orange

I finished painting my dining room today. It's a lovely, rich red-orange shade. I did an okay job, I think. It's kinda shiny, which is something I've never felt ballsy enough to commit to before.

I haven't found a job yet, but I've been applying.

I still haven't heard about graduation, but I'm not particularly worried that I'll pass. I am worried that they won't get their asses in gear on the paperwork soon enough to keep me and my international classmates out of hot water with border control.

In other news, I've been keeping up with Joe My God lately, and as much as I applaud the thousands of Americans who have contributed to her first real grassroots movement in decades by making "It Gets Better" videos, they make me sad. Most of the ones I've seen (made by individuals--not the awkwardly-read ones from politicians and public figures) have told of a difficult and painful childhood that was only alleviated by leaving. The only way they could find to make their lives better was to run away from their families, their homes, everything they knew, and to go somewhere safe. Because the people who were horrible to them stayed horrible when they grew up. Their families and churches remained intolerant, even dangerous.

The videos never say "it'll get better because the world is getting better." or "when you grow up, the people you want to love you will come to accept you for who you are" or even "I had a difficult discussion with my father, but he's come to tolerate me." The sweeping majority say "When you grow up, you can leave all that shit behind. In a little while you'll never have to see those fuckers again."

And in America today, that Is the best option for gay kids in the Bible Belt. Hell, in some communities it's the best option for ethnic and religious minorities, intellectuals, feminists, and even cancer victims. Just get out. There's no rehabilitating these fascists, and if you fight for your right to pursue your own happiness, in the open, pretty soon you'll start seeing burning crosses in your front yard.

Because that's what the Tea Party is. That's who video makers have had to escape in order for things to get better. The white, Christian, middle-aged bigots who don't want to have to accept anything but themselves. Indeed, they want their identity to be the national identity, the only collective identity. I don't think they even want 'different' people to join their religion, culture, or xenophobia--they just want them to go away. They oppose diversity, tolerance, and understanding. They oppose government spending on anything that isn't a free cheque for a million dollars that only they receive for being so wonderful.

The video makers have done precisely what the Teabaggers wanted them to do. Vloggers call it escaping. Baggers call it banishment. In the end, the Baggers get what they want for their community, and the Vloggers join a new one. Nobody has to change.

Teabaggers tend to live in areas of the world where they don't have to grow to accept anyone who's different because there's no one different around. Extreme conservatism is less common in urban areas because everyone is different from everyone, so there's no opportunity for cultural insularity. It is a matter of simple proximity. Urban areas do wind up hosting gangs and working around the odd integration-proofed pocket, but this is what happens to supremacy movements in diverse communities. Weirdos who can't assimilate or tolerate others find themselves on the edges of society, angry but ultimately powerless. Most people just blend in and are fine with that. They don't try to impose upon the freedoms of their neighbours, provided their neighbours extend to them the same courtesy. Any lifestyle that doesn't actively cause harm to others is just fine.

The Tea Party are the problem. They always have been. Now at least they're a unified and easily-identifiable bag of doorknobs. A quivering mountain of human blubber sitting around in their Medicare scooters, Klan hoods in one hand, misspelt sign demanding that healthcare not be extended to poor people clutched in the other sweaty palm. These are people who hate Obama because he is black, hate homosexuals because they're told anal sex is icky, try to ruin women's lives with unwanted children as punishment for not abstaining from the most natural act in human nature, and sincerely believe that America and her people are actually better than everyone else on earth.

They are not fiscal conservatives. That's giving them too much credit for learning about and understanding conservatism. Moreover, the reductions to government involvement and financial oversight they would like to see would result in catastrophe, with each one of them out of the job as soon as their employers moved overseas, or dead in explosions when their un-inspected, corner-cut factories finally shake themselves apart.

They are not social conservatives, as they don't have any coherent moral or ethical values they're sincerely trying to uphold. They demand that women not have the option of terminating pregnancy, while simultaneously demanding that no one should have to provide health insurance to them, so these miserable women are back at work trying to pay off their hospital bills mere weeks after they give birth, making them completely unable to bond with their babies or even breastfeed them. These children grow up neglected, resented, and often abused when the stress gets too bad, leading to lives of crime, hatred, and fear. They demand that students not be permitted to learn about or accept homosexuals, and demand that the only thing their kids be taught about sex is that they shouldn't do it, and try to 'cure' them as soon as they get wind that they're gay anyway, but try and hush-up the fact that their 'homophobic' pastors are routinely caught in bed with South American rent-boys, and forgive their senators and governors for having mistresses. They ignore what it really takes to uphold family values--education, acceptance, support, and dedication--in favour of hate, fear, and disgust.

Fascism is a belief that the best way to unite a country is for the government to mandate that everyone in it believe the same thing, behave the same way, and have all the same values. Once they agree on a religion, political party, and way of life, everyone must follow it without question. The Tea Party does not believe anyone should have the right to disagree with them. They do not believe anyone should be allowed to live in America without being an evangelical Christian and adhering to their teachings. They believe the church should rule the country, just as it should dictate the specifics of every individual's entire life. Because in a unified country, there is no room for individualism, intellectualism, or dissent.

No, wait. They don't believe these things. They just mindlessly repeat these things. Because they're sheep. They're sheep who have been told by their shepherds that they're the best sheep in the whole field. If they look outside the herd they may see that that's not strictly true--all the other sheep are just as pretty as them, really--so they're told not to look. The shepherd's control over them would be compromised if the herd realized that the other sheep were happy too.

You can't be at once fiscally and socially conservative in a secular state. The two are mutually exclusive. A small government cannot execute a cultural mandate. That's why they want to empower Evangelical Christian churches to bindingly establish and enforce their way of life as The only way of life. That's their goal. Not to protect religion from a powerful state that they believe would ban it, but to empower it further than it already is compared to the rest of the first world. It is frightening, disgusting, and back-assward. It is a desire fuelled not even by religion itself, but by hate, greed, and idiocy funnelled and fanned by religious and corporate leaders to further empower and fund themselves. I'm scared shitless for America right now, because too many stupid people have been organized into a singular movement that they don't and won't ever understand. They will bring painful consequences down upon themselves and the rest of the world, and all the rest of us can do is bite our fists and wait.