scarletwoman

scarletwoman's Journal

April 19, 2014

Poll question: Why hasn't Henry Kissinger died yet?

Inspired by this post in Good Reads: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=91011

He will be 91 years old this May.

(Edited to belatedly add "All of the Above" option - you may change your votes at will.)

April 15, 2014

I came across a quote years ago - it was so succinct and right on, and it pains me greatly that

I can't remember it.

The gist of it is: We can never forgive those who we have harmed the most.

This is the core of white racism, this is the source of the hate. It's the unconscious recognition of the crimes committed against "The Other" that is so painful that it won't be acknowledged consciously. It gets twisted into hatred of the victims, because their very existence holds up a mirror - and in order to block out what the mirror reveals, the Other must be dehumanized and despised.

That is, in order to deny our guilt, and maintain our self-serving fiction that we are "good", we need to make our victims deserving of their oppression.

I'm so sorry that I can't remember the actual quote or where it came from. All I can remember is how it made so much sense.

April 10, 2014

I found some lovely links:

Marching for Human Rights: A Personal Account of a Pueblo Presente

Enemy Of The State (A Ductape Fatwa Tribute)

Ductape Fatwa Memorials

You Can't Reason With Americans

In memory of a wise man right here with you

There are more, but these are some of the most striking, imho. It always saddened me that he was so little appreciated here.

I'm so glad that you remember him, too.

Profile Information

Gender: Female
Hometown: Minnesota
Current location: up north
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 31,893

About scarletwoman

I'm an old white woman, born in November, 1949. My parents lived through the Depression and WWII (my dad's a veteran). I've witnessed a lot of history firsthand, plus I carry the stories handed down to me by my parents, aunts and uncles from their generation, and my grandparents from their generation. Basically, my memory is a depository for most of the 20th century of U.S. history, plus the 2 decades (so far) of the 21st century. //////Important quote: Milos Forman (film director, b. 1932, d. 2018) - "I hear the word "socialist" being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Barack Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, "Obamacare is socialism!" They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism." (He lived in Czechoslovakia under Communism before emigrating to the U.S.A.)