Family Politics

The email from my brother Kim in Thailand was the first I had heard from him for six months. He reports that his baby is doing well, and he might be visiting brother Todd in New Jersey. That brother! Politics rears its ugly head. I often hear people say that politicians serve special interests and get away with it despite most people knowing what is happening. They accept that this is how things are. I answer that the politicians get away with it because people in their personal lives are getting away with the same. They don't feel they have the authority to complain. They can't take the risk to protest: they have nothing solid, no personal integrity, to stand on. I send my brother a message: If he was going to be friendly with me, he should help arrange for my brother in New Jersey to return the inheritance he stole. Brother Kim is outraged. It is my fault that I go on about this old story of a few years ago. Where is my proof? And if I had any, the money involved is too little to hire a lawyer, so why am I obsessed with it? Get over it and get on with my life. I send off an email saying: politicians get away with lying and cheating and we cannot immediately stop them, and I cannot stop my family from lying and cheating, but I don't have to be silent about it. I am not silent about what the politicians do, why should I be silent about family with you? It's like you are inviting me to emigrate to a new country, that of a re-established family relation, but politics there is just like the nation I am a citizen of. I complain about the one, why not complain about the other?