I don't live in the "Homeland".

[SoCalDem]

I don't live in the "Motherland"
I don't live in the "Fatherland"

I live in a state
My state is part of the UNITED states
My country is the sum of its parts

Until recently, when my country was spoken of by its leaders, it was called OUR COUNTRY..or THE UNITED STATES...or just AMERICA.

The re-naming of our country is just another exclusionary tactic to further isolate us .

Who qualifies as a "homelander". Are those of us who were born here MORE homelanderiffic than those who came here from a different "homeland" of their birth?

It always reminds me of how subjective the term "home" is.

People often speak of their "hometown". For some it's the town they were born in, for some it's the town of their childhood, for some it's the town they settle in to raise their own families, and for some it's whatever town they are in at any given time.

If an immigrant is from Quito, Ecuador, and resettles in Concord , Massachusetts, which one will they claim as their "hometown"?

It's OUR choice..

Our dear president loves to claim Midland or Crawford or Austin as his "hometowns" (carefully omitting any reference to his true north eastern roots).

I resent the linguistic gymnastics of recent years, every time one of our "leaders" refers to "the homeland" or "our homeland".

Do they mean all of us? some of us? which ones? the ones who voted for them? the ones who were born here? the ones who chose this place over a former "homeland"? the white ones? the brown ones?

Is OUR "homeland" anymore "special" than anyone else's homeland? Is Iraq a "homeland"? Is China? Is Iran?

EARTH is the ultimate homeland, and the people who so casually toss words around like frisbees, seem to care very little about IT, so why should we trust their so-called devotion to this one place among so many?

[eleny]

1. Thanks

I hate this redefining of my traditional reality when it comes to our country.

[HonorTheConstitution]

2. If BushCo would read history books, they would know that that word

for many Europeans is associated with the Hitler regime.

[bdamomma]

5. and we all know that *

does not read.

[Bluebear]

6. Please be assured that they are well aware of that.

It not only doesn't stop them from using it, I think it has a planned allure.

[DutchLiberal]

8. 'Heimat'. Yeah, well, it's very common German so we don't mind,

but we hate Bush anyway, so... ;)

[WinkyDink]

11. I think Georgie learned that at Grampa Prescott's knee, don't you?

The term is no accident, no fluke, no coincidence.

[Golden Raisin]

27. I think they know exactly what

the derivation is and associations are. I'm waiting to see the 'Arbeit macht frei" signs over the gates to the domestic Halliburton internment camps.

[Az]

3. To set a people to war you must first place them in camps

You must separate them from those you wish to wage war upon.

Once separated you must alienate them from the other people. For as long as they see them as people they cannot justify killing them.

Once you alienate them you must cast them as not only different but a threat as well. Then fear will path the way for people to volunteer to kill them.

Homeland creates an image of this is our place. It is a refuge from the rest of the world. Separate. Ours. It is the camp into which they channel us and which they creates imagined threats against in order to control us.

[snappyturtle]

12. Yep it's separate alright! But ,we all know * doesn't play well with others!

So, it's perfect terminology for *. I hate it and I think it sends a scary message globally.

[Wiley50]

13. They're planning to put us into camps, alright

at least some of us, like those of us here

[bdamomma]

4. Homeland, if they like that terminology so much let them move to

Germany, Merkel probably throw them out too.

[Wiley50]

16. Nope. Germany would charge them with war crimes

They came close to charging Rummy in absentia

[indepat]

18. Homeland is just a teeny-weeny step from Fatherland

[dave29]

7. thank you so much

this terminology drives me mad.

I live in the United States. Period.

[Poiuyt]

9. I'm going to report you to the HSS

[WinkyDink]

10. Exactly!! Bush rammed this Fascist term into our collective discourse.

[SIMPLYB1980]

14. Right with you.

Wish more people had read Slate in 2002.
http://www.slate.com/?id=2066978

Neo-con fascist are the one reason I am not for total gun control. I want to keep my weapons in case these fascists get out of hand.


Still waiting on the Reichstag to burn any day now.

[kestrel91316]

15. I have objected since the very first day Bushco crammed this FASCIST

term down our throats.

It's "the nation" or "the country". It is NOT "the homeland" or "the motherland" or "the fatherland".

[SoCalDem]

20. And it provided the "need" for another bloated bureaucracy

called "Homeland Security".. Supposedly HSS (emphasis on the 'ss') is supposed to defend us and make us all secure..

But hey! Why do we have the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT?

The ONE day we NEEDED them, they were all asleep at the switch.

This was one of the most troubliing things about 09/11/01 for me.

The HEADQUARTERS of the defense department was hit by a few people who had been here for a while, and apparently were under surveillance.. and our nation's financial nerve-center was hit, and apparently it came as a complete surprise to the defense department..

In simple military terms, it's as if a scouting party of a few pfcs had blown up Hirohito's headquarters.. There would have been a brazillion books written and many movies made of the heroic feat. Is it any wonder that AlQaeda's "stock" has increased in the laft few years?

Homeland security is just a redundant pork magnet. (originally created as an ego-balm for Ridge who gave up his governorship and then was dissed by Cheney, and was 86ed as veep choice) . It also served as a clever vehicle to change the rules as they transferred formerly union people into their "new jobs"..jobs with fewer benefits.

[bdamomma]

28. I just sent an polite e-mail to the WH Comment line

and ask them to disperse using that term it is against our Constitutional ideals.

[CrispyQ]

36. I hate it too,

[EFerrari]

17. These felons have sunk so low, they're dragging out facist talking points.

Who could have ever imagined they'd do that?

[Dhalgren]

19. When my uncle was serving in the Army during WWII, he was somewhere in England, waiting for D-Day.

He was in a group of soldiers from all over the country (drinking, no doubt) and he was asked where he was from. He said, "Stouts Mountain." They asked, "Where's that?" He said, "About 8 miles west of Hanceville."

I hate this squeezing of patriotism out of every last nuance of Being. It is demeaning, and antithetical to what it means to be an "American"...

[Richard Steele]

21. A chill went down my spine the first time I heard that word used to describe my country.

Even more frightening was how many of my fellow citizens
didn't even BLINK at the term.

[Blue_In_AK]

22. I absolutely LOATHE that term "homeland"

It's so Third Reich.

[catmandu57]

23. Yeah it just drips

Nazi, makes me cringe everytime I hear it.

[Pacifist Patriot]

24. Happily K & R. The term is anathema to me.

[Psyop Samurai]

25. Nor do I...

...and like "unitary executive", those who have calculatedly advanced such notions are supreme traitors and enemies, and should long since have been arrested, tried, and made examples of before history.

[degreesofgray]

26. The first time I heard the term "homeland security"

a chill ran down my spine and George Orwell novels flashed before my eyes.

[bdamomma]

29. I didn't like it either that term has got to just like the same

people who originated that term.

[SoCalDem]

31. Unfortunately, lots of people don't read much these days

I wonder how many people still read Orwell. It was REQUIRED reading in my junior year of high school.. along with


Huxley..

Some of the books we were required to read are probably now banned altogether from schools..

We read:

Main Street
The Jungle
Brave New World
Catcher in the Rye
Fahrenheit 451
Huck Finn
Slaughterhouse Five
Lord of the Flies

and others I have forgotten

[B3Nut]

34. I absolutely DETEST that word.

It is a truly horrific, horrendous, disgusting term. I was still a Repuke when DHS came into being, and I hated that term from the beginning. Let's just say the scales slowly started falling from my eyes...it called to mind the Nazi "Fatherland" and also the days of South African Apartheid, neither of which true humans have any desire to relive.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[Lars39]

30. And we are called Citizens of the United States,

and citizens of the world, too, not potential terrorists or victims.

[SoCalDem]

32. You know they are dyin' to call us comrades

:rofl:

[Zywiec]

33. I agree. I hate the term.

It sounds way too eerily like motherland and fatherland.

[spirit of wine]

35. Citizen of the Earth

I can't stand this Homeland Crapland.

[Flying Dream Blues]

37. I also agree...the term gives me the creeps, and as another poster

upthread said, they absolutely DO know it sounds like the Fatherland and the Third Reich. Ve haf a new vorld order!

[Bluebear]

38. kick for those who have not seen this excellent essay

[Uncle Joe]

39. Kicked and recommended.

I totally agree, thanks for the thread SoCalDem.:thumbsup:

[Harry Monroe]

40. Wouldn't the term "Department of DOMESTIC Security" have made more sense??

Every time I hear the term "Homeland" I can't but help think of Nazi Germany and Communist USSR. Also the Klingon Empire, whose planet, Klingon, was the "Homeworld"

[Stephanie]

41. Second that.

It's so creepy.

[Daphne08]

42. Thank you! That word has irked me for years. n/t

[YOY]

43. I remember a young repub flapping his "oh so proud" gums about this word

I coulda sworn "Tomorrow belongs to me" was playing in the background.

[bdamomma]

44. we should e-mail or call our senators and tell them we find

the term highly insulting to our country and to us, and to disperse with it.

[blondeatlast]

45. Exactly. I use the words "country" or "nation" every chance I get. nt

[Philosoraptor]

46. AMEN!

[Lost4words]

47. I dont live in the Homeland either, its a fascists term IMHO!

I dislike the way they invent names and terms, so stinking phony.

Thanks for your post. :hi: 8643

[leveymg]

48. Homeland was originally a term give by Apartheid South Africa to the Black Bantustans it created

I think it was very strange for the Bush-Cheney Administration to adopt this term, which has the stench of racist connotation. "Homeland security" was later the name of an obscure private counter-terrorism contractor in Northern Virginia, the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, established in 1999, that has its own odd extremist Right-wing associations. The author of the term "homeland security" is said to be Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

Apartheid (meaning separateness in Afrikaans, cognate to English apart and hood) was a system of ethnic separation in South Africa from 1948, and was dismantled in a series of negotiations from 1990 to 1993, culminating in democratic elections in 1994.

The rules of Apartheid meant that people were legally classified into a racial group — the main ones being Black, White, Coloured and Indian — and were separated from each other on the basis of the legal classification. Blacks legally became citizens of one of ten bantustans (homelands) that were nominally sovereign nations. These homelands were created out of the territory of Black Reserves founded during the British Empire period -- Reserves akin to United States Indian Reservations, Canadian First Nations reserves, or Australian aboriginal reserves. Many Black South Africans never resided in these "homelands."

This prevented black people from having a vote in "white South Africa" (even if they resided there) -- their voting rights being restricted to the black homelands. Black homelands were created in the least productive lands in the country. Education, medical care, and other public services were segregated, and those available to Black people were inferior. Their education system, within "white South Africa", was designed to ensure that they were only capable of serving as labourers to White industry.

This from Sourcewatch on the origin of the term: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ANSER_Institute_for_Homeland_Security#Homeland_Security.3F

The Institute's answer conceded that the catch phrase homeland defense had only "recently entered the lexicon of public discourse," although "the concept of 'defending the homeland' is an idea dating back through the better part of human history. To the best of knowledge, the Burns added, the term homeland defense is attributed to a 1997 report by the National Defense Panel. "News reports credit it to panel member Richard L. Armitage, former CIA officer and now deputy secretary of State, though Mr. Armitage has not taken full credit for it -- understandably." <4>

Writing for Buzzflash, Margie Burns postulated, "If Congress actually creates a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security , we will have a Cabinet office named after a corporation. Members of the House Committee on Government Reform and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee should be watchful. The government has already given the company lavish free advertising, with assistance from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's publications. In spite of the Institute, the phrase homeland security was little seen in the popular media before September 2002 (at least in this country); aside from a sprinkling of journals and think tanks, only the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times newspaper, Insight Magazine, and UPI boosted the Institute and its central catch phrase with any frequency." ibid.

Burns continued in Online Journal, "Immediately after September 11, the Washington Times was foremost in aggressively touting and defending -- indeed, insisting on -- instant adoption of homeland as the term of the hour, in articles published on September 16, 22, 30, and October 3 <2001>, also citing ANSER. Predictably, the institute's web site also references articles from the Washington Times." ibid.

[Tom Joad]

49. the earth is my homeland.

[Ganja Ninja]

50. Yup! That's one of the first things we can get rid of when the Dem's

get back full control of this country again, any and all references to "Homeland".

[Hell Hath No Fury]

51. I guess you watched the Fran Townsend...

briefing too! :D

My Mom and I caught that thing and our ears just about BLED from the number of times "homeland" was invoked by her. I finally resorted to doing my Peter Sellers/"Dr. Stangelove" imitation and singing "Deutchland, Deutchland, uber alles..." every time I heard it.

Hearing that word is like a grapling hook to the soul -- everything that it implies is so vile and repugant. :scared: Its use is one of the things I despise most about the Bush administration.

[SpiralHawk]

52. "homeland" is the republicon fascist control state - gooey propaganda

propaganda from the republicon mind f*ck propagandists. I'm with you.

The United States of America was good enough for my pappy and my grandpappy, and it's good enough for me.

The republicon fascists can move somewhere else if they want some stinking 'homeland.'

[Swamp Rat]

53. Republicans have a nazi fetish.

Nazi wannabes... zeeg hile Bubba!1

[triguy46]

54. I just frickin hate that word.

[kma3346]

55. Hear hear!

I'm so glad to see that so many people feel the way I do about that word. It reminds me so much of Hitler and his constant references to the "fatherland." My mom is German and grew up during WWII and she says the parallels between what she observed in Germany then and what is happening here now are amazing and very disturbing.

[vanboggie]

56. Parallels are frightening

My daughter did a project in high school in the similarities of how the Nazis came into power and how the same thing was happening here. That was shortly after 9-11. Her teacher with a GWB poster in her room got really ticked. It's creepy, and BushCo has certainly followed the same plan. They should be labeled as Neo-Nazis as it's even more fitting than neo-cons.

Ditto to all comments up above. "Homeland" sounded Nazi and fascist the first time I heard it, and I still yell at the TV when I hear it spoken!!!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

57. I don't like the sound of Homeland Security

but I am sure names like Domestic Security or Internal Security would have sounded worse...

[bdamomma]

58. Start e-mailing and calling your Reps and Senators

and tell them to eliminate "homeland" from their diction and that you find it highly insulting.

[baldguy]

59. E Pluribus Unum

The founders of our nation understood this.

The current regime does not.