The Survivors’ Guide to Surviving Survivors

Since it’s not like I have anything better to do, like nurse this three-day-long migraine, finish the next Grey recap, pack some more for our potential move, clean the kitchen, work at the work that pays me, or pick my nose, I’m sitting here about to pick a bone.  As a bonus, I have a two-day-old apple fritter from VooDoo Doughnuts, a hot cup of Earl Grey tea, and heart.  I’ve got a heart for you!  All of you!

Now I’m sure you’ve heard about the attacks in Paris (yeah, I’m just plain linking to the Wiki–see above about my migraine), and if not, get out from under that big rock.  That’s led to a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment because apparently all brown people and people from Syria are terrorists wanting to kill all Americans, and they can’t read maps to realize they were on the wrong continent to do it.

Photo by Sipa USA / Rex Features A severly wounded baby boy is medically treated Conflict in Aleppo, Syria – 03 Oct 2012 As Bahar Al Assad’s army steps up its military campaign to regain control of Aleppo, children are treated by the small staff of doctors in one of the city’s last standing hospitals.

Look at this little terrorist, unable to read maps and shit.

I guess those Islamophobes and bigots are right.  This little boy hurts people.  My heart hurts right now.  By the way, there might be sad pics in this article, but you need a guide to surviving these people.  I feel for you like Kanye feels for Taylor Swift.

So now we here in America have some governors willing to take in refugees.  Jay Inslee, governor of Washington state, started it.  I guess someone forgot to tell him that these refugees aren’t the same as these ‘Fugees:

There’s a big difference.  One group is being killed softly with his song, telling their whole life with his words, killing ’em softly with his song, and the other’s getting killed with murder, leading them to flee from the same sort of terrorists who shot up Paris.

A Syrian refugee from Aleppo holds his one month old daughter moments after arriving on a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos, September 3, 2015.

Someone should tell him he’s terroristing wrong.  He doesn’t have any bombs or guns, and is carrying his child!

So what on earth is Governor Inslee thinking him inviting these people to this great state?  Doesn’t he know they’re dangerous people?  Oh, wait, they’re not.  But what about that one terrorist in Paris with a refugee passport?  Not only is that still an iffy situation, but, if correct, that makes one refugee out of millions involved in terrorist.   The good ol’ U. S. of A. churns them out in higher numbers, and using a refugee passport is really inefficient anyways.  Takes a lot longer than, say, getting a tourist visa or a pilot license so you can fly planes into  buildings in New York, or the Pentagon, or a field in Pennsylvania.

4-year-old believes camera is a weapon, and raises her hands to surrender.

So it may be inevitable that some of these suuuuuuuuper deadly people might end up here, like this little terrorist.  Again, she’s attacking my heart.

I guess we have reasons to be scared of these people.  After all, they didn’t stand their ground against terrorist bombs and guns, and fight back using rocks and sticks and fists.  Surely they have plenty of sticks after their homes were blown to smithereens.  How dare they pack up what they can carry to flee just for the small chance of finding themselves still alive the next day?

So now they may be our problem.  Whatever are we to do about it?   Well, I’ve come up with some hand dandy instructions on how to survive the survivors!

Step 1: If you see a refugee on the street, and you know for sure the person is a refugee, offer your condolences for what they’ve been through, and offer to be of any assistance that they need.

Step 2: Give the assistance that they ask for.

Step 3: Thank your lucky stars that you haven’t had to experience the terror that they have.  Even in New York, when legit terrorists flew planes into buildings, that didn’t give people a true look at living every single day in such danger that you will leave everything you know, with no certain ways of getting food or water or even a place to sleep, just to try living one more day and keep yourself and your loved ones not raped and not killed with murder.  Thank your lucky stars that we could rally under one flag and sing about being proud to be an American, in a time where the Dixie Chicks would criticize a president and not be killed with murder for it.

Step 4: Think about how being homeless on the streets of America is a few steps up from where those refugees are now, and it’s a lot safer.  Let that sink in.

Step 5: Stop freaking out about how they’re going to kill us.  We are really, seriously, truly in more danger of being killed by an American-born white guy than by a refugee who is going through hell to live instead of going through hell to get killed by the Police.

Wrong police…

“Right” police:

FERGUSON, MO – AUGUST 11: Police force protestors from the business district into nearby neighborhoods on August 11, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets as residents and their supporters protested the shooting by police of an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown who was killed Saturday in this suburban St. Louis community. Yesterday 32 arrests were made after protests turned into rioting and looting in Ferguson. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Refugees aren’t fleeing from lawless terror to go get themselves killed by law-backed terror.

Step 5: Remember that, in under a week, we here in the US are celebrating a holiday widely (though wrongly) attributed to a feast between people escaping a tyrannical regime and religious persecution in Europe, and the people already on this continent who welcomed them and cared for them, and in about a month, the world’s biggest holiday will be celebrated, and it also involves brown people fleeing.  Only there was supposedly no room for them in the inn.

Extra credit: Offer up any spare room in your home to a refugee.

That’s…really all there is to it.  That’s how your survive it.  Be a good person and be thankful for what you have, and stop justing people based on their skin.  The refugees are humans too, and they deserve humanity.  I define humanity as:

The willingness to accept that other people’s lives matter just as much as yours, and treating those equally-valuable people with the care and respect you hope would be shown to you if the situations were reversed.

Syrian refugee Mohammed Ahmed, 20, right, who fled his home with his family from Baba Amro, Homs province, carries his son at a temporary refugee camp, in the eastern Lebanese Town of Al-Faour, Bekaa Valley near the border with Syria.

Photos from:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article3711953.ece
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-09-03/5-groups-doing-important-work-help-refugees-you-may-not-have-heard
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/lebanon-un-announce-plan-to-cope-with-fallout-from-syria-conflict-1.2148382

 

#JeSuisFrance

I’ve been trying to figure out what to say about yesterday’s attacks in Paris, but am struggling to figure out the words to use when all I want to do is post a string of expletives when not choking back tears. This is 2015, almost 2016. Our world should be more civilized than this. When Tim McVeigh killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1994, I swear the world stood sill, but, rather than stopping, terrorist attacks have become more and more common. Our world is going backward, not forward. Why the hell is this happening? I don’t know, nor do I have any suggestions of how to stop it. Starting more wars isn’t solving anything, but doing nothing doesn’t feel right either. Can this even be stopped, or is threat of attack a part of our lives that we have to accept?

When things like this happen, we all struggle to make sense of it, but the reality is there is no sense that can be made when there’s none to be had.  Terrorism isn’t an act of religion or of politics.  Terrorism is an act of hate.  For every one person who uses any given religion to justify their cruelty, there are many, many more who are either at least neutral, if not drawing from their religion inspiration to do good.

I know the claims that religion is entirely pointless and can never do good, but can it not be said that, even if religious texts are fiction, that a great many people have been inspired by fiction?  Islam is no different than any other (and the Bible contains just as many, if not more, references to the same negative things that the Quran is often blasted for).  We can easily forget that the coordinated slaughter of 6,000,000 under the Nazi regime was headed up by a devout Christian since that happened before most of us were born, whereas modern attacks such as 9/11 and yesterday’s attack are events we experienced.  The reality is any religion can be used for good or bad, and it’s dangerous to let the actions of fringe lunatics color our view of the countless more who are just trying to live their lives without hurting anyone.  Don’t let the attacks by freak-terrorists result in an entire group of innocent people being punished. The innocents in their religion are hurt in this too.

The innocent Islamic people are hurt, France is frightened, and the world is furious that more attacks have happened, more inexcusable murder.  Rather than letting religion drive a wedge between people, we need to unite against the people who are choosing to do this.  They only represent themselves, no one else.

Regardless, at least 150 families are left devastated today, and who knows how many more are traumatized.

Though the US and France have had a love-hate relationship going back hundreds of years, I think it’s safe to say #JeSuisFrance is appropriate today, for *all* of us, regardless of heritage or of religion. As those of us in the US know, coordinated terrorism attacks can make the word feel tiny and frightening. To those of you in France today: The world really is big and full of nice people. You aren’t alone in this. America and the world have got your back.