It's been a few months since I fled Florida and started living with my parents. I'm still paying for an apartment in Florida, having abandoned my friend that I had promised to live with. The prospect of being with family was just too good and my father and my brothers had made the 13-hour car ride all the way here. Non-stop. It was now or never. I had to go.
Being at home has been pretty good. My family keeps making comments about my weight and saying "I look good". I think it means I've gained. I haven't checked the scale though but the pants that I bought from Banana Republic that I liked because they were slouchy and different from what I usually wear are now fitted. And since it actually gets cold in Maryland, I had to stop wearing my sandals and my shoes have been tighter? I really don't want to know how much weight I've gained. I don't need that right now.
The new program I've been working for has been pretty cool. It's not the program that I was hired for though. It's an interim program until I get my security clearance, which I have not submitted the paperwork for because I suck. It's been 3 months now. I guess I haven't been proactive about it because I don't actually want to work for this new program. I just wanted to be in Virginia and I'm cool with what I'm doing now. It'll take a year and a half to get the clearance anyway and who knows if I'll even want to continue working for my company at that point.
I've been trying not to think too much about the details of all of it. By "it", I mean my life and my future. I sort of just worry about whatever the day presents me, which is how I lived before the pandemic. But it has been even more severe as there's even less accountability for my laziness. My dad finally nudged me to get my travel reimbursement from my company. I am ashamed to say that I would have just let it go if he didn't say anything. And that's how I'm taking every part of my life. Just letting it go...
Well, life is both fast and slow these days. Nothing really happens to me, yet so much seems to be happening outside. It's an election year and politics is more present in everyone's mind. The president got the coronavirus last week and of course, the media blew up. Finally, it seemed this man would face retribution for the callous way he handled the pandemic in this country. He got really sick and was helicoptered to Walter Reed. Many people on my Twitter timeline were wishing for his death and honestly, it seemed like it was possible. I refreshed my feeds in utter fascination. Everyone around him began testing positive for corona: Melania, Conway, Chris Christie, etc. People were making checklists, hoping for who should get it next. It was callous but I can't say it was undeserved.
I don't want to say that I necessarily wish for him to die. I was really trying to convince myself not to think that way. I guess I just believe in karma enough. But I did wish for him and the people who co-sign him to be humbled so that the people in the White House finally do right by this country. I was really just hoping for that and then, Trump got better and nothing changed.
There was a debate between the VP Pence and Kamala Harris, Biden's running mate. I was mostly interested in it to see the contrast between that and the chaos that was the debate between Trump and Biden. Pence is such a unsettling person to listen to. Maybe it's because I'm a woman. Maybe because I identify as a leftist. Both politicians spoke like politicians: disingenuous. But Pence was more so disturbing to me in the way he dismissed questions, ran on about stuff that no one asked him about. The way he talked over the moderator. The way he looks: white. He just looks like a villain.
Kamala is someone that I want to like but there is something un-charming about her. I don't dislike her though and I'm fine with her as vice president. I know she was a prosecutor and that doesn't really strike her off my list as it would with many other leftists. I'm still trying to determine what my politics are though. But I guess I can say I'm just bored. Biden and Harris' being elected will not really change the dynamics of how this country is run. But at least we'll have our first Black and Indian and female U.S. vice president, right? Or not. After Trump was elected in 2016, I lost all sense of what this country is. I won't be surprised by whoever gets elected. I'm just bracing for impact.
There's this YouTuber that I got into a few years back named J.J. McCullough. I think he was recommended to me by YouTube because of the content I was watching back then (and still watch now). And I was and still am very into fun-fact-y, current-event-y, educational videos. I'm not sure which of his videos that I got into first but I quickly devoured his content. And I think it helped that I found him pretty cute too. When I first started watching him, I assumed he was part-South-Asian or some sort of spicy hybrid. He had thick, very wavy dark hair and tanned skin and had a thick mustache in his earlier videos so I guess I just ran with that idea. And then I came to find out that his mother was from Holland and his dad was Canadian so he was basically just white mixed with white. And then I soon found out that he was, what he called, a "moderate" conservative and that had me gob-smacked. And then I found out he was GAY.
I was so confused by him at the time (I'm thinking this may have been 2017 or 2018 by the way, if that gives any context for anything). How can you be both gay and a conservative? But also, why did I assume that you were left-leaning anyway? I'm not sure if I posed this question to myself back then but I have a lot more time for thinking critically about this stuff now than I used to so I probably didn't. But rationalizing it now, I guess I took his eccentric demeanor and style (he dressed and looked "cool") as indicators of liberal-ness. The stereotypical look of a conservative in this part of North America is white and boring white man. And as I mentioned before, I also thought that he was part non-white. In 2017/2018, I was so fascinated by what I saw as conflicting identities that I went searching more for his takes on his own politics and found out that he also doesn't drink alcohol or caffeine (and never has) and he also identifies as spiritual. Not gonna lie, he looks like someone that partakes in a spliff or two occasionally. But nope. He doesn't do marijuana either. And he explains that the root of his politics is that he thinks things aren't that bad the way they are and he likes self-identifying with the traditions of the country. What a weird way to think but very fascinating, right?
I'm not sure what the nail in the coffin was for me back in the day but I know I swore off his videos for some reason. I'm not sure if it was a video where he expressed specific ideas that I really didn't like. Or just the realization of him being conservative was enough for me to have a distaste for him. If I had to guess, I probably was simply turned off by his "purity". I still do feel shame about my reliance on "substances" to feel and enjoy life sometimes so I'm sure I thought his lifestyle was an insult to mine, especially since I was very high-seeking at the age of 21. Whatever it was, I completely forgot all about it. I probably told YouTube to stop showing me his stuff and his videos never showed up in my recommendations ever again until last week. Like I said, I initially got into him because he makes educational videos, which I'm a sucker for and he has really good content for this sort of stuff. Even his more "political" videos err on the side of historical rather than opinionated so no random person stumbling on his videos would ever presume what his leanings are. When his video showed up in my recommendations, I did immediately remember he was a conservative though. The content was still really good so I decided to actually subscribe this time. Also, the comments of his videos led me to believe that conservatives in Canada (which is where he's from) are a lot different from (more center than) conservatives in the U.S. So I didn't feel to bad about subscribing... initially.
However, it was still bothering me that he self-identified with conservatives rather than just being a moderate. And it bothered me that I couldn't remember what exactly made me stay away from his videos in the first place. Anyway, I did a little bit of digging and sought out his more political videos. Because of my ignorance in Canadian politics and the fact that I already like his personality, he presents a really good case for his right-wing opinions. But when I saw the left-wing counterarguments in the comments, I got so conflicted. One example was this video that J.J. made about eliminating the requirement for politicians to know both English and French to run for certain government positions. He said that this requirement barred lots of different types of people entry from these positions; in turn, making Parliament very white and of-a-certain-class. And it totally made sense to me. And he said a lot of things opposing Quebec's insistence on having Canada make special accommodations for their French-speaking minority. And left-wing people in the comments argued that dismantling these accommodations would erase the cultural identity of these people and cultural preservation is something that I can totally get with. But these were just the lighter issues. Some things are really a matter of experience and as an American I did not feel I was in the place to make a decision that is very Canadian-specific.
AT THE SAME TIME, I did come to the conclusion that only a white man would choose to be a conservative, even while being gay, and say that it's because he "doesn't think things are that bad the way they are", because the way things are have never been a detriment to his kind. J.J. didn't come from a poor family. He presents as heteronormative so he's the gay equivalent of the token black friend. He's the one gay friend that homophobes don't mind having around. And I get the sense that he likes being different for the sake of being different. He even said that he decided to go vegetarian because he doesn't drink alcohol or caffeine anyway so not eating meat was just another thing he could just not do. Maybe I'm projecting here but this sounds likes an ego problem to me.
Nevertheless, I do like him. I find him so adorable actually. Liking white men is truly a character flaw. It still bothers me that I enjoy his videos. I can't see in what circumstances I would subscribe to an American Republican YouTuber, especially if they were a Trump supporter. There is no fucking way. I feel like my disconnect with Canada makes it easier for me to consume J.J.'s content because I don't know who his politics harms and I'm too lazy to delve deep and find out. Does Canada have a Trump-equivalent? I wouldn't know! But really, does it matter if a politician doesn't openly incite racial violence if their politics are just the same as Trump?
I rationalized that subscribing to J.J. was probably not a bad idea because it gave me a good look into the conservative mind. I'm so deep in left-wingedness that I really don't know what's going on on the other side of our "spectrum". I was raised in a Democrat state. All my friends more or less think the same as me. I only follow left-leaning media. Did I choose to be a liberal or did liberalism choose me? Would I choose conservatism if I was thoroughly presented with what that actually means as opposed to what other left-wing people have told me what that is? Nahhh... I don't think I'd be a conservative in any circumstances actually. I am way more liberal than both of my parents after all and I made that decision on my own. But I don't know everything and I am open to having my views challenged.
BUT I think it's interesting that most people who identify as moderates (as J.J. sort of does) are white, middle-to-upper-class men because they are the only ones that can straddle that middle-ground because they never have anything to lose.
Oh! I just remembered that I actually follow another moderate American guy on YouTube whose content I really enjoy. His channel is called Knowing Better. But he does seem very left-leaning to me for someone that proclaims to be moderate and I never sought out what parts of his politics are right-leaning. He makes educational videos too and they're so well-done that I never thought to look much further into it. He is a veteran so I wonder if his "moderate" identity has anything to do with that. I mention this because I was asking myself whether I would follow an American conservative and he's really as close to that I have gotten (that I know of).
I have also been thinking about how there's a lot of people who identify as Democrats who would be Republicans if the Republicans didn't outwardly hate black people so much in the 60s. Don't feel like delving much into that right now. But I'll just say that there would be a lot more Republican black men if they saw more representations of themselves in that party. And if Republicans weren't associated so much with religion (e.g. had stances against homosexuality and abortion), there would be more white men/women in that party too.
That's all I got for tonight. Maybe I can journal my way through quarantine. That would be great.
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