Foreigners. The world is full of them. Did you know that all but some people in the world are foreigners? It’s true. And yet, if you build and maintain a healthy dislike and disrespect for people other than those of your nationality, race, ethnicity, creed, level of physical ability, social class, sexual orientation, educational background, political worldview, economic worldview, local geographical background (West Side, motherf***er), choice of lifestyle, choice of bank, choice of Coke or Pepsi, skin tone, ring tone, Toblerone, side of fence, side of table, side of bed, side of beef, religious denomination, religious sub-denomination or religious car decoration, you get labeled as some kind of xenophobe.
Well, no more! Or, more to the point, yes I am!
I’m taking the word xenophobia back. As you may have heard, the word has a rich and storied history. There was that Orson Scott Card book, for one. And legend has it that the word was created by Mahatma Gandhi just weeks before his death. Who, praytell, caused his assassination and death? You guessed it. Foreigners. Foreign to me, if not him. Even if you take the more banal view that God was just taking him back into his loving fold, guess what? I choose to fit God to the most literal definition of “foreign” that I have access to. That makes God a foreigner too.
Now I want to speak to those of you for whom the word has not yet been reached. I hear you scuttling in the corners, and I know what you’re saying. “Oh, Rob, but foreigners are nothing to be feared! In fact, this idea of xenophobia being a virtue rather than a bigoted throwback to an earlier and thankfully bygone age borders on heresy!” For those of you who think this way, that xenophobia is some kind of throwback to old and offensive ways of thinking, I have three words for you: Shut up, communists!
I live my life in a state of xeneuphoria. And I’m not the only one. Well, I am, but I shouldn’t be. Our/my stated goal is to take humanitarian compassion, which is kind of like a teddy bear, a box of Kleenex and the Peace Corps all rolled into one, and stuff it in a cannon to be shot to the moon, expunged from humanity and with good riddance.
Don’t forget: The only offensive nuclear weapons ever employed were detonated on foreign soil.
