monday punch-in-the-face blogging: the thanksgiving issue
what i'm giving thanks for this year, darlings, is the strong evidence proffered by my own personal nature-versus-nurture drama that one can easily triumph over one's genetics when it comes to character development and intellectual curiosity. here are five things spoken by my paternal relatives last thursday that made me want to throttle them to within an inch of their lives:
1. "muslims need to be wiped off the face of the planet." (said by my aunt)
2. "i pray for the muslims to accept jesus. i believe that if they could just learn to love christ, they wouldn't be such bad people." (courtesy of my grandfather)
3. "no talking about religion or politics." (spoken by my father approximately seven seconds after i began to attempt to explain the difference between muslims and islamic extremists)
4. "why can't these people just get the hell over themselves?" (dad again, after a brief news report about a group of native americans who staged a small, peaceful protest on thanksgiving)
5. "that wasn't murder, that was just mankind making progress like it's been doing for centuries and centuries. they weren't using all the land." (dad again, making the third time the charm, after i pointed out somewhat sharply that this was, after all, a holiday celebrating the day europeans began their steady invasion and elimination of an entire race of people, and that the remainder of that race had very little to celebrate and a whole lot to be upset about)
when i objected after comment five and tried to wrench some explanation out of dear old dad for how it's o.k. to kill innocent people under any circumstances, he reverted back to his favorite standby: weak pacifists like me would have handed the entire planet over to hitler. this, tragically, is the end of the majority of my conversations with my father, but not necessarily the end of the evening; that comes very shortly after the conclusion of this conversation, when i march out into the kitchen, tell my mother that her husband is the reason i will never believe this world is a decent place to raise a child in, grab my coat, and run out. but perhaps we really should allow it to come to blows just once, and see if that helps any. christmas is right around the corner, after all.
1. "muslims need to be wiped off the face of the planet." (said by my aunt)
2. "i pray for the muslims to accept jesus. i believe that if they could just learn to love christ, they wouldn't be such bad people." (courtesy of my grandfather)
3. "no talking about religion or politics." (spoken by my father approximately seven seconds after i began to attempt to explain the difference between muslims and islamic extremists)
4. "why can't these people just get the hell over themselves?" (dad again, after a brief news report about a group of native americans who staged a small, peaceful protest on thanksgiving)
5. "that wasn't murder, that was just mankind making progress like it's been doing for centuries and centuries. they weren't using all the land." (dad again, making the third time the charm, after i pointed out somewhat sharply that this was, after all, a holiday celebrating the day europeans began their steady invasion and elimination of an entire race of people, and that the remainder of that race had very little to celebrate and a whole lot to be upset about)
when i objected after comment five and tried to wrench some explanation out of dear old dad for how it's o.k. to kill innocent people under any circumstances, he reverted back to his favorite standby: weak pacifists like me would have handed the entire planet over to hitler. this, tragically, is the end of the majority of my conversations with my father, but not necessarily the end of the evening; that comes very shortly after the conclusion of this conversation, when i march out into the kitchen, tell my mother that her husband is the reason i will never believe this world is a decent place to raise a child in, grab my coat, and run out. but perhaps we really should allow it to come to blows just once, and see if that helps any. christmas is right around the corner, after all.
posted by juniper pearl @ 5:06 PM
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