The Korean government just can't stop their repressive, abusive and threatening behavior. They seem an awful lot like an abusive spouse. They say they want foreigners to come here. Indeed, the government and the corporations who woo us give us mighty financial incentives to come here. They lure foreigners- 3D workers and English teachers alike- with the dream of financial and job security, a place to live, a visa and sometimes even plane tickets and signing bonuses. But once we get here, we find we are shackled to jobs we hate, with no rights and little or no opportunity to leave them, lest we lose everything we came here for in the first place. And then when we are brave enough to quit, we lose our visas and try to make it anyway. But then we are punished...
We are punished for trying to realize the things that were promised to us. We are hunted, followed, sometimes beaten by police or bosses, verbally abused and forced to leave the country. In short, we are made to feel that foreigners are merely a resource to be used up. We are not valued for our contribution to the Korean economy. We are not valued for our role in expanding the cultural horizons of the Koreans we meet. We are not appreciated in any way. Yet the Korean government pays decent lip service to building a new multicultural Korea. This, they are very good at. So while they break our backs in the workplace and send us into hiding from immigration officials, they celebrate us in cultural festivals which showcase fresh off the boat migrants who haven't yet had a chance for their dreams to turn into nightmares.
The whole charade is quite disgusting...Yet we can't stop coming here because as desperate as we are to have dignity in our workplaces, we are probably more desperate to have money to send to our families, to deal with our debt, to save for our futures... And so we continue to allow Korea, and other labor importing countries to abuse us for a small fee.
When are we going to end this? When are we going to stand up and say, "Enough!"? It's time for workers from developing countries to end the abusive relationships with bully countries like Korea. I don't mean stop working in them, but to meet them on the same level. Because they have something that we need, but those countries need us, too. Let's use our strength as workers to demand our rights... (* Man, at moments like this, I really want to call a general strike! If only people would follow me!)
*This was written for my Bangladeshi friend, Lelin, who keeps asking me to write something for his Bangladeshi newspaper. He asked me to write about my experience in Korea, yet I find that my personal experience in Korea is inextricably linked to the experiences of migrant workers in Korea. And so I don't really have anything to say about my life in Korea without talking about the lives of my friends who experience, in all seriousness, the same abuse from their employers as women who find themselves in abusive relationships. And today I just happened to feel enough anger to write a productive rant about why I dislike Korea so intensely. And I feel the same way about America, although I don't think American attitudes towards migrants or immigrants is as monolithic as they are here in Korea.
* I will probably add more to this article later. And I'll edit before I give to him. So if you have suggestions on how to improve my wildly angry writing, by all means, leave a comment...
Showing posts with label ranting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ranting. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
i hate microsoft
Why do I have to enable microsoft on my computer to renew my anti-virus subscription? I don't use the windows suite or microsoft explorer, but I needed to buy Norton again, and nothing worked properly until I re-enabled all of the microsoft shit on my computer. I still us the MS opperating system, but I wish I didn't. It really pisses me off and actually, I still haven't been able to get all of the Norton programs working properly. I played with it for a few hours last night and my software still isn't updated. What a bunch of bullshit.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Justified Weekend Ranting
Over the weekend, there was a fire at the immigration detention center in Yeosu (way south of here) and 9 migrant workers died, while about 24 more have been hospitalized and are not expected to survive. The workers who died were Chinese and Sri Lankans who were slated for deportation. It seems a cruel fate to die in a detention center after they've spent their youths indentured to ruthless bosses. Is there NO justice in this world? I mean, at least if they actually got deported, they would've been able to see friends and family.
You know what I say? Borders + Visas= Bullshit. Those guys should have never been in a detention center in the first place. Why is that corporations, and the people who run them, can run rampant across the globe with virtual impunity, while the people who are actually doing the work that makes the world go (like make food, clothes, buildings, etc) are being criminalized for trying to eke out a meager living? It just doesn't make a damn bit of sense, people. I mean, if a CEO can move his factory to another country to make more money, why can't a worker move his/her body and family to another country to make more money... Doesn't that just seem hypocritical?
Furthermore, it's the corporations who are the real law breakers in this new globe trotting economy. Take environmental laws for example . Or how about labor laws. Tax laws. I mean, if the government wants to crackdown on some international wrong-doers, maybe they should start with GE or LG or any of the hundreds of apparel companies that operate here. I guess it's just that the workers are easier to catch and harder to piss off so it's easier to show you have rule and order.
And anyway, when was the last time that a CEO got a debilitating workplace injury? Died in a factory fire? Got beheaded on the job? (That actually happened about a year ago in a factory not far from Seoul). When's the last time a CEO was forced to leave his family for decades so that they could survive? We all know that these things don't happen to CEOs. And I'm not saying that they should. But in a time of enormous wealth and incredible technology, why should they happen to anybody?
Hey you guys up there! Stop being so goddamn selfish and share with the rest of the world. Or else we're gonna get you and you're not going to like it.
You know what I say? Borders + Visas= Bullshit. Those guys should have never been in a detention center in the first place. Why is that corporations, and the people who run them, can run rampant across the globe with virtual impunity, while the people who are actually doing the work that makes the world go (like make food, clothes, buildings, etc) are being criminalized for trying to eke out a meager living? It just doesn't make a damn bit of sense, people. I mean, if a CEO can move his factory to another country to make more money, why can't a worker move his/her body and family to another country to make more money... Doesn't that just seem hypocritical?
Furthermore, it's the corporations who are the real law breakers in this new globe trotting economy. Take environmental laws for example . Or how about labor laws. Tax laws. I mean, if the government wants to crackdown on some international wrong-doers, maybe they should start with GE or LG or any of the hundreds of apparel companies that operate here. I guess it's just that the workers are easier to catch and harder to piss off so it's easier to show you have rule and order.
And anyway, when was the last time that a CEO got a debilitating workplace injury? Died in a factory fire? Got beheaded on the job? (That actually happened about a year ago in a factory not far from Seoul). When's the last time a CEO was forced to leave his family for decades so that they could survive? We all know that these things don't happen to CEOs. And I'm not saying that they should. But in a time of enormous wealth and incredible technology, why should they happen to anybody?
Hey you guys up there! Stop being so goddamn selfish and share with the rest of the world. Or else we're gonna get you and you're not going to like it.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The State of Our Union
This title could be taken to mean many things. And in this case, it does. This is a report on the state of my relationship. This is a report on the state of the Migrants' Trade Union, which has great bearing on my relationship. And lastly, this is a report, much like GWB's State of THE Union last week, that is bogged down by the reality of a situation in which you just can't win. Period.
So let me start off by saying that I am not in a funk again. I am just faced with what seems to be, despite my simpleness of mind and life style, an increasingly complicated situation. It is no secret that the General Secretary and I are caught up in the politics of Korea. He, the leader of a trade union that fights quite militantly for the rights of undocumented workers, and I from a trade union background, are united by a simple philosophy: Life is not fair, but if we work together we can make it better. And despite all of the set backs, the shit that life throws at you, and the losses, I still believe it to be true and so does he.
So why then, is this philosophy, and specifically our common desire to build a democratic movement that will give migrant workers a voice and some power, the very thing that is tearing us apart?
This has been a particularly bad year for foreign workers in Korea. After the 2 year mark of Korea's new immigration law, EPS, which was supposed to reduce corruption and make improvements on migrants' rights and rates of documentation, the number of undocumented workers has unofficially soared to nearly 70% of the foreign worker population. And as a result, the government crackdown on undocumented workers has also gone through the roof in an effort to bring this number down. Additionally, the right wing of Korea is saying that EPS is too generous to migrant workers in Korea, and that further restrictions on migration need to be made.
We have seen so many friends get caught by immigration this year. The government has some fancy new strategies that make immigration officials harder to recognize, and therefore has made it more difficult for us to warn our friends (we have set up an alert system, so when someone see a crackdown, they report it and a message goes out to everyone so that they can avoid that area). Everyone is more afraid to leave their houses or factories, and everyone is more afraid to fight for fear of becoming a government target. When just over a month ago our friend Jaman was caught at his factory, immigration officials were downright celebratory in the
detention center when they realized they had caught a leader. And accordingly, they made life more difficult for him in the detention center.
And now, immigration officials do not only raid factories and subway stations, but also mosques, markets and any place they believe an undocumented worker might live or hang out. In short, undocumented workers in Korea have no right to live, no right to sleep, no right to go shopping for necessities, and no right to worship, but are in fact needed for the economy and coveted by bosses, for the more terrorized migrants are, the easier it is to exploit them.
All this said, it is not as though migrant workers have had no victories this year. MTU and another trade union in Daegu have been able help workers recover lost wages, get work injuries paid for by employers, and in some cases, have even got undocumented workers released from detention centers.
All of this makes for an extremely busy General Secretary. A GS who works from morning until past midnight nearly 7 days a week. A GS who rarely sleeps and who sees his friends even less. A GS who has no time for a personal life (ie no time for me). And so I'm not going to lie. I was downright happy when he told me that we was not going to seek a second term for MTU. I became optimistic, thinking that finally we would have a chance to see what life together might be like if we actually had time for each other.
But this was not to be. The pressure for him to run started a few weeks ago and has been relentless. And I, for the most part of have been silent, not wanting to pressure him, only wanting him to make a decision about what he wants to do. And I was pretty confident that his decision was to leave leadership and become a regular old member again. So when he told me on Monday that he was running for a second term as General Secretary, I had a bit of a meltdown... When, after all, is OUR life going to start?
But here is the reality. Even if the GS did become a member again, he is still undocumented. He would have to find some shitty work in some shitty factory that he is overqualified for. He would have to work 14 hours or more everyday in a job that has takes no safety precautions for a pittance, all the while looking out to make sure immigration doesn't raid his factory while he is there. He might have to live in said factory because it is becoming more difficult to work in Seoul due to all the crackdown. He is more likely to get caught, more likely to get injured and in fact, we probably wouldn't see each other anymore than we do now...
And, well, I have to admit that he is the rightful leader of MTU. He has a plan, he knows what to do, he has all the connections with unions, support groups, government parties (actually, he is an elected representative in the Korean Democratic Labor Party and in the last election, got more votes than any other candidate who ran for a post) and officials, and people trust him to do the right thing. The GS was born to be an organizer. So how could I be angry at him for doing it?
So now I'm realizing that our problems have an external source: Global capitalism. Does that sound crazy? Well, think about it. He left Bangladesh so that he could have a job. He came to Korea and found that it was impossible to stay here legally. But he didn't have much choice, needed money and stayed. He became outraged at how he and his friends were treated here and became a fighter. And it's ironic that he is safer from immigration and makes nearly the same amount of money (okay, less, but it is stable income) as other migrant workers by fighting for their rights here, which someone has to do. So for him, on the personal front, it is a situation that he can't win. And that's the case for the rest of the migrant workforce here, too. They have to survive, and as I'm finding out, this comes at enormous personal cost. It is just not possible to survive AND have a healthy, functioning family. It is not possible to survive AND have what Americans (who have never undertaken the migration process) would consider a "normal" relationship.
Global capitalism is not an excuse for some of the bad choices that both of us make, but I am learning the hard way that I have to adjust my expectations of what it means to be in love, have a relationship and be happy with what you have....
Just... Why does it have to be so hard? I never realized before that loving someone and actually being with him is a privilege that a lot people don't experience because of their economic situation. And it really gets me when I hear people say, "How could he leave his family for 10 years?!" Well, the reality is that the family is able to eat, have a house and get an education because he left them for 10 years. This system is tearing families, lovers and friends apart. This system is leaving thousands of children fatherless (and in some cases completely parentless). This system is also preventing me, white middle class college educated American, from being with the person I love in a "normal" way.
This system sucks.
I hope we can make enough money to leave Korea soon... I hope we can survive the political reality of living in Korea as foreigners, one documented, one without even a passport... I hope we can change this filthy, rotten system for good so that our kids (the editorial "our") don't have to make the same kinds of hard decisions that we do about loving or living.
So let me start off by saying that I am not in a funk again. I am just faced with what seems to be, despite my simpleness of mind and life style, an increasingly complicated situation. It is no secret that the General Secretary and I are caught up in the politics of Korea. He, the leader of a trade union that fights quite militantly for the rights of undocumented workers, and I from a trade union background, are united by a simple philosophy: Life is not fair, but if we work together we can make it better. And despite all of the set backs, the shit that life throws at you, and the losses, I still believe it to be true and so does he.
So why then, is this philosophy, and specifically our common desire to build a democratic movement that will give migrant workers a voice and some power, the very thing that is tearing us apart?
This has been a particularly bad year for foreign workers in Korea. After the 2 year mark of Korea's new immigration law, EPS, which was supposed to reduce corruption and make improvements on migrants' rights and rates of documentation, the number of undocumented workers has unofficially soared to nearly 70% of the foreign worker population. And as a result, the government crackdown on undocumented workers has also gone through the roof in an effort to bring this number down. Additionally, the right wing of Korea is saying that EPS is too generous to migrant workers in Korea, and that further restrictions on migration need to be made.
We have seen so many friends get caught by immigration this year. The government has some fancy new strategies that make immigration officials harder to recognize, and therefore has made it more difficult for us to warn our friends (we have set up an alert system, so when someone see a crackdown, they report it and a message goes out to everyone so that they can avoid that area). Everyone is more afraid to leave their houses or factories, and everyone is more afraid to fight for fear of becoming a government target. When just over a month ago our friend Jaman was caught at his factory, immigration officials were downright celebratory in the
detention center when they realized they had caught a leader. And accordingly, they made life more difficult for him in the detention center.
And now, immigration officials do not only raid factories and subway stations, but also mosques, markets and any place they believe an undocumented worker might live or hang out. In short, undocumented workers in Korea have no right to live, no right to sleep, no right to go shopping for necessities, and no right to worship, but are in fact needed for the economy and coveted by bosses, for the more terrorized migrants are, the easier it is to exploit them.
All this said, it is not as though migrant workers have had no victories this year. MTU and another trade union in Daegu have been able help workers recover lost wages, get work injuries paid for by employers, and in some cases, have even got undocumented workers released from detention centers.
All of this makes for an extremely busy General Secretary. A GS who works from morning until past midnight nearly 7 days a week. A GS who rarely sleeps and who sees his friends even less. A GS who has no time for a personal life (ie no time for me). And so I'm not going to lie. I was downright happy when he told me that we was not going to seek a second term for MTU. I became optimistic, thinking that finally we would have a chance to see what life together might be like if we actually had time for each other.
But this was not to be. The pressure for him to run started a few weeks ago and has been relentless. And I, for the most part of have been silent, not wanting to pressure him, only wanting him to make a decision about what he wants to do. And I was pretty confident that his decision was to leave leadership and become a regular old member again. So when he told me on Monday that he was running for a second term as General Secretary, I had a bit of a meltdown... When, after all, is OUR life going to start?
But here is the reality. Even if the GS did become a member again, he is still undocumented. He would have to find some shitty work in some shitty factory that he is overqualified for. He would have to work 14 hours or more everyday in a job that has takes no safety precautions for a pittance, all the while looking out to make sure immigration doesn't raid his factory while he is there. He might have to live in said factory because it is becoming more difficult to work in Seoul due to all the crackdown. He is more likely to get caught, more likely to get injured and in fact, we probably wouldn't see each other anymore than we do now...
And, well, I have to admit that he is the rightful leader of MTU. He has a plan, he knows what to do, he has all the connections with unions, support groups, government parties (actually, he is an elected representative in the Korean Democratic Labor Party and in the last election, got more votes than any other candidate who ran for a post) and officials, and people trust him to do the right thing. The GS was born to be an organizer. So how could I be angry at him for doing it?
So now I'm realizing that our problems have an external source: Global capitalism. Does that sound crazy? Well, think about it. He left Bangladesh so that he could have a job. He came to Korea and found that it was impossible to stay here legally. But he didn't have much choice, needed money and stayed. He became outraged at how he and his friends were treated here and became a fighter. And it's ironic that he is safer from immigration and makes nearly the same amount of money (okay, less, but it is stable income) as other migrant workers by fighting for their rights here, which someone has to do. So for him, on the personal front, it is a situation that he can't win. And that's the case for the rest of the migrant workforce here, too. They have to survive, and as I'm finding out, this comes at enormous personal cost. It is just not possible to survive AND have a healthy, functioning family. It is not possible to survive AND have what Americans (who have never undertaken the migration process) would consider a "normal" relationship.
Global capitalism is not an excuse for some of the bad choices that both of us make, but I am learning the hard way that I have to adjust my expectations of what it means to be in love, have a relationship and be happy with what you have....
Just... Why does it have to be so hard? I never realized before that loving someone and actually being with him is a privilege that a lot people don't experience because of their economic situation. And it really gets me when I hear people say, "How could he leave his family for 10 years?!" Well, the reality is that the family is able to eat, have a house and get an education because he left them for 10 years. This system is tearing families, lovers and friends apart. This system is leaving thousands of children fatherless (and in some cases completely parentless). This system is also preventing me, white middle class college educated American, from being with the person I love in a "normal" way.
This system sucks.
I hope we can make enough money to leave Korea soon... I hope we can survive the political reality of living in Korea as foreigners, one documented, one without even a passport... I hope we can change this filthy, rotten system for good so that our kids (the editorial "our") don't have to make the same kinds of hard decisions that we do about loving or living.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
remembering and moving on
Remembering:
It's Thanksgiving... And so, just for a moment let's debunk American mythology about Thanksgiving's origins. According to an article written by Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro (found in Z magazine's November print edition), the first Thanksgiving Day was recorded in Massachusetts in 1637. The event that led to Thanksgiving Day was not, as our history teachers would lead us to believe, the Pilgrims and Indians in Plymouth working together to survive a difficult winter, but in fact a celebration of a massacre of more than 700 Pequot men, women and children in what is now Mystic, Connecticut. The Massachusetts Bay Colonists surely faced very difficult circumstances in their first years in the "new world," but their survival was not borne out friendliness with natives, instead it was ensured by the numerous raids and massacres of American Indians that enabled the colonists to loot and pillage native communities for food and other supplies.
In 1970, the American Indian Movement declared Thanksgiving Day as a Day of Mourning for Indians throughout the Americas, and asks people to remember that our country has been built on the backs of Native Americans, who have been cheated, massacred, and lied to since before our county's inception. So before you take a big bite out of that juicy tofu turkey, remember to remember the people who were here first, and ask for their forgiveness while you are at it.
And Moving On:
Yes, I am in Korea. Yes, I am actually celebrating Thanksgiving. Does it sound like hypocrisy because of what I just wrote? Well, too bad. You see, I think that the idea of Thanksgiving is actually a really good one. People of different cultures all over the world celebrate some sort of Thanksgiving and I think it is important to take a special day to feel grateful for everything that we have. But we should remember how we got here, and so while we celebrate, we should do it with a little bit of a heavy heart for all the mistakes we made along the way.
and really really moving on:
How do you cook a Thanksgiving Feast with no oven??!! Tonight I am making a dinner for a handful of friends, but well, Koreans don't use ovens. They hardly exist at all in this country. I don't even know someone who knows someone who has an oven. For real though.
So my menu, you ask? I have no freakin' idea, but I'd better get to work because it's 11am and I haven't even started shopping! I have something that kind of looks like a broiler (I've only used it to bake sweet potatoes) and a ghetto toaster oven that seems like it is going to explode after two pieces of bread, but I think I'm going to try and cook Salmon. It seems risky, especially because that particular fish costs about as much a plastic surgery in Korea, but I think I might be able to pull it off.
Here's a list of the food you can't find in Korea (usually) and so will not be on my menu:
Green Beans
Cheese (except for [Philadelphia] cream cheese and American)
cilantro (who needs that on Thanksgiving?!)
vanilla extract (baked goods are doubly out)
Turkey
Cranberries
cornbread stuff
I will have none of my Thanksgiving staples, except for sweet potatoes, which are in abundance here. What I really want is green beans and pecan pie. An impossibility.
So now I'm off to:
buy some food (where and what I have no idea)
finish cleaning my house so my friends aren't disgusted
edit an mtu paper
take a shower
and
finally hopefully cook something that is edible
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. If anyone wants to FedEX me some pecan pie, I won't complain one bit.
It's Thanksgiving... And so, just for a moment let's debunk American mythology about Thanksgiving's origins. According to an article written by Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro (found in Z magazine's November print edition), the first Thanksgiving Day was recorded in Massachusetts in 1637. The event that led to Thanksgiving Day was not, as our history teachers would lead us to believe, the Pilgrims and Indians in Plymouth working together to survive a difficult winter, but in fact a celebration of a massacre of more than 700 Pequot men, women and children in what is now Mystic, Connecticut. The Massachusetts Bay Colonists surely faced very difficult circumstances in their first years in the "new world," but their survival was not borne out friendliness with natives, instead it was ensured by the numerous raids and massacres of American Indians that enabled the colonists to loot and pillage native communities for food and other supplies.
In 1970, the American Indian Movement declared Thanksgiving Day as a Day of Mourning for Indians throughout the Americas, and asks people to remember that our country has been built on the backs of Native Americans, who have been cheated, massacred, and lied to since before our county's inception. So before you take a big bite out of that juicy tofu turkey, remember to remember the people who were here first, and ask for their forgiveness while you are at it.
And Moving On:
Yes, I am in Korea. Yes, I am actually celebrating Thanksgiving. Does it sound like hypocrisy because of what I just wrote? Well, too bad. You see, I think that the idea of Thanksgiving is actually a really good one. People of different cultures all over the world celebrate some sort of Thanksgiving and I think it is important to take a special day to feel grateful for everything that we have. But we should remember how we got here, and so while we celebrate, we should do it with a little bit of a heavy heart for all the mistakes we made along the way.
and really really moving on:
How do you cook a Thanksgiving Feast with no oven??!! Tonight I am making a dinner for a handful of friends, but well, Koreans don't use ovens. They hardly exist at all in this country. I don't even know someone who knows someone who has an oven. For real though.
So my menu, you ask? I have no freakin' idea, but I'd better get to work because it's 11am and I haven't even started shopping! I have something that kind of looks like a broiler (I've only used it to bake sweet potatoes) and a ghetto toaster oven that seems like it is going to explode after two pieces of bread, but I think I'm going to try and cook Salmon. It seems risky, especially because that particular fish costs about as much a plastic surgery in Korea, but I think I might be able to pull it off.
Here's a list of the food you can't find in Korea (usually) and so will not be on my menu:
Green Beans
Cheese (except for [Philadelphia] cream cheese and American)
cilantro (who needs that on Thanksgiving?!)
vanilla extract (baked goods are doubly out)
Turkey
Cranberries
cornbread stuff
I will have none of my Thanksgiving staples, except for sweet potatoes, which are in abundance here. What I really want is green beans and pecan pie. An impossibility.
So now I'm off to:
buy some food (where and what I have no idea)
finish cleaning my house so my friends aren't disgusted
edit an mtu paper
take a shower
and
finally hopefully cook something that is edible
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. If anyone wants to FedEX me some pecan pie, I won't complain one bit.
Friday, November 17, 2006
things that I'm sick of:
1. This headache. I've had it since Tuesday and last night it was so bad that I had trouble lifting my head off the pillow. And there was some nausea involved. Today it is back to a dull pulse behind my eyes and mostly on the right side of my head. Won't it ever stop?
2. Celebrating Democrats: No, stupid face, I'm not a Republican. All I've gotta say to our Democratic Leaders is put your money where your mouth is. Am I happy that dems won? Yeah sure, I mean they can't be worse than our previous law-makers, but do I really think that anything is going to change? Hell no. Nancy Pelosi and her "hold the fuck on" face that everyone has been talking about doesn't impress me for a minute.
I don't mean to sound so snide and cynical, but I would just like to remind everyone out there that we had, in fact, waged war on Iraq long before the GW administration stole the election in 2000. Clinton and his pals imposed sanctions that killed more than a million Iraqis (to which M. Albright said, "this is they price we must pay" for those who pay no heed to international law), AND we bombed them with uranium depleted missiles which has sent cancer rates and birth defects soaring since 1991. The difference between Bush and Clinton? Under Clinton, AMERICANS weren't getting killed.
Let's take domestic policy as another example. Under Clinton, the economy was booming, right? So how come the gap between the rich and the poor continued to grow at alarming rates? How come REAL wages for Americans remained stagnant or declined? How come these horrible free trade agreements that hurt workers and farmers continued to be negotiated? Why did more women and children get kicked off of welfare? Because the economic and domestic policy during the Clinton years was to grow the economy and maintain the status-quo that the Reagan administration created.
I know that Bush is wasting more money than Clinton. I know that the state of the US's international relationships has worsened since Bush as become president.... YYYYYYESSSSSSS! I know, Bush is worse, BUT Bush is not fundamentally different than Clinton. Really, I'm saying that we Americans are going to have the same problems no matter who the president is. Why, you ask? Well, because all of our politicians are millionaires and businessmen and on the take from corporations who don't give a single fucking iota about our well-being. Really, it's that simple.
All this thinking of politics is making my head hurt even more. If I had my way, I would throw everyone out of Washington and re-make the whole darn system. Back to things I'm sick of:
3. The Poverty-Debt Cycle and Credit Card Companies (which I've already written about here)
4. Being Alone. Here in Korea, I have no English-Speaking girlfriends. I miss girls. And I miss friends. And these days, I even miss English.
5. Is eating egg-n-a-hole for every meal further proof that I am reverting into a bratty child?
The good news is that I can't think of anything else that I'm sick of. Except this: always being sick of things. Is this becoming some sort of disease in America?
2. Celebrating Democrats: No, stupid face, I'm not a Republican. All I've gotta say to our Democratic Leaders is put your money where your mouth is. Am I happy that dems won? Yeah sure, I mean they can't be worse than our previous law-makers, but do I really think that anything is going to change? Hell no. Nancy Pelosi and her "hold the fuck on" face that everyone has been talking about doesn't impress me for a minute.
I don't mean to sound so snide and cynical, but I would just like to remind everyone out there that we had, in fact, waged war on Iraq long before the GW administration stole the election in 2000. Clinton and his pals imposed sanctions that killed more than a million Iraqis (to which M. Albright said, "this is they price we must pay" for those who pay no heed to international law), AND we bombed them with uranium depleted missiles which has sent cancer rates and birth defects soaring since 1991. The difference between Bush and Clinton? Under Clinton, AMERICANS weren't getting killed.
Let's take domestic policy as another example. Under Clinton, the economy was booming, right? So how come the gap between the rich and the poor continued to grow at alarming rates? How come REAL wages for Americans remained stagnant or declined? How come these horrible free trade agreements that hurt workers and farmers continued to be negotiated? Why did more women and children get kicked off of welfare? Because the economic and domestic policy during the Clinton years was to grow the economy and maintain the status-quo that the Reagan administration created.
I know that Bush is wasting more money than Clinton. I know that the state of the US's international relationships has worsened since Bush as become president.... YYYYYYESSSSSSS! I know, Bush is worse, BUT Bush is not fundamentally different than Clinton. Really, I'm saying that we Americans are going to have the same problems no matter who the president is. Why, you ask? Well, because all of our politicians are millionaires and businessmen and on the take from corporations who don't give a single fucking iota about our well-being. Really, it's that simple.
All this thinking of politics is making my head hurt even more. If I had my way, I would throw everyone out of Washington and re-make the whole darn system. Back to things I'm sick of:
3. The Poverty-Debt Cycle and Credit Card Companies (which I've already written about here)
4. Being Alone. Here in Korea, I have no English-Speaking girlfriends. I miss girls. And I miss friends. And these days, I even miss English.
5. Is eating egg-n-a-hole for every meal further proof that I am reverting into a bratty child?
The good news is that I can't think of anything else that I'm sick of. Except this: always being sick of things. Is this becoming some sort of disease in America?
Thursday, November 16, 2006
28 and Three-Quarters Is No Time To Grow Up
Or not getting over that 12-year-old-my-dad-got-remarried-and-has-a-new-family anger...
So this morning, I strolled into my favorite immigrants' rights organization in the hopes of making a contribution. And rest assured, I did make a contribution, though some might consider it a contribution in the wrong direction... Okay, I admit it, I yelled. Not at anyone, just at my computer. I think my exact words were, "that fucking psycho bitch found me." That's right. I checked my email and discovered that my ex-step-sister, with whom I never shared a single delightful moment, had looked me up on myspace or some such nonsense and wanted to "drop me a line and say hi". Well, I've got something to drop, and it sure as hell ain't a line.
Listen, I've really, really, really been trying to work out all this family anger stuff. There is internet evidence of this. You can read here and here and here. Really, I think about this stuff all the time. But just when I think I've made some peace, gotten over something, there is a new bullet flying at my heart that I, of course, didn't expect. I mean let's face it, does anyone really expect to get shot at?
Okay, so here are my issues (and keep in mind that I'm only 12):
So this morning, I strolled into my favorite immigrants' rights organization in the hopes of making a contribution. And rest assured, I did make a contribution, though some might consider it a contribution in the wrong direction... Okay, I admit it, I yelled. Not at anyone, just at my computer. I think my exact words were, "that fucking psycho bitch found me." That's right. I checked my email and discovered that my ex-step-sister, with whom I never shared a single delightful moment, had looked me up on myspace or some such nonsense and wanted to "drop me a line and say hi". Well, I've got something to drop, and it sure as hell ain't a line.
Listen, I've really, really, really been trying to work out all this family anger stuff. There is internet evidence of this. You can read here and here and here. Really, I think about this stuff all the time. But just when I think I've made some peace, gotten over something, there is a new bullet flying at my heart that I, of course, didn't expect. I mean let's face it, does anyone really expect to get shot at?
Okay, so here are my issues (and keep in mind that I'm only 12):
- SHE calls MY father "dad". I don't even call my father "dad". I mean, I just started talking to him again after a really, really really long time. Is this further proof that he abandoned his REAL family for those imposters? Those mean, take-my-father-away-from-me-and-move-into-my-bedroom-and-take- all-of-my-stuff, too- jerks.
- Okay, so like when we were kids, there was this one time when she chased her youngest sister around the house with a knife in a total rage threatening to kill her and then yanked the phone out of the wall when I tried to call my REAL mom. Youngest Sister ended sobbing, shaking and hiding in the corner of an attic bedroom while the rest of us tried to not to get the knife pointed at us- unsuccessfully, I might add. That day, we were all really afraid for our lives, and even more for her youngest sister. I still don't know what set her off, but I remember it very distinctly because at that time, I felt like I was imprisoned in my father's house for our two week "vacation" with our abusive step-mother and her eldest daughter, the prison guard.
- Did I mention that she took the joy out of nearly every salvagable "family" moment?
- She called MY grandmother "grandma". Well, here's some news pyscho: Her name was IRIS, and that was what her REAL grandchildren called her.
Now I know that I sound childish, mean and like I lack the perspective of an adult, but these things really do bother me, not because I hate oldest-ex-step-sister (do I?), but because they actually point to larger issues with my family that I haven't resolved yet. I know, I hate being able to intellectualize it; I really just wish I could wallow in my anger without analyzing it because it makes me feel like a divided person. I'm having a fight with myself now, as I write:
"WW (that's me), you should just forgive her because we are all kids and did mean things to each other and competed for out parents attention."
"WW (that's me), fuck that shit, she's a crazy bitch that you never liked anyway, so why bother even thinking about it?"
"WW, (that's me), is she really in your family anyway??!!"
And "WW (that's me), Why can't you just calm down and realize that you are always right no matter what you think."
Okay, so I have to admit that I like that 3rd response best, but this still doesn't leave me feeling any better. Am I going to "message" her back? Hell no! Am I going to try and think nice thoughts about her? I haven't decided yet. I guess I'm not ready to get over my family anger yet.
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