The Native Iowan

It’s a luvely, blustery, overcast morning here in QLD.

Temps are pleasant. We’ve been getting rain. The flora and fauna are very hapi. Bird life abounds, the garden is growing well. We’ve been working hard at making the property here in Palmwoods shine. Our lock-down therapy… The season has been perfect and we’ve cut and burnt and cleared and cleaned. The place looks great.

I have to say that Queensland is not a bad place to be.

Especially during the pandemic and pandemonium we’ve been living through.

Ive been watching these past weeks as we traveled through fear, lockdown, confinement, solitude and confusion. Ive watched from my comfortable arm chair. Yes I am a privileged old white dude who has probably never been privileged or white. but that’s another discussion…

I’m thinking of how the “WOGS”, the non-WASPs of past generational prejudices are now bone fide white men.

Ive read a lot. Ive listened to the thoughts of many others. I sift, search, glean and consume a lot of info. I recently described myself as an “info-junkie”…

But I try not to get into heated discussions with others. I have no positions or passion to sell. I have no ideal to defend. I belong to no club, party or movement. I am not trying to convert anyone to my way of thinking. I believe I am mature and experienced enough to develop my own way of thinking and can maintain my poise in balance at all times.

Yet I find that not many people are as poised, balanced or controlled.

I kinda find it sad that its difficult to discourse passionately, topically without creating an argument. A fight. A problem.

I think that the average mind, in this time of pulp-info and fake-newz, is unable to articulate or defend positions, ideas, ideals or opinions – without falling back on sound bytes and bumper sticker, slogan type chants and aggression.

The average person I meet has adopted the modern language to survive. This modern language is created by headlines, and memes, and a terrible propensity for group-think. I believe the average individual either does not wish to think for themselves, or they fear being rejected if they take an opposing point of view.

For example: There are marches and demonstrations and protests and criminal crowd behaviour around the world, in the name of lawful policing. We shout “police brutality” as beatings and shootings of folks in uniforms take place. We speak and rally others to an anti establishment cause, shouting for fairness and equality, then go burn or deface or destroy private property.

So, as I was saying, I do not engage in much meaningful discourse. I have learned to hold my words back, not table facts when I hear dumb shit like… “of course we know the world is heating up at an accelerated rate, and the sea levels are rising inches per year”… “renewable energy will replace fossil fuels in a few years”, “electric cars will soon be all we have”, “coal is bad’, “the riots and burning is a result of white supremacy”…

The same folks that went on line and encouraged us all to stay home, isolate and cooperate were the same ones dancing in front of the cameras as the city blocks were burning. That damn-dumb gubernatorial decision in Michigan to force folks to tow the line was proven farcical in the end. Like so much of the dictatorial BS we witnessed.

I have discussed this before, the fact that I have been shaken down, profiled, disrespected, threatened, because of the way I looked, because of the way people perceived me, ALL OF MY LIFE. I have experienced direct racism, projected at myself, my family. I have been targeted for being catholic, being male, being a long hair, being white, being an American. I have stood between my not-too-white family and aggressor(s) more than once. Hell, once I walked into a gay biker bar (by mistake, of course) and was served one beer and told… “see you came in, had a beer, walked out, and nothing bad happened”.

Ive hung out in some damn sleazy water front bars in the islands where I had to walk out the door backwards. I think of a badass biker bar where I was assaulted simply because I did not belong and was not welcome. All I wanted was a beer n a burger but by mistake I found the club house of the local Outlaws Motorcycle Gang.

It looked like an interesting place to me!

So, as Sunday glows. As I watch blood sports on the tube, as my my big, privileged dog lies in the sun, I think of the foolishness and waste I perceive. So saddddd….

Smiles