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Jan. 9th, 2015 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
la_rainetteOver the course of the past two days, my Facebook seems to have developed a split personality.
Yesterday I found it painful to follow, mostly because all my French friends were all still reeling from the pain of losing people who, for folks of my generation, were a little like kindly but infuriatingly irreverent uncles - of the kind that you dread inviting to your various celebrations because they'll get riotously drunk and tell inappropriate jokes to the cute, shy nun - while many of my American and Canadian friends were having a pretty normal day - everyone is aware and supportive, don't get me wrong, but they're not as overwhelmed as we are.
Today - well, today I am getting increasingly uncomfortable with my Facebook feed. It's super hard to see that the Front National is already using the Charlie Hebdo shooting to try and garner more votes - not that I didn't expect it, mind. It's super hard to see Third Child, our friend J's son, who used to spend entire summers with us, post about François Hollande needing "to grow balls and step in more forcefully".
My first thought was "Wow - I'm glad he's still too young to vote". And then - and then I remembered that he no longer was. And I wonder what it says about me - as someone who loves and values democracy - that my immediate next thought was "how can I stop him from voting?"* I love democracy, I really do, but uh. Honestly, guys, if you want to vote for Le Pen, I'd rather you stayed home and didn't vote at all.
*Of course, the solution is to convince him to vote for someone else instead. And I'll try, fear not.
Also, I read this (thank you Jae for linking) and I thought I'd share:
I support the right of Charlie Hebdo to be obscene, disrespectful and inflammatory; but I do not need to be obscene, disrespectful or inflammatory to be supportive. The whole point of freedom of expression isn’t for me to use someone else’s mode of expression, it’s the freedom for me to express myself in my own mode of expression.
[...]
There would be no winner in a war between Islam and the rest of the world: it is a war which the world need never fight and should never fight. The response of Muslims and non-Muslims to murder and violence in the streets of Paris must be to step clearly and decisively away from the war that our enemies desire.
The response of the non-radical non-Islamist people of the world to the Charlie Hebdo massacre should be the opposite of radicalism. The best response is not to seek solidarity by joining the dead in their mockery of Islam’s prophet. It is to support the countries, the systems, the freedoms and the values that make Charlie Hebdo’s blasphemous mockery lawful and possible, whatever the result.
Read the entire post here. Thanks tojae for linking me to it.
Yesterday I found it painful to follow, mostly because all my French friends were all still reeling from the pain of losing people who, for folks of my generation, were a little like kindly but infuriatingly irreverent uncles - of the kind that you dread inviting to your various celebrations because they'll get riotously drunk and tell inappropriate jokes to the cute, shy nun - while many of my American and Canadian friends were having a pretty normal day - everyone is aware and supportive, don't get me wrong, but they're not as overwhelmed as we are.
Today - well, today I am getting increasingly uncomfortable with my Facebook feed. It's super hard to see that the Front National is already using the Charlie Hebdo shooting to try and garner more votes - not that I didn't expect it, mind. It's super hard to see Third Child, our friend J's son, who used to spend entire summers with us, post about François Hollande needing "to grow balls and step in more forcefully".
My first thought was "Wow - I'm glad he's still too young to vote". And then - and then I remembered that he no longer was. And I wonder what it says about me - as someone who loves and values democracy - that my immediate next thought was "how can I stop him from voting?"* I love democracy, I really do, but uh. Honestly, guys, if you want to vote for Le Pen, I'd rather you stayed home and didn't vote at all.
*Of course, the solution is to convince him to vote for someone else instead. And I'll try, fear not.
Also, I read this (thank you Jae for linking) and I thought I'd share:
I support the right of Charlie Hebdo to be obscene, disrespectful and inflammatory; but I do not need to be obscene, disrespectful or inflammatory to be supportive. The whole point of freedom of expression isn’t for me to use someone else’s mode of expression, it’s the freedom for me to express myself in my own mode of expression.
[...]
There would be no winner in a war between Islam and the rest of the world: it is a war which the world need never fight and should never fight. The response of Muslims and non-Muslims to murder and violence in the streets of Paris must be to step clearly and decisively away from the war that our enemies desire.
The response of the non-radical non-Islamist people of the world to the Charlie Hebdo massacre should be the opposite of radicalism. The best response is not to seek solidarity by joining the dead in their mockery of Islam’s prophet. It is to support the countries, the systems, the freedoms and the values that make Charlie Hebdo’s blasphemous mockery lawful and possible, whatever the result.
Read the entire post here. Thanks to
jae for linking me to it.
