Hlootoo's Art

clearsaladsavage:

L I S T E N

As someone born and raised in a socialist country, I grew up thinking it was kinda nice. And it was. For a good while it was. But then they ran out of money, and they raised taxes on everybody, and the poor people got poorer, and they raised taxes again. And there still wasn’t enough money, so they cut into the healthcare budget, and into education. And there still wasn’t enough money, because the economy elsewhere collapsed and being a socialist country, they had to go help. So they raised taxes again, and made it illegal to make money in different ways such as renting out a room in your house. They raised taxes again, and now the same people that were supposed to be helped are poorer than they started out. People got angry and expressed concern, so they made it semi illegal to express those concerns – belittling the people, and telling us that those concerns were thinly veiled racism, xenophobia, greed.
There are places and special phone numbers now, where you (anonymously) can tell on your neighbors if they dare rent out a room, smoke around their children, let their kids use Facebook under the age of 16, grow too many plants, leave their cats alone for too long, sell too many things on eBay. And it’s all for safety, and they all have your best interest in mind, but from the outside looking in now I can see that everything people were afraid of during the Cold War is happening, and most people are too blind to see it. Blinded by their ‘free’ stuff. It’s getting out of hand.

My mother told me today, that she finds America to be a strange place. Confusing at times, and overwhelming. But that it’s better, much better than at home. That I dodged a bullet by moving here. And she’s not very excited to “return to that communist hell scape”. The iron curtain is moving west, and some of y’all seriously can’t wait for it to get here.