spencer were the only alum there to take the place “back” with their tiki torches.

Also reminded again of Scalzi’s too-apt observation:
The “alt-right” are basically those assholes from your college dorm who were always “just playing devil’s advocate” about the topics of slavery and women’s rights.

Yeah, I remember them a little too well. That’s hardly limited to UVA, of course. And it remains a much less comfortable discussion, compared to blaming some other demographics with a lot less actual power. They like it that way, too.

I’m not quite to the point of needing to take a complete break today, but it’s fast approaching. Some of the great rhetoric flying around seriously has my eye twitching right now, and nobody has even been inflicting it on me directly. So far 😩

Probably an excellent time for a nice cup of something and a book. Maybe a movie. Something with little or no overt political content, in any case.