No matter how many times I see it in print, I can never get used to the exhumation of that word “homeland.” It was, of course, a signature Nazi word (Vaterland Sicherheit), as Nazi as a swastika on a jackboot. “While the [Bush] administration has been pouring its energies and money into Iraq, it has fallen far behind on steps needed to protect the homeland," the New York Times editorial page says today—later bemoaning how the war is draining valuable resources that "would be better applied to the real threat, a terrorist attack on the homeland."
Not, stop the war because it's illegal and unprovoked, based on lies and killing innocents—but it's bankrupting and endangering "the homeland!"
Why don’t they just call it “der homeland?” “Vee haf to protect der homeland!” “From de tewawists!” “Yah vohl!”
Where have all the Chaplins gone? We need someone to do a version of The Great Dictator called The Scary-Bad President, with the president as a swaggering cowboy, falling off his horse and shooting himself in the foot. "Mr. President, the homeland is being attacked by tewawists!" "Wait a minnit there, pardner, I gotta finish me this lil' ol book here," he says from the john. Then you see his pants down around his cowboy boots and a shot of the book: it's Mein Kampf. "Nah, I already know all that stuff," he says, tossing it aside. "Whadja say? Terrsts comin'?" He starts reciting one of his stump speeches: "We gotta root 'em outta every muskrat hole!" "No, Mr. President, it's real this time!" The president looks around with anxious eyes. "I want my Rummy!" he wails. Cut to a shot of a jumbo jet with a Dr. Strangelove-ish Secretary of Defense in the cockpit, dressed like Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel gear, flashing a wild grin. He lets out a maniacal cackle. Then a real terrorist comes bursting through the door, panting, and fights him for the controls to the plane. They struggle. The plane goes down on the White House lawn. The Scary-Bad President comes running out with his pants still down—falling on his face—and says for the cameras, "Uh— Ah'd call this a great day in our fight to protect the homeland! Round up all the towelheads!"
The Secretary of Defense emerges from the cockpit holding the head of Saddam Hussein. "I got him! We're saved!"

I told my husband how much it bugs me—"the homeland"—and he said, "Well, it's nationalism. It's exclusivity. It's the perpetuation of the myth that we're all not one, not one people, not one family."
And I thought how nice it is to be married to someone who knows just what I mean; and can say it better than I (sometimes). It's love, not fear and hate, that makes the land a happy home. I think I'll knit George W. a sampler.