news

The Niemöller Moment

/ kiplingkat / Leave a comment

I  know what you all are thinking, “How can she possibly be posting about anime in the face of such tragedy!”

A. I’ve been fighting about all this on Facebook for years, and about the Tree of Life murders since it happened. B. The anime one was sitting in my drafts for over a month and C….

Are we really so shocked? I mean, this time it was Jewish Americans, but African Americans have been the constant target of murder for years, LGBTQ people have not only been targets for violence and murder, but political discrimination. We put a open racist (and pathological liar) in the White House, some of the GOP are openly bigots, the Republican alt-right has become home to white nationalist hate groups.

In two weeks, the alt-right “white-men-only-but-we’re-not-white-nationlists-really” Proud Boys had brawls in Portland, OR and NYC and then tried to play the victims until a video of their leader demanding MORE violence from Trump supporters, saying “We will kill you,” came out. We saw two African Americans murdered at Kroegers when the openly racist murderer could not get into his initial target: An African American church while it was holding a service. Pipe bombs sent to pretty much everyone on Trump’s “hit list” except the Honduran refugees (and he’s promised to send 15,000 troops, the same number we have in Afghanistan, to catch and incarcerate them, he said “we’re catching, we’re not releasing,” so they will get to join the seized children in American concentration camps). And then a antisemitic murderer walking into a synagogue during Sabbath and killing 11 people.

Ironically, all this within the same time period that Mathew Shepard’s ashes we re-interred in the National Cathedral.

Are we really surprised that it came to this?

It was horrific and the families of the victims of all the attacks have been subjected to tragedy no one should bear. I hope they can find some comfort during this terrible time.

But this is America now: The United States of Fear and Hate. Hate crimes (and that’s only 2017 data) have gone up since Trump took office. (And it’s not just speculation, it’s science!) Did anyone really think it was going to confine itself to African Americans, LGBTQ people, or Latino Americans?

After all, the NRA, one of the mainstays of the Republican Party, has quietly been making verbal antisemitic attacks for years, feeding the conspiracy theories that led Bower to mass murder.

And Trump is *still* pushing that conspiracy theory.

(If Soros was actually funding everything the Republican/Right wing claims he funds, he would have to be richer the Bezos, Gates and Buffet combined.)

And the white nationalists have moved onto Americans of Asian decent now too:

Racist Attack Ad on Korean-American Democratic challenger Andy Kim.

The “Not one of us” attitude is more frightening. No one but straight white christian males are safe in this socio-political landscape.

As proven by Trump’s ramping up the anti-immigration rhetoric to the point he is threatening yet another Constitutional Amendment, claiming he can just wipe it away the birthright citizenship guaranteed in the 14th Amendment with an Executive Order (he can’t, but it whips his base into a frenzy).

I have never seen a politician, let alone a President, who hated the Constitution so much.

Trump is putting fear of the “other,” the person who is not a WASP male, over the Constitution.

That is what America is now: Fear over the very laws, the very social fabric, this nation is founded on.

This is the Niemöller moment, because they are after ALL of us.

And we can’t just keep making sympathetic noises anymore. We have to loudly refute hate speech at every turn. We have to tell these people that bigotry is NOT acceptable in this country. (And social media seems to be keeping pace with some of the more outrageous individual racists.) And we have to not just speak up, we have to act. We cannot leave these people in power anymore.

Do you know that they have listed “antifa” as a terrorist group (in the U.S. antifa is not even a group, hence the lower case spelling, let alone terrorists) while violent right wing, white nationalist terrorists are running rampant (and have been since 9/11, alt-right groups, including white nationalists, are responsible for almost three times the number of terrorist attacks in the U.S. than extremist Muslim groups, and that was only as of January of this year, think how much further ahead they are now), encouraged by a bigoted president who wants to be emperor, supported by a rabid, reality-denying base who want an authoritarian government in denial of everything the United States claims to be.

Protest. Vote. Take our country back before they take it away, along with American lives.

And frankly, four of my great uncles fought in WWII, one of them died fighting Nazis. I will be damned if I will tolerate them here in the U.S.. If that makes me a “horrible/evil antifa” person that the alt-right loves to project all it’s nastiness on to (and go to any political thread and watch alt right people accuse antifa people of doing whatever violent or murderous alt right bastard has just done, such as equating criticism of Israel’s policies toward Palestine to antisemitic murder, yes, I’ve seen it), I’m fine with that.  Fuck ’em.

 

Sorry I Have Gone Quiet

/ kiplingkat / 2 Comments

I have gone into a downswing and am not feeling very communicative.

If it was not spurred, it certainly was exacerbated by coming back to NC from Maine, which is where I really want to be. Honestly, when the plane lifted off from Portland, I cried. I value the opportunities and experiences, the cosmopolitan worldview that living in Los Angeles gave me, but I am ready to come home. The University education and culture have been enjoyed here in NC have been invaluable, but I miss Maine with an ache. Even with driving in the snow. Plans are formulating.

Someone I really liked is in love with someone else. While I can see he is happy and I wish them the best, and it was never going to happen anyway, it’s hard to not be just a teeny bit heartbroken. But it’s all for best, I think. I’ll get over it.

The news has been very bad. Israel and Palestine can’t seem to keep their hands from each others’ throats. Ferguson broke out in more violence (way to lose the moral high ground guys). The Ebola Outbreak in countries least able to handle it. The horrifying, tragic violence in Iraq and the demand to go back in, to spend more trillions of dollars we do not have and thousands of American lives to re-occupy a country and manage a populace that does not want us there for how fucking long? What are we supposed to do, turn it into a fucking colony? Do the chicken hawks think if we stay their for twenty years, thirty, it’s going to be better? They will love us and the government we install more? WTF people? I am sorry for the people dying. It’s is horrific, but we already held their hands for ten years. We can’t make a country for them, the U.S. and U.K. have proven that repeatedly through Iraq’s history. It is their country and their responsibility to get it together. I think they are the only people who can.

The fact that Americans want to restart the Iraq War is simply horrifying to me. This is one of the reasons I hate the conservative right: They learn nothing from their own mistakes, ever.

Then there is this tragic statistic.

The ongoing grief over Robin Williams’ passing reveals how important he was to our society, to the world, to our lives. I don’t think I have ever seen a celebrity that was memorialized for over a week like this, certainly not a comedian’s, while the scandal mongering has been blessedly minimal. Realizing that light has gone out has been a real blow, especially in such dark times. We miss him.

So…I’m not in a good place right now.

Plus work is busy getting ready for the school year and I’m pet-sitting for a friend, which means I am spending my evenings away from my computer.

So yeah. I’m quiet.

Film at 11…..

/ kiplingkat / Leave a comment

This is heroism:

Head Doctor at Sierra Leone Ebola Clinic Catches Deadly Virus

“When everyone else was running out, they ran in.”

Prayers for him and his family that he and all the victims of the outbreak recover.

And now for a commercial break….

 

 

Lawmakers Say Migrant Children are Diseased, Should Be Denied Shelter

Michelle Bachman Calls Immigrant Children “Invaders”, Compares Them to Rapists

Showdown Over Immigration, “This is an Invasion.” 

Now…where have I heard that all before?

Oh goody…The American Right already went there

Reminder:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I understand wanting to have some control over who gets to work here and who gets citizenship, but we are a nation of immigrants. We always have been. And the funny thing is, all the complaints about Latino people now? They were saying them about the Irish in the 19th century (and the Chinese on the West Coast) and the Germans in the 18th century: “They take our jobs. They don’t integrate/kinda scare me ‘cuz they’re different, etc.”. And the AmerIndians have been saying it about all of the European-decended people for the entire bloody time, only with “they took my land, murdered my people and did their damnedest to destroy my culture” on top.  If you can’t embrace immigration as part of American culture, GTFO.

On a personal note, I do not think I have had a more patriotic experience than seeing the Statue of Liberty.

Also this:

God

Someday, “Compassion” will be part of the American cultural identity, but not today.

And now a word from our sponsors:

 

 

New Broadband Users Shun U.K. Porn Filters Ofcom Finds

First of all: Work not, Yoda Phrasing does. Have editors, BBC does not.

Secondly: You naughty wanking bastards! Get your mind out of the gutter!

There’s no room for me in there. 😀