(no subject)
Over at Pandagon, there was an interesting exhange between two commenters:
Anne Nonymous: "...Why is it so important to the wingnuts to keep track of who in the government is Jewish, anyway?"
Dan: "Because we look just like them, and they’re not allowed to make us wear gold stars anymore."
Anne Nonymous: "I guess that makes sense. I mean you can see which ones are women, or not white, the gays are supposed to stay in their closets and hide their shameful existence from the world, the trannies aren’t supposed to exist at all, and the generic liberals all have a (D) after their names. The Jews are the only ones where you actually have to keep a list."
Add that (which stemmed from Mel Gibson's outburst) to the shooting at the Jewish Federation, the fact that the Israeli government is acting like the second-most arrogant *ssh*l*s on the planet, and the fact that I'm reading Dave Neiwert's Death on the Fourth of July, and I'm getting a little bit nudgy.
I joke that it's more likely that I'll get blown up by a milita member taking a stand against the federal government than that I'll get shot because I'm a Jew. Except that it doesn't feel that way anymore.
I'm watching an A&E Documentary: The New Skinheads. Now, this was done in 1995 (a fact I wish they would have mentioned at the beginning of the broadcast,) which explains why it doesn't seem quite up to date. Still, like a five-year-old encyclopedia, there is still a decent amount of perfectly good information to be had.
But it's scaring me. It's scaring me more than the above occurances did. Because with that weight on my mind, I'm listening to nice, clean-cut, all-American boys talk about how everything I love isn't good enough to be in their little paradise. And I can't stop thinking that every single one of those boys would be perfectly happy to see me dead, if not kill me personally. (If they could get away with it, if it was worth their time.)
It's hard for me to explain what I'm thinking; my mind is full of half-made connections and threads that spin out too long. But I know this; on the television, the hate speech is much closer, much more fearsome, than when it's on the page, even when it's on the computer screen. When I think the words, they have less power and terror than when I hear them. Which, as a side thought, is probably linked to why I stayed in my room when I heard the Take Back the Night rallies at Western; mobs, especially chanting mobs, terrify me. Hearing the words hurts more than seeing them. Which, when you think about it, isn't all that surprising.
I don't really have much to say, I suppose. I need to think about this some more and try to figure out what it is that my brain is trying to put together.
Edit: Changed "Israelis" to "Israeli government." I really need to remember that just because governments make decisions, that doesn't mean that the populace agrees with them, or even should be assumed that they hold the same opinions.
Anne Nonymous: "...Why is it so important to the wingnuts to keep track of who in the government is Jewish, anyway?"
Dan: "Because we look just like them, and they’re not allowed to make us wear gold stars anymore."
Anne Nonymous: "I guess that makes sense. I mean you can see which ones are women, or not white, the gays are supposed to stay in their closets and hide their shameful existence from the world, the trannies aren’t supposed to exist at all, and the generic liberals all have a (D) after their names. The Jews are the only ones where you actually have to keep a list."
Add that (which stemmed from Mel Gibson's outburst) to the shooting at the Jewish Federation, the fact that the Israeli government is acting like the second-most arrogant *ssh*l*s on the planet, and the fact that I'm reading Dave Neiwert's Death on the Fourth of July, and I'm getting a little bit nudgy.
I joke that it's more likely that I'll get blown up by a milita member taking a stand against the federal government than that I'll get shot because I'm a Jew. Except that it doesn't feel that way anymore.
I'm watching an A&E Documentary: The New Skinheads. Now, this was done in 1995 (a fact I wish they would have mentioned at the beginning of the broadcast,) which explains why it doesn't seem quite up to date. Still, like a five-year-old encyclopedia, there is still a decent amount of perfectly good information to be had.
But it's scaring me. It's scaring me more than the above occurances did. Because with that weight on my mind, I'm listening to nice, clean-cut, all-American boys talk about how everything I love isn't good enough to be in their little paradise. And I can't stop thinking that every single one of those boys would be perfectly happy to see me dead, if not kill me personally. (If they could get away with it, if it was worth their time.)
It's hard for me to explain what I'm thinking; my mind is full of half-made connections and threads that spin out too long. But I know this; on the television, the hate speech is much closer, much more fearsome, than when it's on the page, even when it's on the computer screen. When I think the words, they have less power and terror than when I hear them. Which, as a side thought, is probably linked to why I stayed in my room when I heard the Take Back the Night rallies at Western; mobs, especially chanting mobs, terrify me. Hearing the words hurts more than seeing them. Which, when you think about it, isn't all that surprising.
I don't really have much to say, I suppose. I need to think about this some more and try to figure out what it is that my brain is trying to put together.
Edit: Changed "Israelis" to "Israeli government." I really need to remember that just because governments make decisions, that doesn't mean that the populace agrees with them, or even should be assumed that they hold the same opinions.