Auntie Charo's Soapbox

The other afternoon, I was stuck in traffic! I've been tooling around doing a few errands. Friday afternoon I could have listened to the wonderful classical music that was on K57 or, I could have ground my teeth to the bone with Debbie. I switched back and forth for awhile, thinking that eventually, K57 would come back on and I would be able to listen to what Coffman would find amusing, or, to make fun of. That wasn't the case so I was stuck to listening to the whiners.
I tried to put myself in the shoes of the callers. I tried really, really hard. I envisioned myself being this man who called himself the 'magalahi', imagine someone referring to himself as the leader. I'm thinking, if I was 'the leader', you would already know that and therefore, I wouldn't have to refer to myself as that, but he did. He said that he wanted to tell those thousands and thousands of Marines and their dependents, some say 17 thousand that they better take care of the land, his land as the 'taotao tano' have taken care of the land. Dear gawd, I wanted to get sick, I thought of all the places in the north where people dumped stoves, iceboxes, old cars, junk of all sorts and beaches with pampers and name it and here this man is telling 'Debbie' to tell these people that 'they' better take care of 'his' land as if it was in pristine order?
And Debbie agreed! She said something to the tune of how dare them just come to Guam and 'migrate' and played around with the word 'immigrate' then tried to figure how how it would be if they came here finally using the word 'migrate' from Okinawa. The conversation was quite sickening. I thought about how awful it would be if this kind of conversation took place around people that didn't have feelings one way or the other about the Marines and their families coming to Guam. After hearing about the Marines, thinking that they were coming to Guam to mess it up, gosh, they'd be upset as well, wouldn't they. They'd even feel upset enough to carry a sign!
And here these two were talking about the 17 thousand that were coming to Guam to take advantage of the water and power and phone system, and maybe taking a few seats at the GPO movies and few carts at ROSS, hey, who in the states is complaining that there are probably more Chamorros in the US than there are on Guam this very moment? That they are on welfare, using foodstamps, using medicare, medicaid, et cetera, et cetera and not one U.S. talk show host is talking to one person complaining about them being there.
In 1958,William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick wrote The Ugly American, a bestseller that coined the phrase for the tragic American blunders in Asia and abroad, perhaps one day, a book will be written about the Ugly Chamorro, about the arrogance of the Chamorro and its blunders.
We want the American dollars in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Services as in Public Health, in FEMA dollars, in highway funds in almost everything but food in our mouths but then we turn around and lambast them when there's something they need on our island. This afternoon show had callers that called to say that they want the U.S. to pay to use Guam. I don't know what Section 30 funds are if that's not pay, then I don't know what is. If FEMA funds and all the money that comes after any Act of God comes, I don't know what 'pay' is.
I think that the basic problem is that the so-called 'nation' or 'people of the land' don't understand is that Guam is a territory that belongs....belongs, as in owned, by the U.S. and that the U.S. can do with it as it wants. If the 'nation' wants something else, then it should declare independence and for that, I'm afraid, it will have to do something it will probably lose....not enough time or energy to discuss at this juncture.
So, not to worry, you will be happy to know that most of us will appreciate your presence and we'll be happy to see you spending your hard-earned dollars at Home Depot and K-Mart and our little island will grow in leaps and bounds economically because you're here....there's truth in the saying, the more, the merrier!