mexicans & other musings

(image from: http://www.roadkillbill.com/%21Walmart%28Always%29.jpg)

My father just came into my work to say hello. I am in currently in the office of a restaurant working on my backlog of revenue reports. I am now sufficiently irritated.

We get in to a fairly heated discussion regarding immigrants. He chants the wronged white person mantra of "these wet-backs are taking all my tax dollars". I suggested that rather than getting pissed off at the immigrants he should take up arms against the companies that are importing & exploiting them. He can extol the virtues of capitalism while conveniently forgetting that capitalism has brought us to this juncture. Everything from slavery to state-run daycare are products of capitalism.

He makes sweeping generalizations about immigrants such as "they come here to work for a few months and then sit back and collect unemployment and work the system". I asked him if he had ever bothered to speak with one of the Mexicans he so abhors. I volunteered that he was more than welcome to head back to the kitchen and sit down with one of the line cooks or dishwashers and find out what their lives are really like. Maybe he could hear how painful it is to leave behind their families, or how they work eighty plus hours a week for criminally low wages.

Perhaps if he could see beyond the brown skin he would recognize someone not unlike himself. Maybe if he listened to more than the rolled R's & thick accent he would realize that the propaganda he sees on Fox News or reads in the Chicago Tribune is a pile of steaming shit manufactured to detract from the REAL problems in our economy. Don't get mad at the Hernandez family when it's The Waltons of this country you should be after.

The other thing bothering me is that before he left he kissed me on the head, patted me on the back and said

"I don't know if i have told you how proud i am of you"

I have not done anything particularly remarkable so i asked him what he meant.

"Oh, you know, what you are doing...taking care of Maddie, raising her to be intelligent and well-adjusted...just that you are doing good. It could have easily gone the other way you know"

Gee, that makes me feel like a puppy who just got praised for peeing on a tree instead of a chair leg. Obviously his faith in me ever doing anything more remarkable than raising a "well-adjusted" child & catching myself a good husband is non-existent. I must have really been a fuck-up to earn praise simply for being a mildly productive member of society. Tell me you're proud of me when i win a Pulitzer, or cure nut cancer.

I'm most likely being overly sensitive but he's the same person who told my brother, when he wanted to join the military, that the Army was for the unrefined & ignorant. He did not fight in Vietnam because he is missing a disc in his back. He worked his way through college and was white collar post graduation. I know he has amended his position on military service and that he is proud of my brother who works for the White House Communications department, but it is obvious that neither my brother nor i lived up to his expectations.

Please don't misunderstand, i love and appreciate my father. He is a very kind, generous person. I am indebted to him for reasons that he will never know. I am just supremely annoyed at the moment. GRRRRR!

Back to work...