Spring Waning Seed Moon
OMG The Tea Party at the Capitol. Don’t know about you but watching so-called patriots straight arming their fists in the sky like the Black Panthers and the protesters at the Mexico Olympics created cognitive dissonance. A speaker at the rally said, “Do we love our country or what?” then raised her fist high above her head. The crowd roared.
Personally, I choose “…or what.” in this context. If love of country demands pulling back from rescuing the economy, taking care of the needs of fellow citizens and killing foreigners, then we have become not a country but a caricature of a country.
We have had 8 years of this kind of chuckle headed, shut the brain off and leave me alone with my righteousness blather. Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Pearl and other political refugees now await the judgment of history and it will not be kind.
The morphing of political symbols is not new, of course. The V finger peace sign beloved of my generation had its origin in the V for victory of Winston Churchill in WWII. This appropriation of the rally style, signboards and pumped fists in the air by the right is not so much blasphemy as it is culture at work absorbing, adapting.
Still, those of us marched and fought the Vietnam War and participated in the struggles for civil rights can be forgiven a twitch of the heart when seeing flag draped anti-socialists holding placards and chanting with their fingers closed in a fist above their head. Just doesn’t seem, well, you know…right.
