THANKSGIVING is probably the most popular and earliest-given justification for invasion, murder, imperialism, occupation, and “othering” that we know of in this country. Even now in Iraq we hear fables fashioned on the same colonizer’s framework and it sickens. But Thanksgiving is Iraq, with its steaming platter of corpses. Iraq is Thanksgiving.
A CRUCIAL COMPONENT to undoing misogyny and sexism is revealing to men that we are sold an illusion. The “man” they would have us be is an unnatural and dangerous one. It is a fanged, bereaved, lie. It is the shifting shape of oppression with a wolfskin slung over its eyes. It is a shroud.
TOO MANY in the USA cannot help but be poisoned by our toxic MSM and its festering monologue. It is a media that cares not for humans, but instead for profits and fitting in with the power flow. Let’s be reasonable: almost 100,000 hungry children wandering and lost cannot be helped by laser-equipped fences and fancy phrases.
FINALLY, immigrants and darker-skinned people are being seen more and more as “us” and less and less as “alien/other/invader.” We now enlist more voices and more strength. Obama’s election is not the instigator of this change, simply one sign among many that our hearts and minds and awarenesses are demonstrating the reasonability and intelligence and empathy that a modern day human ought to have.
DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT ELECT: You are too smart to pretend you don’t see all this. So I say if you do not act on it and soon, you are nodding along with this scourge that threatens both our peoples and the whole nation as a consequence. And I know I don’t need to be overly direct about this, but I will anyway:
MOYA BAILEY: I don’t feel victorious. I don’t feel like we won. I do think that these sentiments are particularly interesting after the early press spin that asked whether Barack was black enough and black people were ambivalent about the answer. Now he’s one of us, our hero, our modern day Martin and Malcolm….
STEPHEN COLBERT always jabs and parries and stutter-steps while most of his guests are busy arranging their facial expression or shouting out unfunny jokes to try and appear as if they are keeping up. Author Sherman Alexie gets off some fast shots and smart comments as he makes his case for Barack Obama.
CHANGE is coming for the world. Neoliberalism is crashing, Free Market Philosophies are crashing, Wall Street is crashing: All the mechanisms in place that are best at making the rich richer and the powerful more powerful and the poor poorer are collapsing. Posturing Palin is on TV telling the commoners they need to support the party of elitism, and Evo Morales is doing just the opposite.
MY HEART RACED faster and faster and when it was over I…I let the sadness wash through me as it had to for a few moments. The bold ignorance and hate and bigotry was…terrifying. And sad. And loathesome. And real. But not new. This energy takes people’s lives every day in some part of this land. But maybe we move closer to a new time. And simply that possibility is inspiring.
AS SADDENED AND CYNICAL as I have become about humankind in my life, I still nurture a belief in the human heart and the sense of Right. I still feel that in most cases of wrong being done, all it takes is thinking, feeling people getting the real facts of a situation. And the facts of this situation are shocking and revolting to a thinking mind and feeling heart.
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