C’mon, let it not be Asians this time. Last time was pretty bad.
Here’s the video from whence the screenshot above comes:
Author: Joey deVilla
Jon Stewart’s right, and we’ve been here before. Where we are now, I’ve been before — and I’m still around.
And I will remain to be around, fighting the good fight, running the good run, standing for justice, and bringing the accordion-powered “golden retriever energy” that is my stock in trade.
Keep watching this blog!
And in the meantime, here’s where the Jon Stewart quote comes from: the New York Times Podcast episode titled Jon Stewart Looks Back With Sanity and/or Fear, posted last week. Enjoy!
I’m in the United States as I write this, where November 11th — the anniversary of the end of World War I, also known as the Great War — is referred to as Veterans Day. In Canada and many other Commonwealth countries, November 11th is referred to as Remembrance Day.
The symbol of Remembrance Day is the poppy, which grew in abundance in some of Europe’s bloodiest battlefields during World War I, and became the central image of In Flanders Fields, a poem written by Canadian soldier Lt. Col. John Alexander McCrae, a field surgeon assigned to the First Field Artillery Brigade after a particularly bloody battle in Ypres that started on April 22, 1915 and that lasted 17 days. After performing a funeral for his Alexis Helmer (no chaplain was available), McCrae sat in the back of an ambulance, from which wild poppies could be seen growing in a nearby cemetery, and wrote the following into his notebook:
Here’s the text of the poem:
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
He showed the poem to a Cyril Allinson, a 22 year-old sergeant-major, who was delivering mail at the time. Allinson is quoted as saying:
His face was very tired but calm as we wrote. He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.
The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind.
It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.
McCrae wasn’t satisfied with the poem and tossed it away. Luckily, a fellow officer retrieved it, and it was submitted to two British magazines: The Spectator and Punch. The Spectator rejected it, but fortunately for generations of soldiers, Punch saw fit to publish it in December 1915.
For our soldiers and the sacrifices they made, I’d like to say “thank you”.
In times of high dudgeon, there’s a tendency to throw integrity out the window. One particularly noteworthy example was the Marn’i Washington, a (now former) manager at FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) who directed government relief workers to not assist people in hurricane-stricken houses with Trump campaign signs.
I’ll make my position clear on this, in case there’s any misunderstanding: As a public servant, you serve the public, and that means everyone.
It was wrong for now-former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and it was wrong for Marn’i Washington to declare that Trump voters were not worthy of FEMA aid.
We have to be better than this.
The thing about people who voted for Trump is that his bigotry — never mind his criminality — wasn’t a dealbreaker for them. In fact, for some people, it was one of his selling points, and now that he’s been elected, they’ve been emboldened.
To their credit, a counter-protest formed quickly. They were joined by United Campus Ministry Reverend Todd Salmi, who held up two signs reading “Jesus values and respects Texas State women” and “Jesus loves all y’all” to counter the hateful ones the demonstrators were holding up. He remembers that Jesus had harsher words for the Pharisees than for prostitutes.
Louie Dean Valenica, a professor at Texas State, tweeted the two photos above, followed by these posts:
Texas States’s response team was there quickly to help manage the situation.
As an expert on fascism… this is where it starts. Extremists at home who feel emboldened. The ones holding these signs were not part of our Texas State community. They might be outsiders, but they aren’t strangers to those of us who study the radical right.
Then there’s the matter of these racist text messages being sent to Black people:
Black people in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, the DC area and elsewhere reported receiving the messages. The messages were sent to Black adults and students, including to high schoolers in Massachusetts and New York, and students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), such as Alabama State University and other schools, including ones across Ohio, Clemson University, the University of Alabama and Missouri State. At least six middle school students in Pennsylvania received the messages, according to the AP.
For more:
- Wall Street Journal: Racist Text Messages About Slavery Sent to Black People in Several States
- New York Times: Wave of Racist Texts After Election Prompts F.B.I.’s Scrutiny
- WISN Milwaukee: Milwaukee 12-year-old receives racist text message: ‘You’ve been selected to pick cotton’
- NBC News: States work to tackle racist text messages sent to Black people nationwide
- CBS News: Officials condemn racist text messages sent to Black residents in at least 20 states
- Wright State Guardian (Wright State University’s newspaper): Black Students Across the Nation Receive Racist Text Messages, including Wright State
Here’s a statement by Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District on the incident:
And finally, there’s this dipshit:
None of these people are acting in any official capacity, but they were all emboldened by the election results. And we’ve seen this before — remember when high school students were using Trump’s image and name as racial insults aimed at Latinos at inter-school sports events?
This is just the beginning, and this is what we must resist.
I’ll close with this meme from the previous election:
This one’s by Adam Douglas Thompson, and you can view the original here.
Also, I’m pulling this banner image out of mothballs:
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Change one ingredient; then we’ll talk.
I like cottage cheese, but not like this! Swap it out for oatmeal or yogurt, and then we’ll talk.