Here & Hereafter

LET’S GET POLITICAL

 

It’s been the worst week for modern British politics, and for many of us, maddening.  Forget the expenses debacle, although how could we.  It’s those two seats won by the British National Party that deeply worries me.  There goes that trip to Yorkshire this winter.  All other parties have condemned the vote and the BNP, but there exists an anger and dissent that runs so deeply in the UK that those who feel disenfranchised have lashed out with their vote.

We’re told that many who voted for the far, far right aren’t aware of the bigoted and racist past, present and future of their new party.  Their representatives have disguised themselves in a dangerous cloak of rhetoric regarding their genuine care and protectiveness of the British people.  Good god, they even spout that they’re not racists.  They represent themselves falsely.  Their additional mission’s bulls eye is immigration.  I’m an immigrant.  Should I take this personally even though I’m a white American and not the brown and black skin they normally target?  Do they mean to target me as well?

And what a blow to those veterans who walked and wheeled themselves to Normandy again, sixty-five years later, only to be slapped in the face with the victories of the same sort they fought so bravely against.  Is the irony lost?

The leader of the BNP received eggs in the face today outside Parliament, but somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.  A small little town, a village of unwieldy bigotry is growing here.