A Little Update

My thumb is better, but there is still something wrong in that joint.

Emo is recovering from his neutering op. Animal Trustees, which provides low cost spay/neuter and other services, rocks. And since Spooky, my 8 yr. old white cat was beating up on the new arrival, I looked up info on how to introduce a new animal into the household. I had figured that they just needed to have time and establish dominance, but this site recommends gradual introductions and not allowing aggressive behaviors, which can become patterns. Kind of like humans, I guess.

And I have been taking myself on a cautious tour through some scary landscapes: the rightwingers blog community. I am really quite frightened by what I see there. These people are only two links away from this blogger's Vine, but they might as well be on another planet as far as world view goes. That would be totally okay with me, but unfortunately those accumulated worldviews add up to war, untempered nationalism, and a very meanspirited intolerance of anything left of Rush Limbaugh. This polarization is very dangerous, I think. We are becoming a divided nation, and the dominant class is getting more and more aggressive towards the submissive counterculture. Every time the left scores (Farenheit 911, nearly busting Bush for treason re: the Valerie Plame outing, etc) the rightwing response gets meaner, ruder, and more intimidating. Are we supposed to puff ourselves up in response? Hiss and spit? Wouldn't that further the divide, which if allowed to continue, could result in us evolving into separate species, or a pogrom or forced death march????

Reading about things like Protest Warriors, which do things like harass CodePINK (positively the creampuffiest side of the left, and proud of it) as they are leafletting could develop into patternistic aggressive behavior just like my cats, I am aftaid.

Of course I am very sensitive about aggressive nationalism after reading Night by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, an autobiographical account of his boyhood experiences in Aushwitz and beyond, a struggle to survive and make sense of the inhuman cruelty of the Holocaust.

When my own family members talk about forced deportation of people like me and my friends who criticize Bush or neocon nationalism, I wonder how far away we are from reliving one of the worst nightmares humanity has ever created.