The sky is high. The Czar is far.
This picture was taken way before Palin was ever picked as McCain’s running mate, back when my hair was darker too:
I don’t think it’s very similar at all, but I’ve been using it on LJ, and two separate comments to the tune of “omigod is that, like, a Palin Halloween-themed userpic” have appeared. Hmmm. And here I was still agonizing between going as Jane Sixpack or Bill O’Reilly in “WE’LL DO IT LIVE” mode (I’ve been in that kind of mood).
I was listening to Voice of America in Ukrainian the other day, and lo and behold, there was a segment on how McCain is targeting Ukrainian-American voters.
And his entire shtick with that is apparently “f*ck Russia… I mean, I will help keep Ukraine independent.”
No, you’ll just “help” split Ukraine in two.
I’ve said this a number of times on my blog and I’ll say it again: McCain was a respectable politician, and I’ve always admired him from coming out of a POW camp and being able to hold it together and go to Washington. That takes chutzpah, no matter how you look at it. But now the whole McCain “brand,” as it were, is all about race-baiting and talking about how intellectualism is a bad thing but forced pregnancy is a good thing. This alone stopped me from voting for him. Never mind the whole Ukraine thing.
So this is what happens when people keep saying – “skinhead problem? What skinhead problem?”
Now, I walk a fine line when publishing such essays, because I do not wish to contribute to russophobia. I get angry, helplessly angry, when I see Nazi slogans spray-painted in my neighbourhood, but I also have repeatedly seen my words co-opted, distorted, and used to justify all sorts of xenophobic nonsense.
At the same time, I believe that staying silent is doing a disservice to people who are quite literally dying in their fight against nazism. Those kids who are busy de-facing the nazi slogans on my street? I salute them.
Every little thing counts.
But if you’re going to read this and think “well, it’s just those barbarous Russians, what can you expect?” – here’s a preemptive fuck you. FUCK YOU.
(I often censor bad words on this blog, because they contribute to scary and depressing search hits, but whatever I’m making an exception this time.)
Once again, my state continues to shock me. Is this a threat? Someone’s idea of a stupid, sick joke?
First a reporter getting kicked at Elon, and now an animal shot to death, with Obama signs acting like some sort of funeral shroud.
Meanwhile, someone has sent in this postcard to PostSecret. Is this also a threat? An expression of dread? Dread for whom or what, though?
This election is equal parts hope and fear. And yes, I blame both McCain and Palin for helping stoke that fear. For implying and, in Palin’s case, pretty much saying, “look, there’s this boogeyman out there, there is this creature, this terrorist, and something must be done about it.” I think they knew exactly what they were doing. And now the entire thing is spinning out of control, but their precious fee-fees are hurt over being compared to George farking Wallace.
What about Obama’s family? What are they feeling right now? When someone you love is being presented as a terrorist, are someone who must practically be culled from society, and those being reaching out to have heard the dog-whistle loud and clear, what do you do with that?
Daisy has posted something you really ought to read: on Abu Ghraib, on our national nightmares, and even with some commentary on radical feminism thrown in the mix.
When I read that, all I could think was “I just want to go back.”
But to what, exactly? Has there even been a time in this world’s history when innocent people didn’t suffer for the sins of others, while the perpetrators wiped the blood off their hands and called it “justice”?
No, I suppose not. But that doesn’t make the ghosts of Abu Ghraib any more terrifying.
And when I say that I want to go back, where I really want to head off to is my childhood; a time when I politics and facts were just things that I’d overheard about in boring conversations between adults, and when I didn’t have to face the idea of a person turned into a non-person and summarily beaten to death. By my own government.
Natalia A. 