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Because I Don't Want To! [1]

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Date: 2023-11-29

Every story is a diffuse fog in the nether regions of someone’s brain before it hydrates into ink and rains onto paper, pulp or digital, becoming the words a reader eventually takes in- this one is no different, it’s been forming in the back nebulae of my neural net for a long time.

In a lot of ways, it goes back to the start of Maga and Trump’s ride down that ugly, damned escalator in 2015, but then, in many ways it started much earlier in my life.

Back in the day I had the rare privilege of talking about these things, the liberal conservative divide, with a bunch of soldiers who were out of Mississippi and Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. At the time, there wasn’t yet the hate between us that we are seeing now. No, there wasn’t, but there was its precursor which is an inherent disdain for the person you are discussing these things with.

Me being the cultural product of a Hick/Hippy upbringing and not being able to not debate things that were and are very dear to me- while being white, got told in no uncertain terms why they want to refight the civil war and why they want slavery back- why they are invested in the patriarchy, I get it, I was told their answer often enough.

“We aren’t ever going to change, because, yankee- we don’t want to.”

That’s it- a stubborn refusal to change in light of a changing world, mores or demographa-anything.

In a way, and I have to admit it, they do have a point.

Conservatism was cooked up in a cast iron cauldron to preserve the old ways that were being threatened by such things as America’s founding and the French Revolution- conservatives SAID they would ensure guided change. The lie was baked in at the beginning, they really wanted to stifle any changes they didn’t like.

Oh boy, that didn’t work- people heard them say they wanted SOME change and they ran with that.

Before you knew it, EVERYBODY could read and they were forming THEIR OWN OPINIONS and stuff! Then came the end of chattel ownership of humans and women’s suffrage right after, people began actually choosing the GODS they believe in and EVERYONE got to vote. Things just picked up speed on the road to hell from there. Damn sneaky liberals!

Nope- they ain’t gonna change and nothing we can do will make them. They have to take this position now because they gave us an inch and we took a kilometer!

The statements weren’t said in heat, back then, although there is enough thermal energy nowadays to melt steel. No, this was the early eighties and we were surrounded by the UCMJ, plus the fact that I was white kept the words civil, then- but those words were mirrored and reiterated by my Black and Asian friends in the Unit- They won’t change, they don’t want to. For them, it’s their way or the highway.”

There was a sense of resignation in each and every one of their voices as we discussed it- fool liberal, those are southern conservatives- they won’t change so you have to.

I have never understood why I have to just because they won’t.

The methods worked out to get by their intransigence seem insanely tepid and weak.

Going forward do a work around, fake them out legislatively- talk around the subject, don’t be direct! Too many people want what THEY want so be careful around those folks! DON’T anger them- they can be violent!

Yeah, okay- sure.

Does that work for them?

I only ask because it is getting quite tiresome to me.

I feel a need to explain.

I’ve never been a hand wringer- chicken little and I, we are usually at odds. My main career path has been combat arms soldier and then civilian event and sensitive location security. Those career paths fit my personality to a tee. A funny story- the police in northern Germany gave me a nickname- “The bouncer who doesn’t hit first” they liked my work. I always took pride in that.

So, back to dealing with my countrymen and women and their intractable stubbornity. They don’t want to. It is just THAT simple.

Now, I just took a coin out of my pocket and looked- yep, two sides and an edge. The edge I’m going to mark as ambivalence or appeasement. The sides each get a big “I don’t want to!” engraved into their faces.

So which one lands face up if we flip it.

It seems, if I look at the media and the greater American nation, the words of my fellow democrats, the absolute “Egg on your face” shit show that is this (R) congress and the current fights that we are again having all over America, as though it always lands face up for the conservatives. They don’t have to because they don’t want to...have to… or something.

After all, why should it not favor them? That coin toss gets a lot of help landing face up for them through compromise and yes, betimes, fear of the threats posed.

I don’t feel a lot of fear, not in my make up. (Not necessarily a good thing, believe me) I spent my life learning and using violence, in the service of folks who would rather not have anything to do with violence- threatening me with future violence does not make me back down. It really makes me stubborn- kind of like the ass in the picture above.

So, how about compromise? Compromise is only good when both sides are willing to engage in it and also have, in some form, a common goal. Destroying democracy so I can live in a corrupt, fasciracist state is not one of my goals.

Simply put, there are things that I, as a liberal, quite simply will not compromise on.

“I don’t want to...!

There are so many things that hit this rubicon for me, so, so many. The world they envision as good and proper is, for me, a hellscape unbearable to even contemplate.

But the overweening arch of nausea that I experience, the aqueduct that holds up all the other vomit inducing sheit that they seem to love is, for me, the criminal corruption.

Allow me to be unequivocal here, it’s all bad. But the idea that we should live as a society where crime is the key to prosperity and adulation, where every cop not only can be paid off but SHOULD be paid off because that’s just a damn good way for folks to live is a point beyond which I cannot go. Truth and honor, those are precious treasures, they are not to be squandered for something as mundane as a buck or the public’s approbation.

I’ve said it here and elsewhere- Mr. Trump? I’d not let him past the door of my apartment- not him nor any of his supporters to include my brothers. He’s a thief, a rapist, a racist and an incorrigible liar- they adore him as all of that and see him as a role model- ergo, each and every one of them is also a potential thief and whatever else he is. I don’t associate with such people.

If you let them in, you ARE going to lose things of value to you. Yes. Virginia, that does include your rights too!

This extends to all of the other ills- I’ll say sorry, in a sort of sarcastic/sardonic way to the thirty three percent of American citizens who won’t support democracy and me keeping my rights any longer because they just “Don’t wanna”.

“Sorry, this is America”.

This is America and I don’t want to either! So whose I don’t wanna is gonna win?

I don’t want to have an America where corrupt judges or civil servants enrich themselves and rob me of my rights- whilst laughing at me about it.

I don’t want women to be forced to carry a child to term- no, I don’t want that. I want them to be able to choose- with their doctor, IF they choose that doctor! Are we getting the concept of free will- sorry, free choice here?

I don’t want anyone excluded from immigration to my nation for any reason other than personal actions they may have taken in the past. I don’t want to live in a nation where we are too miserly to offer asylum to the needy. I don’t want America to be a greedy, mean spirited nation.

I don’t want ANY God or even a lack of a God or Gods to be legislated in any way- save that there is to be an inviolate wall between Church and State. I don’t want to be forced to believe in a God I do not believe in, and I will not be!

I don’t want children to sit hungry in school and I don’t want young adults to be denied a college education for ANY reason. If they have the ability, get them into those schools! I don’t want an America where anybody has to take half of their medicine so they can hopefully eat that day.

I don’t want fist fights in congress or nepotism in the senate. I don’t want a playing field tilted in any direction except toward those who have historically been disadvantaged- they need help, the system has been rigged against them for too many centuries. We have a debt there and I don’t want to be the kind of nation that slips out and leaves it’s debts unpaid. Ever!

I don’t want ANY of my rights taken away.

I don’t want a Bible, Koran or The Book of Law in any school- I don’t want religious people preaching politics unless they promptly accept 25% taxation on all income for the privilege of doing so. To include income tax for the clergy.

I don’t want any woman to be the property of any man. I don’t want any man to be the property of any woman. I don’t want marriage constrained in any way after the age of majority- if it is between consenting human adults.

I don’t want discrimination allowed in the workplace nor do I wish greedy employers to be the arbiters and enforcers of OSHA. I don’t want to live in the wild west, we did that, we don’t need to go back.

I don’t want to lose anymore good people to gun violence.

I could go on, by all the powers above and below, I could go on- that nauseous aqueduct mentioned before is full and it is flowing fast.

We’ve had too many years of prime examples of what they want- everything from nepotism and hypocrisy to open insurrection against the rest of the people in our nation- an insurrection against anyone who dared tell them no is how I see it. Theirs is a dirty, grimy and colorless world. I want no part of it.

It’s an ugly vision for the future of our nation, theirs, one I cannot countenance and also my reason for writing this- we need to simply tell them no.

Or, using their own vernacular, saying it the way my southern daddy would have said it-

“Not naw, but HELL NAW!

I don’t want what you want.

And the inevitable shouts of “Liberal, sit down and shut up” that are certain to meet such words?

“No.

I don’t want to!”

Now, let us have that fight.

Kell

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