Maybe there's something wrong with me. I am not enthused about the coming election. I hope Obama wins, but only because I have had enough of the Republicans and their wistful, "wish it were 1952 again" attitudes, and the ideological leech they've been carrying around since 1980 that wants to…
I love basic the concept of Lego. It’s a very clever set of blocks with which you can build almost anything. But going to a Lego store is also a peek into the kind of country America has become. We are a country of warmongers.
I took each of these photos in the Lego Store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. For starters, I do want to recognize that Lego makes simple kits that you can use for building anything you want. For instance, here’s a basic starter pack that doesn’t include any guns:
If 280 pieces isn’t enough for you, you can graduate to this 700 piece set. Look at Dad, acting as though he is content building little houses. I know what Dad really wants. He wants his kids to get a little older so that they can build things with guns!
Here’s a hot rod car. But what’s a mere car to a kid?
We need to be inspired by people we see on TV. Hence, Spongebob Squarepants makes a joint appearance with Legos. Now . . . if we only had a gun . . .
A GUN!!! Are you crazy? Why would you need a gun? Because that’s what so many Lego kits include. Guns of all shapes and sizes! Notice the guard in the tower. He has his own Lego gun. I suppose he has it so that he can shoot that guy trying to make an escape. I wonder why they don’t show …
Sure it could. The same way fascism always happens. Not imposed, all of a sudden, from above, like a boot on your neck in the dead of night. It grows and festers in dark corners of society, feeding off the irrational fears and resentments and feelings of entitlement of an angry minority and growing ever stronger, with noone noticing it, until it bursts into pungent & infectious & malignant life, strangling its host. Fascism grows from the ground up and keeps growing uncontrolled until it stops – or is stopped.
Tim Wise at Redroom has written an eloquent and timely call-to-arms entitled “This Is How Fascism Comes: Reflections On The Cost Of Silence.”
Before you read the whole thing, I present some snacks to whet the appetite:
…If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad. It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be a comic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000 years ago.
If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones Sarah Palin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said “grow good people,” and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial, isolated, fearful and superstitious ones.
If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, from anti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homes than books, or whose books, when they have them, are principally volumes of the
Wick Allison was Editor in Chief of The National Review from 1990 through 1993. Allison donated a lot of money to John McCain during the primaries, but he is now endorsing Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States: Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for…