I realize he grew up behind the iron curtain, but the post-Soviet ignorance must stop. HB thinks I am some kind of brainiac because I knew about the Berlin Wall, which he never heard of. (!) I told him the fall of the Berlin wall to our generation is akin to the man walking on the moon, the Vietnam War, or the day John Lennon died. Doesn't it bother him that everyone ELSE knows?
He doesn't know about the Soviet invasions of Hungary or Czechoslovakia in '68, nor the rest of his Eastern Bloc neighbors. He didn't know his own mother waited in bread lines. He doesn't know what a Refusenik is. He didn't know there was only one Soviet newspaper! He didn't know that books about Aztec civilization were illegal because they wanted their citizens to believe that no great civilizations besides Russia ever existed. (Bitches.) He's Ukrainian and he doesn't know about the man-made Ukrainian famine. He doesn't know people were shot for escaping.
It's the same as if I were to act very blas� about slavery or Hiroshima or lynchings or segregation or Japanese internment camps or indian reservations or IRAQ. That shit is important to know.
Knowledge doesn't land on our doorstep. There is a library next door, a bookstore across the street, and thousands of brilliant people from every nation in the crosswalk below with stories to share. We have internet and gossip and shortwave radio and zines and pop culture and fancy degrees.
There's no excuse, comrades. Make yourself a frothy delicious Oaxacan caf� con leche and start learning, or I'll whip out my Aztec heart rippy-out-y capabilities on yr viking asses.
And that, my friend, is why I'd make a horrible parent.
Fin.
11:01 a.m. - 2009-08-21