From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Bailing Out (rant) (was: Re: Freedom of Religion as well as everything else)
Keywords: Civil Rights, Pagan
Date: 28 Aug 92 05:20:01 GMT
Organization: University of California, Irvine

In article <1992Aug27.202406.28046@u.washington.edu> grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer) writes:
>In article <l9knkaINN6vp@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> emarsh@hernes-sun.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Marsh) writes:
>>In article <2A99A23A.6198@orion.oac.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>>
>>(much useful discussion of Republican/fascist rhetoric deleted)
>>
>>>I wish I could disgree with ANYONE on this, but I can't.  All I can say
>>>is that i will have MY FINGERNAILS PULLED OUT BEFORE I WILL STAY IN A
>>>COUNTRY THAT IS LIKE THIS.  I *WILL* LEAVE.  I HAVE THREE DEGREES IN
>>>VERY TECHNICAL SUBJECTS; OTHER COUNTRIES WOULD BE HAPPY TO ACCEPT ME.  I
>>>WILL TAKE MY KNOWLEDGE AND SUPPORT ELSEWHERE.  I'm not happy about the
>>>idea of leaving, but I refuse to work for a country like this.  I
>>>fucking refuse.  I would PREFER to do work in the US since it has seemed
>>>IN THE PAST to be a fairly nice place, but we'll see.  Hopefully one day
>>>it will be the country my grandparents came to with such high hopes in
>>>the 1890's. 
>>
>>I feel exactly the same way. With my training and my wife's, we can do
>>quite well most anywhere in the world. I rather like the idea of New Zealand.
>
>How nice for you.
>
>I'm sure it's very reassuring to those who have advanced technical degrees,
>plenty of money, or other tickets to easy emigration, to realize that if
>things start getting too bad, they can simply bail out on the rest of us.
>Plenty of P/pagans and other soon-to-be-undesirables don't have that
>option, but that's their problem, isn't it?

Since when is it my responsibility to play mommy to an entire country?
I have advantages, and I will use them.  I am not taking anything away
from anyone else by exploiting my ability to make myself attractive to
another country. 

>If this country does become a fascist theocracy, it will be because those
>people who might have made a difference chose to follow their own narrow
>self-interest instead.

Oh, bullshit.  If Albert Einstein had stayed in Germany in the 1's and
1940's, he would have died in a death camp.  There's a time to talk the
other person into dropping the gun, and there's a time to turn around
and get the hell out.  This is a judgement call.

If a leopard is on your ass, you don't teach it how to hunt other things
-- you get away from it.  If you want to stay, go right ahead.  If *I*
want to leave, I will do so.  

When a country gets out of hand, no amount of reasoned talking by
reaosning people can stop it.  It will get out of hand and recover, like
a ball rolling downhill.

I repeat -- if lbert Einstein had stayed in Nazi-dominated Germany, he
would have been gassed, not given the keys to the city. 

>If, on the other hand, this country is ever going to become what Janis'
>grandparents came looking for, we'd better get working.  Hard.  And
>despite the fact that our precious egos may get bruised in the process,

Or our lives threatened, or our houses burnt down, or our families taken
away.  Etc. etc. etc.  These things have happened in the past, and there
is no reason why they can't happen in the near future.  

>*together*. I suspect Janis' grandparents knew that; I know mine do --
>and unless a lot of us learn it over the months and years to come, we
>are going to perish.
>
>End of flame.  Now get off your duffs and do something.   

Oh, please.  Any concrete ideas?  Or is this just an open call?  If it
looks like I can live here comfortably, I will do so.  If it looks like
I'm going to be a pariah with no job, I am not here to destroy my health
and fail in my ambition to be a good community/junior college teacher
and/or linguist and see my family broken upd have my relationship with
TMM ruined for some nebulous "ideal" like saving a country that is
hell-bent on not being saved.  There's a time to cut your losses;
whether this time is now or not remains to ben.     
Blessings,
Janis