By Captain Fogg
God enriches: it's the state motto of Arizona. To some it surely suggests that the rich are the chosen of God and the poor and struggling? Your papers please.
My hypocrisy alarm has burned itself to a cinder over the last few days simply from the stench coming from our self-styled Libertarian friends from Arizona who have just given far more power to the State government than the Constitution allows and reduced constitutional protection from the power of law enforcement provided by that constitution -- a step away from Libertarian principles that even the notorious Glenn Beck balks at.
Anyway, if God has enriched Arizona in any way, the government of that stolen state has done a great deal to cheapen its claim to being a part of a free country and to impoverish its moral status as well. Perhaps taking a clue from the Texas school board's redaction of American history, Arizona has decided that no courses taught in its schools may give students the impression that they belong to a persecuted minority.
That's right, the Navaho have always had it easy, no one ever gave a black man a hard time and the state itself was never taken by force. It's now official.
Thank you, Captain. I have been too burned out of late to write about this. In one dastardly piece of legislation, Arizona has trashed academic freedom, freedom of speech, respect for diversity and multiculturalism, and the cultural aspirations of its minority citizens. The same bastards who scream 'freedom' in the streets think nothing of taking away the freedom of someone else. They spit on the Constitution while invoking it. Hypocrites! It would not be a Godwin fallacy to speak of the Libertarian Utopia of Arizona as a gang of jack-boot Nazis. Damn them all.
ReplyDeleteI think they're going to pay a price for it, and perhaps that can become a lesson because from what I hear around here, everybody loves it.
ReplyDeleteAZ refused to accept a Martin Luther King holiday and of course was adamantly against every civil rights act. They call it libertarianism, but it's not - in this case it is Fascism and if Hitler pops up in this context, it's not my fault but theirs.
I have to admit I was thinking of Orwell while writing it though.
"...in a move that was more covert until the Wall Street Journal uncovered it, the Arizona Department of Education has told schools that teachers with "heavy" or "ungrammatical" accents are no longer allowed to teach English." --HuffPost
ReplyDeleteGreat move, Arizona. If Albert Einstein were alive, this idiotic law would disqualify him from teaching science.
Arizona is on a roll: "Show me your papers" law; anti-ethnic studies law; and finally anti-foreign accent law.
Next? Outlawing Taco Bell and any non-White Food restaurants that promote "ethnic" pride.
Well, if they're going to get rid of all furren' influences, I say they ought to change the state motto to, "Homines veri non manducant quiche." (Real men don't eat quiche.) That'll fix them damn French.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine who grew up in Arizona told me once that when she was in secondary school, the kids were taught that the Hohokum natives just sort of disappeared for some mysterious reason. Must've been an act of Deus, that. Whereas in fact, as she found out later, the Hohokum were pretty much driven to extinction -- stripped of their water supply and a whole bunch of other things. I suspect that's exactly the sort of thing the new crop of Inevitable White Men in AZ are determined to keep all those beaming blank slaters from finding out about their fair state. It's all right little ones, pipe down now and have another delicious hot bowl of Cream of Bullshit (TM). And if you don't like that, how about a soothing cup of STFU with a sprig of "Don't make me say that twice"?
"get rid of all furren' influences"
ReplyDeleteAnd if we're going to keep quoting Goebbels, let it be in English like Jesus intended.
Few stories of persecution against the Indians are as sad as the story of the Seminoles. Too sad to go into, but Florida history is a horror story and so are current events.
In fact my bad habit of reading history is beginning to make me more angry that reading the news does and if that prompts any of you insect-brained wingnuts to say I hate America, be informed that I don't - I hate you, I hate your lies, your stupidity, your arrogance and your ignorance and when I say hate, I actually mean something far worse that English has no word for.
But tell us how you really feel, Captain. ;)
ReplyDeleteSeriously (aarrgh!), AZ is what Jon Stewart called "the meth lab of democracy."
Even the UN condemned this new educational "initiative," but that's probably one more important reason for the AZ lawmakers to keep it in place.
Way to go, AZ.
I guess I have a bad case of the "white guilt" -- as a Caucasian descendant of European immigrants (pilgrims, pioneers, frontiersman, settlers, whatever we like to think of ourselves as that doesn't involve thinking about the fact this place wasn't ours), I cringe painfully whenever this arrogance rears its ugly head. I don't understand the cowardice about facing the facts about our history, our legacy, and the enormous debt we owe to the descendants of the populations we decimated in order to make ourselves at home.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, the relationship of the conquerors to the conquered has been pretty horrifyingly oppressive, and I'd like to see that change. For one thing, it's barbaric, and barbaric is not generally considered a good thing. I mean, don't we frown upon conquerors we're not descended from? We don't exactly hold Gengis Khan and Atilla the Hun in high reverence, you know?
I'm not saying we should give all the land back, that would be tremendously impractical -- but there are still a lot of reparations that should be made. I don't mean handing out checks to everyone whose ancestors were slaughtered, that's not practical either. And I do try to be practical.
But would it kill us to show a little grace and for cryin' out loud, feel a little shame over our fore-bearers general assholishness? That doesn't seem like much to ask, but, looking around (especially at Arizona), maybe it is.
"But would it kill us to show a little grace and for cryin' out loud, feel a little shame over our fore-bearers general assholishness?"
ReplyDeleteApparently it would. We're still hearing about how Obama "apologized" to "them" which he didn't, but you'd think we have never done anything to feel ashamed about and you'd be right that history itself is seen as treason - 'cause we're number one!