Like A Magpie, I Live For Glitter, Not You

Pedestrian traffic lights

But it has very quickly morphed into making fun of people any time an American draws a connection between our current regime and other examples of authoritarian governments. And like. Guys.

Learning from history is good. Seeing commonalities between your circumstances and the circumstances of people from other places is good.

Do you genuinely want Americans to treat our country as some exceptional land where there are no parallels to be drawn with other places?

Are you so ignorant of history that nothing going on around you ever reminds you of things you've learned about other times and places?

This is like that time on Twitter I watched someone quote Marjane Satrapi's iconic line about how ordinary Americans have more in common with ordinary Iranians than either of us do with our governments --- a thing this person was quoting in order to express support for Iranians being fucked over by US foreign policy --- and someone else responded by questioning their right as a white American man to claim to have things in common with Iranians.

Fuck that.

It's rad as fuck to learn about the jokes that carried other people through their dark times. I hope someday someone going through their own dark times learns about the jokes that bounce around my groupchats on any given day and thinks "That's sounds just like OUR nascent fascist regime!"

It's rad as fuck to see your own circumstances reflected back across time and across borders. It's rad as fuck to situate yourself as part of an endless human tapestry, with a history that doesn't repeat, exactly, but definitely rhymes.

My dude, my brethren, my fellow comrade

This is just literally what being Jewish feels like

My grandparents were holocaust survivors that could barely talk about their birth country when they were alive. My great grandmother lost her entire family when nazis gunned down Jewish Latvian villages and left no survivors. My great great great grandfather lived in a desert with barely any water resources because that was safer than staying in Poland next to his christian neighbors. And then there’s also my ancestral grandmother that lost everything when her family barely escaped the spanish inquisition.

My family has more lost history than the library of Alexandria

And you know what’s the worst part is?

You learn it in bits and pieces, scattered across your lifetime.

The first time you hear about places we can no longer visit or ceremonies we can no longer perform, you’re too young to remember. It is always part of you. It feels more like a fantasy world then a piece of history you’ve lost.

One day, you are researching family history. So many of the branches of your family tree get suddenly cut off. You start to understand what that means.

One day, you are reading your great-great-grandmother’s story’s. You read about her sister who moved east when your great-great-grandmother moved west, and the day that the letters stopped coming. You know what it means, even before you look up the name of the city she moved to, and what happened to it.

(You are one of the lucky ones. The trauma is far enough back that you weren’t raised in its immediate shadow.)

One day, you learn about the Yizkor book, the collected memories about the inhabitants of a village that no longer exists, which talks about your family.

(You are one of the lucky ones. So many villages don’t have Yizkor books, because there was no one left alive who remembered them.)

One day, you visit what used to be one of the cultural centers of your people. Now, it’s a museum to what was destroyed.

(It’s one of the lucky places. So many of the memories have been paved over and erased.)

One day, “the last Jew alive in [country where hundreds of thousands of Jews once lived]” stops being a shocking statement, and becomes a genre.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You’ve never been the last.)

There is no one time your culture was violently destroyed. It happened over and over again, across continents and millenia. The survivors flee, and hope they will have a few generations before the place they flee to is also destroyed.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You’ve never had to flee.)

Your culture is still here, because you are still here. What you have is the fragments of a thousand burned texts and demolished buildings and extinct dialects, but it is real. It is alive. Multiple militaries and paramilitary organizations are actively trying to kill it.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You don’t live in their direct line of fire.)

You grow up being told it’s better now. People don’t hate you for being different; not like they used to. One day, you realize their acceptance is dependent on them not having to think about how different you are.

(You are one of the lucky ones. It is possible for you to pretend.)

You speak your language, and you are speaking for everyone who was murdered for speaking it. You study your texts, and your are studying for everyone who was murdered for studying them. You celebrate your holidays, and you are celebrating for everyone who was murdered for celebrating them. You live your life, and you are living for everyone who was murdered.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You are able to speak, and study, and celebrate, and live.)

Nothing you do will ever be fully for yourself. You are a memorial to everything that was lost. You are everything that has been salvaged. You are the hope that something can be rebuilt.

The two types of people to “jokingly” identify as a label:

1. Asshole trying to be edgy. If youre mad they double down, if you go ok ill call you that, they freak out and distance themselves from the label

2. Someone trying to figure themselves out

(in)frequently secretly fond of these cowboys

me: idk man it still sounds like an ocular migraine