What the flu flushed out

So the regular flu is supposed to be deadlier and once you have this newest flu, there is Tamiflu to help lessen the bite.


The flu has managed to flush out something more insidious than any bird, pig, human virus cocktail. The fear mongering is a media pandemic in and of itself. My earliest memory of what racism is was the diner scene in the movie Giant. For years my brother and I disliked the song, The Yellow Rose of Texas .


This socio-economic climate (Bush's rank leftovers) is perfect for a scapegoat round-up. Not that it ever stopped. After 9-11, ugh, the stuff people were forwarding. Just yesterday I received a terribly racist video from a (questionable and now temporary ) acquaintance, about Islam and people from the Middle East. The way 9-11 spawned all sorts of bigotry, the last election and current flu have done the same. I prefer it be kept behind closed doors, knowing it's around but off the streets, I speak of the bigotry, not the flu. Some things will just always exist on some level. It is a very specific mind in a very specific type of person who can utter such things out loud and with such conviction. I mean, they really believe these things they say.

I have met these types, dined with them, gone to the malls with them...they seem so normal. One young lady of 25 or so once said to me seven years ago, in a heated tone, "A carload of MEXICANS (said as if it were the foulest word she could muster, it was actually cute in a sick sort of way) drove up and they all got out and they looked around." She was having a garage sale and I was there and they looked around just as anyone else would look around. I was confused as to why she was so angry. It was so uneventful but for the rest of the day she spoke of the car they drove, how they fit into the car, how they got out, how they walked around. Every detail was recorded and the uneventful story re-told a few more times.

After that incident I saw her less and less. I no longer viewed her as anyone on my level, that of a real human being. She was a bigot, someone that I would stare at and wonder about because she was some sort of sick anomaly in my world. What had occurred to make her so incapable of higher level reasoning, to have her physically exist in the same world I existed in but to experience it in such a skewed and warped way? I wondered of the anger she felt the minute she walked out her door and kept with her until she got home (maybe it didn't end there). She must have felt hopeless, overwhelmed, stressed on a daily basis. I can't feel these things on a daily basis, never minute to minute that's not living. How could anything in this world make a person feel that way? She was the mother of two baby girls and I wondered just how this all would turn out one day. I'll never know, I thankfully lost touch a few months after that.

But when these types find each other, they begin to think that they are in the majority. When the press finds them or when they find a voice they begin to think that they are correct in their thinking and all convictions confirmed. In reality, they don't go far and they are out numbered. I think they know this on some level because this behavior stems from fear,not a noble origin. It's all ceased to be unique and original. They always say the same things, we've all heard it already, we've all seen it played out in the worse possible ways too. Eventually you build a resistance, see things for what they really are and there is nothing to fear. All viruses eventually weaken.

Note: One thing this flu ordeal has made me sensitive too is those coughing and sneezing in public. I had already taken note long ago of the many grossy-grossouts who don't cover their face when they sneeze and shoot their spit to the wind. However, despite all the fears and warnings and this scare, at the grocery store the other night, all I saw were people sneezing without making an attempt to confine it or harness it. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW You guys are gross and suck year round.