“Don’t defend yourself, you have nothing to prove, the truth
is on your side. State the facts. Let the viewers see how ridiculous the church
is. There is no way for you to loose this argument”, I said to Identity’s
director yesterday, as he was getting ready for a live TV show. I was sure that
he could just sit back and relax, while priests made clowns of themselves,
proving that providing 15 people with a place to live in the winter is immoral.
And clowns they were. Last night, two priests tried to prove that:
1.
There are unassisted homeless people
2.
NGO Identity, along with several other organizations,
schools, theatres, poets, writers, etc is raising money to equip an empty apartment
charitably provided for shelter purposes
3.
Thus, it is immoral to help this group of
people. Let’s leaving the homeless, well, homeless.
4.
Oh, and they also said it is better to give
charity money to church. You know, because millions they get from my taxes are
not enough to provide several families with a roof over their heads.
That is what happened. Of course, you may believe in
conspiracy theories, you may think that Identity (along with others NGOs,
schools, theaters, poets, writers, just charitable people, me) really wants to
open a shelter for THE CHILDREN for a sole purpose of beating the shit out of
15 lost souls until they go gay. God knows, an NGO supported by several
embassies, staffed with lawyers, psychologists and social workers might even attempt
to rape THE CHILDREN, or shoot child pornography films or force them to spit on
crosses and piss on icons. Some of THE
CHILDREN may even get crucified upside down on a full moon and orgies will be
held on their dead corpses. It all makes sense now, you see, we just have to,
must think of THE CHILDREN!
So while I was happy that Identity’s director explained that
charity is good because it actually provides home for several families during
the winter (he even mentioned other NGOs taking over for professional training
and psychological counseling), the whole country caught a stupid virus. Raging
over the non-existing CHILDREN (see, everyone just misheard that the shelter
was for families, and yes, families do include adults too), zombies started
congregating and contemplating of ways to stop this evil-doing, money-donating
charity freaks. The Minister of Health declared that letting several families
into a privately-owned renovated house is against two (not one, mind you) international
conventions. Stupid politicians opposed this initiative, though they admitted
that they did not know much about the shelter, since they “did not go into this
issue deeper”. Today, Identity got threats from all kinds of people, promising
trouble not only for the NGO, but for the inhabitants of the shelter (!)
And thus, while I was blissfully thinking that the church
actually helped promote the cause and that we have nothing to prove, I mean
literally we are collecting money to prepare an apartment for homeless people,
while I was telling my colleagues to check out yesterday’s TV show and laugh at
the clowns, Identity issued a statement that it will refrain from further
activity, since it is not safe for them or for the future shelter.
Fuck this country. For real, fuck it. I feel like the Dark Lord
has risen and death eaters apparate everywhere, jinxing good deeds, destroying
Turkish restaurants and strip clubs, offending people of different races, putting spells on people and feeding them
lies. And as I desperately cling to my Hermionies, Rons, Dumbledores and
others, unicorns are slaughtered all over the dark forest.
Thank you, dear secretary of the patriarchy for killing my
last hope. I have nothing left to offer this county. Nothing. It does not
deserve me, my friends at the Identity, or anyone who wants to make a
difference in this stinking mess of a country. I am leaving. Your loss, not
mine.
P.S. Click on the logo to see the statement.
Damnit, that sucks - but not overly surprising given the run of events here this past year. Hell, just look at that letter that the supposed "intelligentsia" wrote to the envoy of the EU about "accepting Georgian traditions" and how popular that ridiculous bit of scrawling was. Don't stop trying to make things better. Even in the US, things didn't happen overnight. Georgia is a tree almost ripe for shaking.
ReplyDeleteDear Pasumonok,
ReplyDeletePlease don’t despair. As I was reading your post, I was thanking the providence that I don’t have to deal with the narrow-minded people you must come across. As someone who was born and raised in Georgia, I remember having interactions with people who never engage in critical thinking, do things only based on what their dzmakacebi would approve of, and in general, relying on, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the worst demons (rather than the best angels) of their souls.
I have been living in the States for over 20 years and have grown to love and appreciate the country. However, America, too, has its generous share of institutionalized blood-boiling abuses that stem from bigotry and hatred. For example, most Americans don’t want to hear about the injustices committed in the name of this country’s (failed) war on drugs, where a person caught for the first time with 1.5 grams of cocaine is given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The fact that most of these unfortunates are low-income blacks is either ignored by the society, or worse, taken with the sense of satisfaction that “there will be fewer hoodlums in the streets.”
I can’t tell you what to do. Just don’t despair and remember that any society is as good as the people who live in it. I think Georgia will lose a lot if its society were deprived of you.
Best,
Georgian expat in the U.S.
Thank you. Thank you so much for these words.
DeleteMaybe I need to be less radical and take say a three-year vacation away from here and work on my PH.D. or something. Otherwise, I will go nuts