Border Wars.

We like to say that chimpanzees are warlike. Instead of having sex to make peace, they hunt down their enemies and patrol their border areas much like armed guards patrolling the ruins of a prized museum. Upon closer inspection, though, we’ve found that wars and human incursion - no arms for that which they cannot resist - have led to the chimpanzee wars. Limit their territory, start living where they live, and they turn on each other.

Humans are very much the same, I think. Marginalized communities like mine are under attack right now and we’re setting up purity tests all around us, a lot like border guards, to limit who can come in and who belongs in the wasteland. We even hunt down and attack those who’ve transgressed our rules of what mustn’t be said and how to voice dissent. Resist, but only in one specified way with pre-printed words. It reminds me of 1984.

I was just asked when I was leaving after quoting Green Day’s “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA” around the Census being armed by Border Patrol to identify people we deem illegal here in the US. At first, I wanted to just reply lol, but the binary of love it or leave it required more than that. Then I remembered Harvey Milk’s speech - “Come to San Francisco? Or stay and fight.” I thought of “I’ll stay and fight, like a patriot” was a good response, but someone else beat me to it. A response so I don’t have to say much else.

I’m disturbed, though, by my recycling of slogans. Am I just as bad as The Party, simply repurposing things at hand to lob little bombs at my snarky targets? I’m not really a fighter. I think, and it saddened me that we killed our latest target of border ire. Not because he was a great guy. Just because, well, he was killed. Killing anyone is a sad occasion to me because we all have families, we all possess a divine spark that is not our human right to extinguish. Never.

I want to say something original here, but it seems like everything has already been said. I find myself lobbing makeshift grenades at human targets.

Am I any better than a chimpanzee?