I am sitting here wondering, hearing the US will not get the 2016 Olympics, whether the challenges international delegations had getting to the UN and the hate speech towards "aliens" would influence their votes??
There has been a growing xenophobia growing in this country, of course a legacy from the fear-mongering by the Bush-Cheney in part, but also the blowhard anti-immigrant rage you hear every day,
if we could use this incident to focus attention on how our bigotry plays in the rest of the world, maybe it ould do some good.
.
I live in Arizona, and we are perhaps more xenophobic here then elsewhere, but I am saddened each day by the amount of hatred I see everywhere. We are of course the state which allows folks to bring guns to bars, the state where the xenophobes have completely taken over the Republican party, and a border state with walls going up.
But each day on the teevee machine I hear news that would certainly give me pause if I were from an Arab country, a communist state, etc, about the level of participation my countrymen could enjoy if the Olympics were held in the US.
The rage in our country that people like Ghadaffi would be allowed to come here to speak at the UN, influencing I am sure his argument that perhaps it was time for the UN to move elsewhere, the uproar that the US would even participate in the UN, would give a person pause perhaps.
Perhaps our xenophobic, bigoted hate speech is coming home to roost.