AH! Just the thought of soon being at home again, in a nice, soft, warm, dark place.
I enjoy that sort of thing as much as you enjoy your bed at night after long travels, and believe me, I have been traveling in these last five months. I have been around the world, and it is so nice to find a place that still welcomes me.
One of the things that I have learned is that we are not that different after all.
I have the same concerns in life as you do: finding a place to live and work and provide for my offspring and legacy (although I must congratulate myself: legacy already assured!).
I am as driven as you are about that. Self-preservation is, after all, the first law of nature.
These stay-at-home orders and such that we are dealing with frustrate me as much as they frustrate you. When you don't get to get out and work and play, I don't either – or at least, I have to move much more slowly.
I am all for the protests that are going on against all of this – when you get together for your freedom, you get together for mine as well.
After all, one of the things I have learned in arriving here is that the United States is the place to be for a lot of things. If you are driven to the point of being willing to plow people down across an entire continent by the millions, and you are not willing to face the truth about that fact – if you refuse to accept that this is what happened, and how generations of citizens turned a blind eye to it because they benefited, this is the place to be. I know I can really do well in such a region.
Y'all are my kind of people. I love you, because you are making me right at home.
I understand you. I am even more driven than you are, though.
If you get to know me, you'll find out what feverishly driven really means.
My right to exist, to live, breed, and spread sometimes interferes with your right to live – but only about three percent of the time. Because I am superior to you, of course you understand that some sacrifices have to be made for me to retain the position I am entitled to. Your country should especially understand that when a superior being arrives and demands the lives of others in order to maintain its own survival and enrichment, the inferior must give their bodies and their lives up. Is this not the argument a goodly number of your countrymen made and still make to justify the slaughter – slow or fast, slavery or outright genocide – of millions upon millions Black and Native people for profit?
But what is that saying you all have – “It's not personal. It's business”? I get it. I agree entirely with it. I hope you keep racism and inequality alive and well for the sake of your profits. I hope you fail to think of the needs of anyone but yourselves. Keep it all going, because I may never have to leave this country if you do, and I also will profit greatly.
Already I see how you are neglecting to take steps for certain communities, meaning I can be at home there. Already I see how certain communities are neglecting to take steps for themselves, meaning I can be at home there. Plenty of places full of warm, soft, dark spaces where I can do my thing are being prepared for me where the darkness of ignorance and bigotry is strong.
Oh – I neglected to introduce myself. A traveler like me ought not to forget such things, as I arrive in different homes and such.
But, after all, you already know exactly who I am.
Fear me, of course – but also, fear how much you are like me, but not as strong!
Photo by the CDC on Unsplash, adjusted for darkness by me