Festival and Unrest

So the festival has begun here in Edinburgh. [grumpy local] And the streets are crowded and the buses are always running late and there are morons everywhere grah grah grah[/grumpy local] Flight of the Conchords had a cover byline on today’s Metro and were the cover page of the Festival insert. This is good. They are, according to Metro, tipped to win the Perrier this year.
Cool.
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Feeling deeply disturbed by the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Makara on the heels of a smaller, similar act in Thorndon. My unease about the trend towards racism in New Zealand of a few months back has returned. The extremist forces of ethnic fear are particularly hateful. Normally I’m more concerned with the small-scale creep of prejudice into the mainstream discourse – but in the past week or so I’ve had a few contacts with the extreme prejudice that will never be mainstream. It’s sickening.
I know that the incredibly vast majority of New Zealanders are equally sickened. But I hate that there is a National Front. And I hate that Don Brash has been playing the race game. They are two extreme ends of the same nasty prejudices and I hate them both.
We are meant to be Better Than This in New Zealand.
Rationally, I know there’s lots more to say and to be said. These issues are not simple. (Actually, the cemetery issue is simple – it’s hateful and disgraceful and wrong.) But all I have at the moment is this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that the worst things I’m seeing on this side of the world are going to be at home as well.
Ugh. Enough. I need to sleep. Go read David’s blog, it is funny.