États Rouges, 2050.
She was not a particularly bad bishop. She was, in fact, quite typical of Episcopal bishops of the first quarter of the 21st century: agnostic, compulsively political and radical and given to placing a small idol of Isis on the alter when she said the Communion service. By 2037, when she was tried for heresy, convicted and burned, she had outlived her era. By that time only a handful of Episcopalians still recognized female clergy, and it would have been easy enough to let the old fool rant our her final years in obscurity. But we are a people who do our duty.
I well remember the crowd that gathered for the execution, solemn but not sad, relieved that at last, after so many years of humiliation, the majority had taken back the culture. Civilization had recovered its nerve. The flames that soared about the lawn before the Maine statehouse that August afternoon were, as the bishopess herself might have said, liberating.
According to Fichte a “real völkische community” would egalise itself once the nationalist consciousness started growing. All members of this community would be entitled to a fair and sober existence, if they would keep themselves far away from “foreign influences” and “decadent luxury.” Just like Fichte, the Khmers believed the “völkische” body to be a biological organism that could only remain healthy when completely isolated from “foreign countries.”
“Daddy says the ethnic cleansing is an obsession to the Angkar. The Angkar hates everyone who is not a real Khmer. The Angkar wants to clean the democratic Kampuchea from all other races. They are seen as the source of all problems, all corruption and all injustice. Only when they are gone, the real Khmer culture wil florish again,” Ung writes in her book. She must keep at distance from “ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese and other minorities that are racially depraved.”
—Eric Krebbers, quoting in English the Dutch translation of Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father.
Via Atrios, Archpundit, and Joe Conason. “The first Civil War was, on the whole, a gentlemanly affair,” writes Bill “Brother Number One” Lind; “the second one wasn’t.” —Well. The first time is a tragedy, the second a farce; and those who do not learn from history are doomed to end up on its slag heap.
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I wish they'd end up on the slag-heap faster, preferably before they'd managed to breed or find a publisher. Blecch.
I'm amazed this pious, badly-educated turd didn't "pitch" Anita Hill (or her descendents) onto the pyre while he was at it. Guess his proxies of color had too many other fish to fry.
Damn me as overly dependent on smilies, but that :eek: one would come in handy right now. Twenty-seven of them marching in formation would about do it. Use your imagination.
If this was supposed to be a reminder that there are worse speculative fiction writers in the universe than Spider Robinson, Thanks. I think.