Okay, back to politics

[womzilla]

This was posted by The Rude Pundit, from "a reader" named Ty:

As a negro, all i keep thinking about is the negroes in the south who [were] mired in an awful world before the civil rights movement and even after and how they were strong and alone and mostly unsupported at first. how their sacrifice and blood and washing the floors of whites who hated their guts allowed me to do all the shit i do every day, and be in my cushy tax bracket, and laugh and smoke cigars with my negro buppie ivy league friends, and how i owe it to them to fight the assholes in the capitol for every inch they wanna take off that sacrifice

fight and fight and fight. i owe history and precedent. fight and fight and fight. i owe my grandmother and my grandfather and his father and his mother who was a slave...

and if one more liberal friend tells me (even jokingly) that he's moving to canada or europe, i'm gonna kick his fucking heart out for my grandfather and grandmother and her mother who was a sharecropper and never had that choice...

it's on!

America. Fuck yeah.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends on who your forebears were. Mind were able to get out of Europe around 1900, and I'm very glad they did.

It would be a damned shame if Ty or anyone else needed to emigrate and didn't for a reason like his. Throwing away good oppurtunities for vague emotional reasons isn't something that would make a lot of sense to sharecroppers, either, I think.

Ty and a lot of us are in a much better position to change things than either his or my forebears were, and that matters--but that wasn't the argument he was making.

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

Mmmm...I think it was part of the argument he was making. Somewhere in there, I heard "You sissies! You've got it nice! Fight back! Use it or lose it!"

Whether he actually meant to say that or not, I dunno...

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I find myself just a wee bit dubious of Ty's claim to be a "negro," precisely because he used that word. I don't know anyone but a few elderly white folks who actually do use that word lately.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Folks like that went to Canada. Underground Railroad, they called it.

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

My memories of "organizing" in the sixties and seventies consist of an awful lot of over-serious people trying to drum it into our heads that goddamnit, we'd better get behind the Revolution or die.

That memory, valid or not, is what has kept me incredibly leery of any "organizing" for decades.

So...this time, let's try something different. Joy. Joy, not wildly ecstatic let's-burn-out-right-away "joy", but the calmer, quieter kind that comes from doing what's right, what's in our hearts, without lying or hiding or living in fear. That's all. Joy. Satisfaction. I live for that, these days, and I'm not giving it up, either to Bush, or to anyone who wants to hijack it in any other direction.

But yeah, it's on. This is my country. And I claim it, joyfully.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I see his point, but I want to know where in America he lives. Because I'm getting tired of the fake macho liberal who sneers at those who are thinking of leaving the USA, and says "hell no, I'm staying and fighting... go me!"

If the sneerer is sitting pretty in a blue city in one of the bluest states, then he's a bit like the fake macho keyboard warrior who talks about how "we're" staying the course in Iraq, from the safety of his rumpus room in Waco.

You want to be a tough fighter? Move out of your comfortable coffee house social circle and into a rural county in a red state. Do your bit for demographic change: it's like vote-swapping, only with your feet.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who actually lived in another country (Canada) for 14 years, I can only say that it helped me to realize just how fucking uncivilized the United States is.
As the only country in western culture NOT offering some form of socialized medicine. As a country who's morality is conflicted in a way I find totally distasteful ("Wait a minute, you can't show two naked people on television! Hey, here's a thought, let's throw in some violent acts to replace that!). As a country where greed has replaced progress and innovation as it's driving force
I am looking into the possibility of using my Social Insurance number and returning there, because, no matter how you cut it, 50% of the population of this country have a point of view that I consider to be founded in evil, ignorance or both.
That percentage is just too high.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

There is a quite large black community here in Montreal who are specifically descended from black people who left the US -- first on the Underground Railroad, then just to be treated decently in the Jim Crow years. Lots and lots of people like his grandfather and his father and mother did have that choice and took it, deciding that being dirt poor in Canada beat being dirt poor in Alabama or wherever.

[shunn.livejournal.com]

and if one more liberal friend tells me (even jokingly) that he's moving to canada or europe, i'm gonna kick his fucking heart out for my grandfather and grandmother and her mother who was a sharecropper and never had that choice...

A revolting capstone to what is otherwise a stirring excerpt. America is about liberty, and like it or not that means the liberty to leave as much as it means the liberty to stay. It's as hateful to promote violence against wannabe expats as it is to promote violence against other minority groups. Or majority groups, or whatever.