Why should we?
I'm not absolutely saying no but I need you to answer the question.
All I see are rats leaving a sinking ship terrified they will suffer the consequences of their actions/inaction.
They would have, at the very least, stood by and watched us be destroyed dozens of times in the last decade.
The FBI labelled SAH moms terrorists
The IRS went for our businesses
The DoJ going after Trump and anyone associated with him
Demonizing everyone who knew the truth about COVID and vaccines or simply wanted the right to go outside.
Flooding our towns with rapists and murderers both foreign (open borders) and domestic (defund the police)
Every other word from their media and politicians calling us racists, Nazis, terrorists
Too many other persecutions to name here.
They gave their money, their votes, and their consent for this tacit or otherwise.
And now that they may actually have their lives affected they wish to "join" us.
The tides have turned and the fair weather is gone and now they wish to change course.
Yesterday morning I would have met them with open arms.
Today... today is a different day and these are different times.
A Good man, wonderful father and great American has been taken from us because he wanted nothing more than to talk to these people.
Why should I welcome them?
How can I call them Brother and Sister when they would have watched me burn and done nothing?
To live together in a civilized society we must have trust and shared values.
As of today I no longer think we do.
So again I beg you to tell me
Why should we?
USA. A restaurant. I could not finish my meal, and I bowed my head in shame.
Then they handed me a box, and I nearly wept.
The plate had been enormous. I am a samurai; I do not surrender to food. But this was a siege, and halfway through I knew I could not win. I set down my fork. In my country, to leave food on the plate is to insult the rice, the farmer, the cook, and your own ancestors, roughly in that order. So I sat there, quietly making peace with my dishonor.
Then the waitress smiled and said the most beautiful sentence I have heard here.
"You want a box for that?"
A box. To take it. Home.
I went still.
"You would save it?" I asked.
"Yeah, of course. It's still good."
It's still good. Three words my grandmother said to me a thousand times, across an ocean, in another language, over a bowl I was not allowed to leave.
I had crossed the world expecting to find everything different here. And a stranger in an apron had just handed me my grandmother's exact heart, in a small paper container, without knowing she had done anything at all.
I took the box. I held it like a newborn. I bowed to her, to the cook, and to the half a sandwich within, which would now live to see another day.
That night I ate it by a window, slowly, the way you eat something that was nearly lost. It was, if anything, better the second time. Everything saved is.
So now I order too much on purpose. Not from greed. From faith. Because I have learned that here, the same as home, a meal does not end when you are full.
It ends when the box is empty.
And the box is never empty the same day.
Which means a good meal can last forever,
as long as someone, anyone, still believes it is too good to waste.
USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.
I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.
Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.
In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.
This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.
The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.
So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.
The owner asked if everything was okay.
"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."
He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"
I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.
I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.
So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.
And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.
Reborn.
A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.
@DefiantLs Seems like the Congressman should know the answer to that question as congress declares war.
Anything else is just a conflict or action.
It's unfortunate that guy doesn't know how his job works.
In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.
I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.
"Nobunaga."
He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.
"Perfect. Banana, party of one."
Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.
Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.
I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.
It woke.
It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.
He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.
"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"
A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.
All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"
So tell me honestly.
For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.
When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?
Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.
Dear (native) British people, I enjoyed watching you throw garbage cans at your corrupt police force.
I’d like to watch it again tonight.
Thank you,
America
am i sure the death star is going down? look at my quant. look at him! you notice anything different about him? look at his eyes. i’ll give you a hint—his name’s a fucking number!! he doesn’t even speak english—it’s all beep-boop shit!! yeah, i’m sure.
@HazelAppleyard@RantyAmyCurtis I find it very odd that y'all are demanding they take their knives away rather than taking back your right to defend yourselves.
I got into guns for real around the time I first started receiving Actual Death Threats, in december of 2024. Since then I've become licensed to carry a concealed firearm in 46 states and I practice the Federal Air Marshal qualifier twice a week. I have literally run from someone who pulled a gun on me because, guess what, DC laws required it.
Meanwhile, I have a chorus of prohibited people talking about how I need my guns taken away and snitch tagging my local sheriff and the FBI.
You guys really want me disarmed, huh? Why is that?