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Just deal with it.
Let it go.
Don’t rock the boat.
I wondered at the origin of these philosophies.
The whole save face way of thinking.
I laughed at a meme about why quiet guys love fiery outspoken women.
Because how else is going to tell the waiter he forgot my mashed potatoes!
It’s fine.
I’ll just eat it like this.
I’m not an introvert, though I do have introverted moments.
That’s what happens when you are super okay with being yourself.
Being with yourself.
But I don’t know if I send back food.
Or make a scene about it.
Why?
In traffic, I will roll down my window and instruct other drivers in their lineage, the proper placement of their head in orifices, and a dozen more “this might get me shot one day” types of outbursts.
Yet, in a relationship, in a restaurant, in a crowd, I more often than not just keep my mouth shut and adjust me.
Adjust my attitude.
I see it happen a lot. I’ve heard those first phrases a lot.
Just be cool. No big deal.
And my favorite.
This too shall pass.
Because it did. It does.
I scream at an idiot driver doing something stupid, and I’m over it.
Hell, I’ve almost forgotten it by the time we make the next light.
It passed.
But I was watching a documentary on Netflix which made me curious about all of this.
Why do we let it pass?
It was about the extermination of Jews in World War II, specifically in Eastern Europe.
Nazi overseers instructed local Nationalists in identifying, rounding up and shooting 1.5 million Jews, and almost a million “others.”
I try to keep a perspective about it. There was a growing concern about Communists, specifically the Bolsheviks.
The Nazi propaganda machine readily linked jews to communists, and the Nationalists decided the best way to protect the future of their country was to classify, collect and destroy over 2 million people.
There were roughly 3,000 identified leaders of this.
And when the war was over, 23 were prosecuted for war crimes.
The rest went back to their normal jobs in towns where they killed people.
Where everyone just let it go.
The people in their villages and communities didn’t want to rock the boat.
I know bad things happen in war.
But genocide and extermination do not seem to be things we should overlook or just keep quiet about.
Of the 23 prosecuted, a few were hanged, the rest were sentenced to life in prison, and in the early 50’s, all were released for one reason.
The USA needed a unified West German to stand between Europe and the Soviet Union.
The Nazi bastards who eradicated the Jewish population were from West Germany, and to mollycoddle and support the new German government, we had to just “forget” they were murderers on a massive scale.
Stuff like this makes me hate politicians and question human nature.
They are all old men now. They are dying anyway.
We are 19 years away from the hundred year mark of the start of it all.
Why does it even matter now?
Because the Nationalist movement is on the rise again.
I don’t know if I’m strong enough to fight it.
If logic and reason and history can even help me.
Because we were at the lake on Saturday, and got invited to some neighbors for burgers and dogs and fireworks after a day on the water.
They lived a few houses up from the people we were visiting and we didn’t know them.
But they were from a small town in south Arkansas, and the couple we were visiting was from that town, so everyone knew everyone.
Except me, though once they found out I’m from Pine Bluff, I was treated with a de facto sense of neighborly affection.
One of the granddads cornered me and peppered us with questions about Black Lives Matter.
It evolved from conversation about our #10 being recruited by a travel baseball team from this small town.
The old man said something to me about how the blacks knew better than to protest in their town, because he was a member “of a certain organization, I don’t think I need to mention which one.”
And I froze.
Looked at the people around me.
All good people, according to how they looked on paper. Good jobs, good kids, good community.
There was laughter and food and fun and fellowship.
All the things anyone would ever want in a feeling of community.
Except for a single toss off phrase from a man two generations older than me.
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t speak up. Didn’t argue, because it would have made the people we were visiting uncomfortable and would have put a damper on the mood.
Even though I was cringing inside.
Because what do you say?
I wouldn’t be able to convince them of anything, and they wouldn’t be able to change my mind to a more Nationalist point of view.
I don’t think money or boats or lakehouses make you a good person automatically.
I think how you treat people defines who you are as a person.
They treated me well.
But if they started rounding people up and gassing them, how would that make me feel?
Would I still keep quiet and not rock the boat?
We ended up scarfing the burgers and making excuses to leave within twenty minutes after that moment.
Did we stay so long so we wouldn’t make them feel bad?!?
Should I have just called him an idiot and stormed off, or yelled and raged against a group of people I just met?
Or just let it slide, because maybe it was just an old man pissing and moaning?
Let it slide, I decide and go on enjoying my burger and beer.
This is what’s good in life.
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