Brex-Shit (by sarah)
I've made a colouring sheet, the first in a series I have planned of political satire. The series is going to lay everything bare and brutal, including both sides' prejudices.
I am on the remain "side" but know the horse has bolted revealing horrible maggots of racism, classism and a few other isms which I thought we had mainly vanquished. I feel I no longer belong in my home, rejected by my origin, and yet "my" side mock where I come from.
My home/origin - I am ashamed, Romford, ASHAMED!
Out has ruined my kids future; Remainers did not listen when I said you are alienating the working class. Hell, they were alienating me!
I belong to no one and nothing now - not even Europe with the likely sources of funding for my Science-Art and the outreach I like doing with poetry etc... being scrubbed out I am not hopeful for Cuddly Science nor The Muse Monsters Literary stuff. The government does not have a good track record of funding these things, ie Science and Art; the EU did.
It wouldn't be so bad if they were actually going to give the EU money the NHS as they said they would, but they've already back pedalled on that one.
All I wanted to do was help the next generation see that, regardless of background etc., science was for them, that they had a future. And now I am not even sure they do have a future. So yes I am angry and I am struggling with forgiveness because there was a fight down our street, outside my house, which there has never been before.
Our nearest Tesco's has had racists shouting at the tills, I'm having to explain what is going on to my kids. I am having to assure them it will be fine but I don't know if it will be. I am trying to check my neighbours are ok because they are eastern europeans and there is hate swirling around - they are the best neighbours I've ever had and they are my friends.
I have had arguments I thought I would never have, seen the ugly fascist belly of people I call peeps, people I trusted and love. I feel my country is in ruins, my future, my kids' future dashed, I watch as the people I went to university with face their research - some of it life saving - being axed.
For the first time ever I am thinking of moving out of the country; 52% voted out, that is half the population and out of that half I do not know what proportion are the scary flag-waving fist-punchers and who are the bystanders and who are the secret agreers and enablers of this hatred.
My husband has a non-English sounding name, he speaks what sounds like a foreign language - I almost did not allow him to learn it as I feared a time like this as the warning signs began to appear when I was pregnant with Jean. But we will not be cowered and so I encouraged him with it and he teaches the kids. It is a constructed language, but bigots don't know that, and nor do I think they care. So I now fear we'll get more than a house egging and more than the verbal rant in the chip shop as people mistake him for an immigrant. And he's lucky because he's white so they don't know until he opens his mouth or they see his name in full.
When your eldest asks you worried questions about refugees because the playground talk has been ugly about them being dangerous when you've been collecting clothes for the refugee kids... you know something is wrong, so very very wrong.
I should have been more verbal before the referendum but I did not want to fall out with people, I just told them quietly how our livelihoods were tied into the EU and I stupidly thought they would listen.
No one listened to me, not on either side. So yes I am angry and mainly I am angry at the politicians who took to the public vote something that they should have been brave enough to decide themselves. Now there is a hornets nest shaken and stirred and the hornets are stinging.
It's a mess, a right royal mess or is that sovereignty? What ever it is we now have to exit Europe because to not do so makes a shame of our democracy - whether we can or should go back in is something else.
And I watch the pound drop, I watch the knock on effects across Europe and try to shut out the parallels with world wars and I see trillions wiped off the global economy and think about how we will be really lucky if we are not, all bar the super super rich, a hell of a lot worse off.
As I said I am struggling with forgiveness, I feel my husband is now in danger as well as my neighbours, I am seeing bullying on all sides. The UK is broken, shattered and I can't see how it is going to recover - I hope it's quickly.
I want my country back, not this nazi nightmare.
So I am doing the only things I know how and that is trying to make the world a better place and creating art about these issues.
There are daemons of my own like the knot of feelings over working class and university - and the unique mix of these thing that is me, but that is for another time.
Enjoy the colouring.
Art and Craft, Sarah, Society | sarah | 
Tue 28th Jun 2016 11:02 am
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By John Cowan, Tue 28th Jun 2016 @ 6:33 pm
When Eisenhower was elected U.S. President in 1952, a lot of European intellectuals in New York started packing their suitcases. They knew what it meant when a general was elected, or "elected". Cooler heads mostly prevailed, however: Eisenhower served for eight years, delivered the first warning against the military-industrial complex (he was ignored), and peacefully left office with no trace of a coup anywhere. The nation survived.
Then there's Andrew Jackson (1828-1836). Donald Trump may talk like a Mussolini, but he has never killed anyone in a duel, nor advocated genocide, as Jackson had; on his last day in office, he said he only regretted that he had not been able to shoot or hang two of his biggest political rivals. The nation survived Jackson too.
This too shall pass.