No real update tonight
Today was spent dealing with a fair bit of fallout from the mass shooting in the mosque in Quebec City, and my brain is now fried. My section wasn't directly involved, thank goodness, but a lot of people seemed to think we were involved, so I spent most of the day redirecting traffic to the appropriate sources.
I've had to do some compartmentalizing about it, too, in order to get my job done. I had to set aside my visceral horror and my disappointment at the fact that (another) hate crime was committed in my beloved country. Now, I was under no illusions about Canada before, unlike some of my American friends on Twitter who are aghast that our panda-hugging nation has right-wing extremists in it too, but it's still incredibly disheartening to see first-hand that they are finding comfort in the current political climate, and feel emboldened enough to take action.
There's going to be a lot of talk in the next few days about this man being a "lone wolf" and probably mentally ill, and we'll go through the whole list of rhetoric that we usually go through when it comes to single white male shooters. We don't like our terrorists white, after all. Luckily the provincial and federal governments have declared this to be a terrorist act, so legally he'll be prosecuted that way, even if public opinion doesn't follow suit.
I love my province of birth for many reasons, but dear Lord, the racism there is terrible. Sure, there's socio-historical reasons for Quebec's distrust of organized religion, but that doesn't fully explain the rampant xenophobia and islamophobia that's become so evident in the last decade. Right now I'm too tired to work out how to even begin to fix this situation. Maybe tomorrow will bring a little more clarity. One can always hope.
Huh. This turned into a small update after all. Look at that.
This entry was originally posted at http://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1433983.html, where there are currently
comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!
I've had to do some compartmentalizing about it, too, in order to get my job done. I had to set aside my visceral horror and my disappointment at the fact that (another) hate crime was committed in my beloved country. Now, I was under no illusions about Canada before, unlike some of my American friends on Twitter who are aghast that our panda-hugging nation has right-wing extremists in it too, but it's still incredibly disheartening to see first-hand that they are finding comfort in the current political climate, and feel emboldened enough to take action.
There's going to be a lot of talk in the next few days about this man being a "lone wolf" and probably mentally ill, and we'll go through the whole list of rhetoric that we usually go through when it comes to single white male shooters. We don't like our terrorists white, after all. Luckily the provincial and federal governments have declared this to be a terrorist act, so legally he'll be prosecuted that way, even if public opinion doesn't follow suit.
I love my province of birth for many reasons, but dear Lord, the racism there is terrible. Sure, there's socio-historical reasons for Quebec's distrust of organized religion, but that doesn't fully explain the rampant xenophobia and islamophobia that's become so evident in the last decade. Right now I'm too tired to work out how to even begin to fix this situation. Maybe tomorrow will bring a little more clarity. One can always hope.
Huh. This turned into a small update after all. Look at that.
This entry was originally posted at http://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1433983.html, where there are currently
comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!