Huddle up, Charmers.  As many of you know who have followed me for years, I don’t explicitly talk about politics very much.  Usually it’s like putting lipstick on a pig and everyone just gets annoyed.  If you’ve been following me that long, you know whereabouts I stand on many issues and know that I do my best to be respectful of dissenting opinions.

 

This last week since my book came out, I’ve been deep into AncestorLand.  Now if you’ve been following me for years, you know that I have an uneasy and unsteady relationship with most of my ancestors due to sad feels, tiny family which I’ve watched much of die and all consuming grief. That’s enough for me to deal with, so I don’t go farther back than our more recent ancestors that my family still tells stories about, so I personally go about three generations back.  I’ve been thinking a lot about my uncle since book launch, especially since the publication of my current book is the fulfillment of my deathbed promise to him.  So, obviously book launch day was spent feeling shitty and grieving for him.  It got better for me but then it got worse.  More specifically, worse in Charlottesville.

 

So let’s talk about my mother and uncle’s father.  My grandfather came to this country through Ellis Island with very little.  He fought in World War II and it was recently his birthday.  He’d be 109.  In the war, he was required to fight against allies of his home country for a new country that sort of/kind of accepted him if you squinted really hard.  But he believed in doing what was right (fighting people who were mass slaughtering people and pro-fascist), so he fought.  He wrote poems about his time in the war, he wrote letters to the editors of newspapers when conditions were unbearable, he was missing in action for a time and then he came home and did social work for poor communities.  My grandmother had an eighth grade education and worked in the Ideal toy factory.  They made sure my uncle learned a trade (aviation) and my mother got her master’s degree.  Education is everything in my family.  Everything.  It’s what they worked so hard for.  It’s what they gave up their dreams for.  For us to be able to have the means to accomplish whatever we put our will to.

 

I cannot hold my head up as my grandfather’s granddaughter if I am required to condone current Nazis for milquetoast reasons.  I can’t.  Not after he fought so hard to stop genocide because it was the right thing to do, even if it meant turning against his country of origin.  And if I’m being really real here, I can’t believe I’ve had to had this conversation all morning.  You think my grandfather was all old-timey, “Hate the game, not the playa?”  (Hate the ideology, not the person) when he was in the trenches?  I highly doubt it.  Firstly, Italians and Italian-Americans are known for our love of the vendetta both grand and petty.  Secondly, holy cats if there was ever a Captain America enemy for the time, Nazis were it.  Nazis and Nazi like enemies are still often the go-to bad guys in media.

 

Charmers, many of us reading this are witches.  Guess who’s getting cleansed if all wring our hands and say nothing because someone on Facebook may be offended?  That’s right!  Don’t worry, non-witch readers, there’s room for you too!  Were you born Jewish?  Are you only kindof white or not white at all?  Are you not a binary gender?  Are you childless?  Are you a woman who works?  Have you ever been a ho?  Are you disabled in any way?  Are you a sexual minority?  Step right up!

 

Like . . .what the hell did I wake up to this morning where I had to justify not having any effs to give about the delicate sensibilities of Nazis, one of which just killed a chick?  Oh hey!  You know who else is a useless childless sl*t?  Me and many of you!  But I’m supposed to be like, oh no I don’t hate Nazis, I hate what they believe in which is the total destruction of 85% of the people I associate with.  Dude.  I hate Nazis.  I’m not going to run my car into a bunch of them unlike some people but I’m not required to be nice about Nazis.  That’s the point of being a Witch.  You don’t have to follow an ideology that is meant to keep you in line and then killed if a bunch of genocidal maniacs come into power.  You don’t!  You get to work Witchcraft against them, you get to doxxx them, you get to create art as resistance, you get to sign petitions, you get to go to vigils, you get to yell at the internet because that is your right as an America citizen.

 

So I suggest, you start making some noise.  You think Grammy and Pop-Pop want you to sit quietly and say oh well, freedom of speech, so if a girl gets killed for being a protestor at a goddamn Nazi rally, we should all just accept that during a time where our President took three days to grudgingly say it’s not okay to be a Nazi piece of shit?  They do not.  They didn’t.  You shouldn't either  That’s real ancestor Work.  Get to it.

 

Illegitimi non carborundum.