For people who work five days a week, Fridays are a big deal – the end of the week most often. The relief of a weekend awaits! But also, Friday means rest and respite. There isn’t any rest or respite of late, is there? I freely admit, the news has me nigh paralyzed with depression.
Some of it is just repulsively idiotic reporting, like a Fox News piece about the florist here in Washington State bitterly kvetching over how her life is “turned upside down” by practicing her religion and refusing flowers to a same sex wedding party. No link, I refuse to link to such dreck. Just let me say this to the poor martyred Christian florist: your life is NOT turned upside down by the practice of your religion. You utter twerp, your life is upside down because you tried to force YOUR religious precepts on somebody else!
How would you like it if I, as a pagan, decided blood sacrifices were necessary in times of civic turmoil (i.e. NOW) and decided that YOU, as a Christian, should participate in bleeding with me? No? Gee, wtf, you MUST let me fully practice MY religion upon YOU if you intend to practice yours upon others, right?
And yes, another shooting. How come we left of center types are told to be civil while the righter-than-thou crowd can say ANYthing at all, inciting violence everywhere? After all, Trump inveighs against the media and now a guy shot up the office of a newspaper that he had the ass at for telling the truth about his conviction as a stalker. How come THAT chicken doesn’t go home to roost? Seems to me that if you get into trouble for the harm it causes if you should “FIRE!” in a movie theater, one should get in some sort of trouble for calling the press “the enemy of the people.” We all know by now that being labeled an “enemy” or “terrorist” is a virtual death sentence with or without judicial approval.
For the second time, Maxine Waters faces death threats. For saying that members of this misAdministration SHOULD be publicly challenged for their lies and malfeasance, she is being threatened with death. So much for freedom of speech, eh? Again, we are told that was not civil. Well, funny the oh-so-offended GOP never says anything when blacks, Hispanics, and other marginalized members of our society are refused service in restaurants and the like, isn’t it? When their feather are so very ruffled by facing public refusals to serve their racist white asses like the masters they want to be, I say it just shows the depth of their hypocrisy.
I am fighting my paralysis by going to protest the immigration policies of the Trumpenfuhrer tomorrow. (Please join me, following others!) Detaining families, caging children, rounding up green card holders (to make their quota) and declaring all of this for the “defense of our borders” reminded me of something grim this week. Guess where and when the following quote came from, please:
“People should listen to us when we say, again and again: WE determine the order at our border! And we ensure that it is maintained, for good reasons. Whosoever wants to traverse the …. border needs permission. Otherwise: stay away from our border! He who puts himself in danger will die. I know, ladies and gentlemen, it sounds hard. And will perhaps even be interpreted by some of you as ‘inhumane’… But what is ‘humane’ and ‘inhumane’?
Humane it is, to make peace for all men on earth. That is not done by prayer! It is done by fighting. And if, as history teaches us, wars are made by man and not God, then peace too, is the work of man. ” (following is a long bit about how border security makes peace, thus shooting people for crossing it is humane to maintain said peace)
Because doesn’t that remind you of statements justifying all sorts of unpleasant things of late, as long as those things happen to brown skinned people, or Moslems? No, that was not a statement of the Nazi era, although I am sure I could find something similar. THAT above statement was from a television personality in East Germany regarding the shooting of people at the border — people trying to escape over the Wall. Read “Stasiland” by Anna Funder. It will chill you. Seeing those mentalities reflected in twenty-first century America chills me more. It is summer, but I shiver and reach for a sweater.
I lived and worked in Berlin, Germany back in the Cold War days before the Wall came down. Believe me when I tell you, America is not sounding American any more. Maybe I cannot get the rest and relief I want today – but tomorrow, protesting, perhaps I can give someone else what they need.
