D and I recently had the special honor of hanging with the main driver behind America’s slow devolution into our very own Dark Ages – aging, scared, neocon Baby Boomers. It was all Obama This, Healthcare That, I Worked With Polacks So I Don’t Need Diversity Training and Accidents Happen. When the conversation reached the intellectual fever pitch of one especially ignorant, cantankerous old guy asking, “Why do we have to talk about the stupid oil spill instead of something cheerful like the best music ever, Southern rock?” was when I asked D to pack up our things. “Good night, it was very nice to have met you.” Have fun toasting Ronnie Van Zant and secession while the rest of America burns and so does your town but you refuse to see it, dumb asshole. We’re leaving.
D travels and is stressed out all the time thanks to the crap Ohio economy. We are both extremely depressed and nauseated over the gross mishandling of the oil disaster response. No one seems to care as long as the price of gasoline sits under $3 a gallon and they’re keeping up with the Kardashians. Every single day, though, I remind myself how lucky I am for being employed, healthy, living near my family and able to take care of myself. But, every single day any more, living in America tries my patience and sense of community and security.
Wonkette | Arizona School Demands Black & Latino Students“ Faces On Mural Be Changed To White
An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student“s face from the mural, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students pictured on the school wall to be repainted as light-skinned children.
… Remember where you were, when you could still laugh about teabaggers and racists and Arizonans, because funny time is almost over.
Couple this with influential idiots using Indian-Americans as fetishes and punchbags, referring to us as everything from the Chosen People to F**king Ragheads. On very public forums. And getting away with it.
I don’t have a problem with conservatism, its principles and opposition based on policy, but Republicans and now The Tea Party are a whole different animal. This is the first time since 9/11 that I have been worried for my safety and that of others of my skin color. When I sincerely hope on a daily basis that these dogwhistles during a time of economic uncertainty don’t incite cultural and physical violence against perceived and real ragheads. The malcontents have begun projecting their rage onto people of color in Arizona. Where next? It is scary.
Also read: First Draft’s Arizona Displeases Tube Kitten Again
It is absolutely time to elevate the level of seriousness with which we take these people.
You’re the Chosen People? What the hell? I’d get angrier about it, but we chosen ones have to stick together. It’s like that half-joking lament I’ve always heard from fellow Jews:”God, if we are the Chosen People, why’d you have to choose US???”
This is why organizations like the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center still exist. It doesn’t take much for the hate talk to turn to hate actions in too many cases. None of this is even remotely funny to me. Never really has been.