One of the most disturbing things that has come out of the latest round of wingnut efforts to expose ideological enemies (and travel photographers) is their targeting of the children of Times staff members:
Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous – grab for the golden ring.
This kind of talk is a sign of a very sick mind, and the toleration of it among so many is the sign of a very sick society. Hell, even the mafia leaves the families alone.
So what happens if someone takes this rallying call seriously and finds out where these kids go to school? What’s next? One of our readers, Natalia, knows first-hand what happens. When she was a girl in the Ukraine, her parents made some enemies, and those enemies came after seven-year-old Natalia.
One of the reasons, if not the main reason, why my parents moved to this country in the mid-90’s had to do with the fact that people they’d pissed off back in then-lawless Ukraine were going after their loved ones, mostly me. My father received letters that said things, and I quote, “We’re going to take your little daughter, rape her in every hole, and bury her alive.”
I was seven years old and couldn’t go outside, unless accompanied by my Doberman, Joy (may she rest in peace) and/or an adult. My parents stashed me away for nearly two months in a mountain town on the Polish border, where I barely had any contact with them, for the sake of my safety. We moved three times. I knew how to shoot a Beretta. I couldn’t sleep with the lights off. I survived one kidnapping attempt, and spent four hours under the couch with a gun when someone attempted to break into the flat while my parents were away, which resulted in the fact that I was never left home alone for many months after.
This kind of trauma isn’t easy to get over:
I was in therapy for years over this. In some ways, I’ll never get over it. My childhood has a big gash running through it, because of Ukrainian thugs and their impact on my existence. I still remember the day we moved into our new house in the States. I had a hysterical fit when I discovered that the downstairs windows were not bulletproof. I was ten years old.
My parents left behind most of their earnings and possessions, just so we could start a new life in the States. So I wouldn’t wake up screaming every night, so that I could go to the ice cream parlour with my girlfriends, read a book, learn to ride on horseback, so that I could hang with people my own age, instead of sullen cops and bodyguards who cleaned their pistols on our kitchen counter.
For Natalia, the horror at the wingnuts’ incitement to stalk the children of Times staffers for the imaginary sins of their parents runs deep. She’s been there, and she never thought she’d see it happening in the United States:
This is why this latest development terrifies me. The people posting this are not doing so courtesy of an Internet hook-up at their local mental asylum. They’re tax-paying, independent Americans like you and me. And they also happen to think that it’s Ok to target those they do not agree with, as well as their children, who are completely innocent in all this, no matter how you look at it.
What a brilliant example these “proud Americans” are setting for the rest of the world. Screw this “democracy in Iraq” bullshit, how about we take the lead from North Korea and become a total police-state? Sure, it’s hypocritical, but who’s going to notice? Anyone we disagree with will be shot in the fact courtesy of Dick Cheney’s rifle, and the same should go for their little brats.
What the hell is going to happen if some nut takes them up on this offer? “Oopsies, we were only kidding”? Right. If I learned anything about tone from years and years of studying English, I can tell you right away, this asshole is not joking.
So this is how some stand up for America nowadays. The same America my parents fled to in order to keep their child and themselves safe. Oh bitter irony.
She’s right. These are people just like the ones you live with, work with, go to school with, who are listening to and reading the hate-filled words of the Michelle Malkins, the Bill Bennetts, the Ann Coulters, whose eliminationist rhetoric is given the mainstream media stamp of approval when they’re paraded across our television screens and given column-inches in mainstream newspapers and the mainstream media fails to provide a platform for anyone who challenges this rhetoric directly. The media, it seems, can’t get enough of legitimizing those who call for the stalking of their own families, who advocate the jailing or execution of their colleagues, and who wish terrorist acts upon them.
If they won’t lift a finger to defend themselves, what makes us think that they’ll do anything to protect the public interest?