Of evil prime ministers
Mar. 25th, 2019 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI had a very nice Purim, on the whole. But I'm not really coping with politics and the uncertainty over whether we'll still have a functioning country by the end of the week.
I wasn't organizing anything official this year, so I was able to show up and be as jolly as I wanted to be. Which was somewhat happy but not perhaps as jolly as I would have been expected to perform if I were in charge. A lot of people think Purim is the coolest festival ever, when I describe it as being about drinking and fancy dress, and I can see that this seems exotic if you're used to the Protestant-influenced idea that religion is anti-fun. But I don't really like being drunk (actually I drank less than a pint of low strength beer over the whole festival), and I don't really like being silly, so I'm not in fact the biggest ever fan of Purim.
Anyway, I went to the synagogue Megillah reading from work, having quickly changed into a simple cat costume (black velvet trousers, light grey top under a black jacket, tail made out of some old tights, little cat mask). Other people were in charge of the children's party where they encouraged the kids to get over-excited and eat sweets and pizza, so I just showed up for the reading. Lots of good costumes, adults as well as children, readers who got into the silly voices, English summarizers who were actually funny. It's a really good idea to feed the children before the reading and wrap up the whole thing by 8 pm, but I was a bit thrown because I'd expected more food than just a couple of hamentashen. No problem, I grabbed some chips on the way home, and thought it was reasonably in the spirit of Purim not to remindcjwatson that I would show up in costume :-)
I didn't try to rope work colleagues into celebrating this year. I had a small house party in the evening, which went really well. Andreas was excited about having a fancy dress contest, and I used a Purim-lottery mechanism to select the order of appearance, by drawing tickets out of a hat. I dressed as Wonder Woman, thanks to the wonderfulghoti_mhic_uait who lent me her exciting superhero dress, and actually managed to win the popular vote. There were also a rainbow unicorn, a rainbow dinosaur, a minotaur (complete with labyrinth), a Roman goddess, Dr Who and a couple of cowboys. And some lovely people who did not dress up but did bring food and good company. And ghoti_mhic_uait made really good hamentashen with poppy seeds, a mix of triangular Ashkenazi ones and ear-shaped Sephardi ones. My girlfriend is the best.
Sunday we did Purim again with the Sunday school kids. More of them than I expected wore costumes, including some of the teachers. I went as an old-fashioned gent, in three piece suit, bowler hat and an umbrella. We gave the teenaged TAs free rein to write their own purimspiel, which was, um, in somewhat questionable taste, but quite well done. They rather played up the bit where a young teenaged girl makes a dynastic marriage to an old drunk lech, which is unquestionably in the text but maybe not something I would have joked about for an audience of mostly under-12s. Also people under 20 are too young to have grown up with the assumption that Russian accent = villain, so I'm not sure what they were doing with Haman.
Also on Sunday, photos appeared on Facebook from my Stoke community, and I'm so pleased. Because 10 years ago, they thought Purim was this weird event where a Chabad shaliach (missionary) turns up, reads something very fast in incomprehensible Hebrew, and gives out packs of sawdust-tasting pastries, while policing the gathering to make sure gifts are only exchanged between people of the same gender. Ten years ago they were worried about not having enough members under 50 to be sustainable. But this weekend they had a dozen children in costume, and about as many adults of all ages, and most of them dressed up, and had a proper silly Megillah reading. Purim is fun now, and the community has children and young people, and I take at least some of the credit for that.
In between, I went to the People's Vote march, along with a couple of million other people including half my DW circle and FB friends list. I had originally been reluctant to go because I don't really want a People's Vote, especially not at the eleventh hour like this. Butghoti_mhic_uait said it was a way to show solidarity with all the Europeans who will be worst hit by Brexit, and that seemed a good reason to be there.
It was the politest, calmest unimaginably enormous march ever. There was almost no police presence – I'd been more worried about violence from the police than potential fascist antagonists, but apparently the powers that be decided that the best plan was to let people march and keep things uneventful enough to potentially play it down. Though in practice the sheer numbers made it newsworthy. There also weren't many of the usual protest crowd; the nominal organizers were #PeoplesVote who are basically a lobbying organization, rather than activists of any stripe. We spent some of the time marching alongside goths, partly Cornish people, and partly the NHS, all groups I'm very happy to support.
There was a desultory Socialist Wankers Party presence, but by the time we passed them they were just handing out leaflets and not causing any trouble. I had no expectation at all that Corbyn would be there; he's pro-Brexit and not at all in solidarity with middle-class liberals like me. But it was kind of weird to find myself at a protest headlined by, of all people, Michael Heseltine.
I don't know if we achieved anything, but in some ways it felt quite good to be part of a crowd demanding more friendship with foreigners. I'm a bit grumpy at social media complaints about people who didn't march; there are lots and lots of perfectly good reasons for not attending a particular protest march, and people who don't march make all kinds of other contributions to their causes. I'm really really grumpy at leftists who think the march was somehow bad because it included a lot of middle-class people, or that only direct action is a valid form of politics.
And yes, it's probable that at least some pro-Europe / anti-Brexit people are racist; any large group of white people is going to include some racists. But the march itself was in no way racist, unless you assume that all British people and all Europeans are white. Like, a few people had banners with silly ironic parodies of stereotypical British behaviours, such as "Let's all have a nice cup of tea and forget about Brexit". You have to really stretch to take that as a racist slogan, which is something I've run across on Twitter. I mean, offering cups of tea in a crisis is hardly a white people thing, and I can't imagine anyone who's ever met a south Asian or Caribbean would take it as such.
But really, some people who are against Brexit might possibly be racist, so... we should do nothing and let the government go ahead with the whole catastrophe? I can not see how that is possibly going to make anything better for anyone from any ethnic minority. I am absolutely in favour of ending the hostile environment and making things better for immigrants of colour from outside Europe, but giving the nasty racist government carte blanche to be horrible to European immigrants is not the way to achieve that.
Anyway, I enjoyed spending Purim with my community and my friends who are silly in geeky ways, but I was also glad not to have to pretend to be happier than I am, given the timing.
I wasn't organizing anything official this year, so I was able to show up and be as jolly as I wanted to be. Which was somewhat happy but not perhaps as jolly as I would have been expected to perform if I were in charge. A lot of people think Purim is the coolest festival ever, when I describe it as being about drinking and fancy dress, and I can see that this seems exotic if you're used to the Protestant-influenced idea that religion is anti-fun. But I don't really like being drunk (actually I drank less than a pint of low strength beer over the whole festival), and I don't really like being silly, so I'm not in fact the biggest ever fan of Purim.
Anyway, I went to the synagogue Megillah reading from work, having quickly changed into a simple cat costume (black velvet trousers, light grey top under a black jacket, tail made out of some old tights, little cat mask). Other people were in charge of the children's party where they encouraged the kids to get over-excited and eat sweets and pizza, so I just showed up for the reading. Lots of good costumes, adults as well as children, readers who got into the silly voices, English summarizers who were actually funny. It's a really good idea to feed the children before the reading and wrap up the whole thing by 8 pm, but I was a bit thrown because I'd expected more food than just a couple of hamentashen. No problem, I grabbed some chips on the way home, and thought it was reasonably in the spirit of Purim not to remind
cjwatson that I would show up in costume :-) I didn't try to rope work colleagues into celebrating this year. I had a small house party in the evening, which went really well. Andreas was excited about having a fancy dress contest, and I used a Purim-lottery mechanism to select the order of appearance, by drawing tickets out of a hat. I dressed as Wonder Woman, thanks to the wonderful
ghoti_mhic_uait who lent me her exciting superhero dress, and actually managed to win the popular vote. There were also a rainbow unicorn, a rainbow dinosaur, a minotaur (complete with labyrinth), a Roman goddess, Dr Who and a couple of cowboys. And some lovely people who did not dress up but did bring food and good company. And ghoti_mhic_uait made really good hamentashen with poppy seeds, a mix of triangular Ashkenazi ones and ear-shaped Sephardi ones. My girlfriend is the best. Sunday we did Purim again with the Sunday school kids. More of them than I expected wore costumes, including some of the teachers. I went as an old-fashioned gent, in three piece suit, bowler hat and an umbrella. We gave the teenaged TAs free rein to write their own purimspiel, which was, um, in somewhat questionable taste, but quite well done. They rather played up the bit where a young teenaged girl makes a dynastic marriage to an old drunk lech, which is unquestionably in the text but maybe not something I would have joked about for an audience of mostly under-12s. Also people under 20 are too young to have grown up with the assumption that Russian accent = villain, so I'm not sure what they were doing with Haman.
Also on Sunday, photos appeared on Facebook from my Stoke community, and I'm so pleased. Because 10 years ago, they thought Purim was this weird event where a Chabad shaliach (missionary) turns up, reads something very fast in incomprehensible Hebrew, and gives out packs of sawdust-tasting pastries, while policing the gathering to make sure gifts are only exchanged between people of the same gender. Ten years ago they were worried about not having enough members under 50 to be sustainable. But this weekend they had a dozen children in costume, and about as many adults of all ages, and most of them dressed up, and had a proper silly Megillah reading. Purim is fun now, and the community has children and young people, and I take at least some of the credit for that.
In between, I went to the People's Vote march, along with a couple of million other people including half my DW circle and FB friends list. I had originally been reluctant to go because I don't really want a People's Vote, especially not at the eleventh hour like this. But
ghoti_mhic_uait said it was a way to show solidarity with all the Europeans who will be worst hit by Brexit, and that seemed a good reason to be there. It was the politest, calmest unimaginably enormous march ever. There was almost no police presence – I'd been more worried about violence from the police than potential fascist antagonists, but apparently the powers that be decided that the best plan was to let people march and keep things uneventful enough to potentially play it down. Though in practice the sheer numbers made it newsworthy. There also weren't many of the usual protest crowd; the nominal organizers were #PeoplesVote who are basically a lobbying organization, rather than activists of any stripe. We spent some of the time marching alongside goths, partly Cornish people, and partly the NHS, all groups I'm very happy to support.
There was a desultory Socialist Wankers Party presence, but by the time we passed them they were just handing out leaflets and not causing any trouble. I had no expectation at all that Corbyn would be there; he's pro-Brexit and not at all in solidarity with middle-class liberals like me. But it was kind of weird to find myself at a protest headlined by, of all people, Michael Heseltine.
I don't know if we achieved anything, but in some ways it felt quite good to be part of a crowd demanding more friendship with foreigners. I'm a bit grumpy at social media complaints about people who didn't march; there are lots and lots of perfectly good reasons for not attending a particular protest march, and people who don't march make all kinds of other contributions to their causes. I'm really really grumpy at leftists who think the march was somehow bad because it included a lot of middle-class people, or that only direct action is a valid form of politics.
And yes, it's probable that at least some pro-Europe / anti-Brexit people are racist; any large group of white people is going to include some racists. But the march itself was in no way racist, unless you assume that all British people and all Europeans are white. Like, a few people had banners with silly ironic parodies of stereotypical British behaviours, such as "Let's all have a nice cup of tea and forget about Brexit". You have to really stretch to take that as a racist slogan, which is something I've run across on Twitter. I mean, offering cups of tea in a crisis is hardly a white people thing, and I can't imagine anyone who's ever met a south Asian or Caribbean would take it as such.
But really, some people who are against Brexit might possibly be racist, so... we should do nothing and let the government go ahead with the whole catastrophe? I can not see how that is possibly going to make anything better for anyone from any ethnic minority. I am absolutely in favour of ending the hostile environment and making things better for immigrants of colour from outside Europe, but giving the nasty racist government carte blanche to be horrible to European immigrants is not the way to achieve that.
Anyway, I enjoyed spending Purim with my community and my friends who are silly in geeky ways, but I was also glad not to have to pretend to be happier than I am, given the timing.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-03-30 03:44 pm (UTC)As someone who couldn't make the march, thank you for being there!