politics and stuff

 So, I don't live in North America anymore, but I used to. I was born in the US and maybe lived there 10 years (in various states, I moved maybe every 1 or 2 years due to my dad's work), then I moved to Canada and basically grew up there. Now I am in Europe (I say that nebulously because I also keep moving around).

I like to read the news. And watch US late night comedy shows. And watch clips of political streamers saying stuff. And go on Reddit and see clips. My brain right now is split between the Europe news, aka "will Greenland be invaded, will NATO collapse, how does Europe disentangle itself from US economy and trade" and then US news, aka "doing war crimes, woman is murdered, people are kidnapped off the street and disappeared, mass violence against protestors". And even though I know technically I would be more worried about Europe, I can't stop thinking about the US.

It's scary, because I know that if I hadn't chosen to go to university in Europe and gone to UBC or SFU, my parents would have moved back to the US, because they hated Canada and wish we had never gone.  This would've been bad, of course, especially since my mom is an Argentinian immigrant. She is a US citizen (might not be soon, since she told me she wanted to denounce it), is incredibly good at English (she was an English to Spanish translator, and even worked for the pope at one point), and quite pale, but not pale enough to not possibly get kidnapped off the street.

It's pretty terrible, to image our parents in danger, I think. And so I should probably stop, but it's hard. Because we were so close to that.

It's weird, because I am not very fond of the US. I don't remember much about it, I always moved and never really had a place there that felt like a home, but I can't help but think about what I would do if I was in the US right now. Am I a fundamentally brave person? I'm not quite sure, since I suffer from a debilitating fear of death. But maybe I can imagine, that in some alternate universe, if I still lived in the US, that I would go to a protest and maybe get shot or something.

I don't know. I keep thinking about George Orwell, and how he went to join the war against fascism during the Spanish Civil War. He went, sat in a few trenches- bored out of his mind- got shot in the throat for no reason in particular, then went back home to England, where the clouds parted and only the thought of war lingered. I wonder, would I be George Orwell?  Would I just go home?

I mean, he didn't just go home. George Orwell went home and then he wrote. He wrote incredible, classic anti-fascist pieces of work that people still regularly misunderstand and misquote to this day.

I've been listening to a lot of Labi Siffre lately, and feel bad that I prefer his love songs to the political ones.