Nearing the end of my yellow brick road of life, I am confronted with two different worlds in which I live. These two worlds are polar opposites.

My two worlds

On the one hand, one world consists of those of the white supremacist mindset. They have issues with people who aren’t white. The white supremacists don’t want to have communities of color around nor do they tolerate those of different religions. They also don’t like those from outside of America. There is a simple answer for their beliefs. It is either that they are the summum bonum of all humanity, or they are scared. White supremacists aren’t the crème de crème of humankind. They feel inadequate and lash out as a response to feeling less than some other group.

This guy, who named himself “the QAnon Shaman,” doesn’t seem pleased with the world in which he finds himself.

The QAnon Shaman

In my world, I don’t buy into white supremacy over anything. I don’t see the QAnon Shaman is protecting his inferiority. He is demonstrating his mediocrity by acting like a macho man. To make matters worse, this silly shaman feels let down by Donald the Dumb, because Trump didn’t pardon him. Trump feels so inferior that he can’t support macho men like the shaman, who also have inferiority complexes.

Last week, I had to go to my ophthalmologist for an eye exam. As I sat waiting for the drops to dilate my eyes, I jotted down the people in my life who had helped me. In the medical profession, my primary care doctor’s ethnic background is Chinese even though he was born in America. A couple of times that I see him for an office visit during a year, I greet him with one of the very few expressions that I still remember when I taught myself Mandarin. I will ask, “Ni hao ma?” That question is from a non-Asian asking how an Asian, who has cared for me for two decades, feels. When I go for an office visit, I don’t worry about whether I can trust him, nor do I blame him for COVID-19.

Over a dozen years ago, I fell off a ladder and hit my head on a concrete retaining wall. That fall resulted in a subdural hematoma or traumatic brain injury. The neurosurgeon that saved my life was a Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East. I wasn’t any more worried about whether I felt safe with him or my primary care doctor.

I had a female doctor whose background was from the Indian subcontinent. She removed my cataracts. Again, I made it through the surgery and wasn’t worried. My former cardiologist’s ethnic background was Hispanic. He treated me for a couple of decades until he retired. My new cardiologist is an Indian who was born in Indiana but had parents that were from India. I’ll be the first to state that they know more about my eyes and heart than I did.

My web administrator was born in Islamabad, Pakistan, but she works in Stockholm, Sweden. She is married to another Muslim from Pakistan. I haven’t lost any slept about them being out to get me.

I have taught at various colleges in the past quarter-century. One of the colleges had a president that was actually from Shanghai, China. As with my primary doctor, I would ask him when I happened to see him, “Ni hao ma?” At another school, the president is a black female. I trust her.

Each semester that I teach, I look at the student roster. If I can’t pronounce 75% of one or both the student’s names, I am delighted. I benefit from diversity in my class, and they also benefit.

My family lives in Myanmar, which is a Southeast Asian nation. In addition to Ko Ko, Moh Moh, Ti Ti, Snow, and Fatty, there are other family members from both parents. I have other friends like Than and Tin Tin. Being from Asia is not something that causes me any apprehension. I merely miss them.

My neighborhood seems like a housing development for UN employees. I have a litany of friends: a Korean guy, a black female, a Sikh family, a Hindu couple, and several Muslims.

I’d rather live in my world a diversity than the world in which white supremacists are attempting to look more important than everyone else. The QAnon Shaman or his leader, the Orange Man, are ultimately failed attempts at being successful. The QAnon Shaman is sitting in jail waiting for the Orange Man to pardon him. However, the Orange Man is waiting for many lawsuits to be filed against him.

Orange Man #1

Orange Man #2

Each of us needs to remember what Gilgamesh taught us many millennia ago. The only real immortality for us is how the world remembers us. I’d opt off of being remembered as the QAnon Shaman, the Orange Man, and people of that ilk.