THE "EFB" QUESTION

For the past year or more, the vultures have been asking me why EFB is now (former) EFB. And for that time I have avoided answering the question, mainly because I wasn’t sure I knew. After all, she’s still the same person, for the most part. So what has changed?

She’s still a conservative, although she voted for Obama in the most recent election. Apparently, Catholic conservatives don’t feel comfortable with right-wing wing nuts like Sara Palin in the White House. Or maybe it was just her, considering her brother had no problem with the former Alaskan governor turned undeserved successful author.

She still has questionable views on race, especially as it pertains to the American condition and the causes for the issues we face on this side of the world. (Yes, lccb I’m including Central & South America).

She certainly hasn’t stopped believing in the “superiority” of white physical attractiveness. She still get into creaming, swearing, psychotic arguments with her mom both in person and over the phone which often culminate in her screeching, “evil old fucking bitch!” But most of you who have been reading me for years know her mom is an evil, insane old racist filled with more hate than the legal limit allows.

And if you know that, you probably also know that her siblings are a collective hive mind of intolerant, judgmental, superior minded assholes. So, what’s changed? What makes a peon like that no longer a total EFB? Well, it starts with me and my own hypocrisy.

As a left-leaning individual, I often cite environment as a determining factor in one’s behavior and actions. Having met she and her family that argument has grown in intensity; conservatives tend to judge based on moments without context and they are no exception. Well, she is an exception now.

Perhaps it has come from knowing me for so long or listening to what I had to say. Perhaps she’s literally never heard anyone present an intelligent argument to the contrary of what her sainted Libertarian brother said about all things political and social. Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s the case.

Maybe being with a person of mixed race has provided her with an outlook and perspective he never could have achieved with what I like to call a mono-toned person. That is mot likely the case as recent development have shown. (More on those in a later post)

Basically, I realized that in order for me to make my argument about environment, I had to acknowledge that she too is a product of hers. To do anything else would make me a hypocrite, like her family members that deal with their screed up kids then criticize “urban youth.”

So, I took a long hard look at my inner Scribe. Then I looked at her background. Then I watched how she related to her family members as oppose to when I first met her. Then I watched some “South Park” reruns and laughed hysterically and went to bed at which point I forgot about my little experiment for about three years. Or maybe it was three weeks, whatever. I got back to it eventually so who are you to criticize?

I used that objective journalistic training I never received and wound up seeing some disturbingly shocking truths; most notably that EFB was indeed a product of her environment. Without making excuses (and really, why would I?) I considered the type of family from which she’d come. A mom whose every moment is ruled by agenda and emotion, siblings who are of a hive mentality while still insisting they are individuals with their own minds, angered whenever she strays from the mold. In particular, she has two oppressive, incredibly sexist brothers who refute anything they don’t like hearing or that makes the white race look negative. I mentioned the brothers because her sisters seem to see thinking as a man’s game, especially the two married ones. The single, eldest sister has some ideas but spends most of her time garnering sympathy from their mother and turning her against EFB.

Add to this a father that would inflict physical punishment for such horrible transgressions as elbows on the dinner table and you gain a pretty clear insight into just how fucked up she should be.

However, EFB is nothing if not strong-willed. Somehow she has continued to carve out her own identity or at least as much as she can in light of the dictatorship he grew up under. Having finally stopped resisting listening to other forms of thought, namely that which occurs above the brain stem, she has become far more well rounded than those to whom she is related.

I call her former EFB because I no longer believe the “E” is accurate anymore than I would call the angry criminal evil because he succumbed to the often insurmountable bullshit in his environment. It’s easy to judge others when our own lives were far stabler. Yes, my parents also divorced when I was in single digits. Yes, my dad was about a useful in life as a third testicle. But my support system was strong and open-minded and I was never made to feel like a failure because I disagreed with someone or chose a different path. My mother never called me such lovely things as (list a many as possible) when I disappointed her in the name of tough love, which is obviously thinly disguised resentment.

It’s easy to judge someone who, on the surface, had ever advantage in modern American life. But then I look at her nieces and nephews who have even more and realize that doesn’t mean shit.

So, it was fun using the acronym but I can’t in good conscience continue to do so. That’s why she’s (former) EFB~