In this age of real and imaginary extremes, conspiracies and lockstep mindsets, where too many have become self-hypnotically vulnerable to potential electoral crucifixion, so nailed by our self-decapitating federal government: no time for sneers, smirks nor unmasking for, I told you so.
Long before Tim Russert unintentionally parted The Red Sea of America’s Red and Blue states, exposing the myth of our, united we stand, what impressed me most about Charlton Heston’s pre-NRA Moses response to a leader who thought himself a god, was: an imperious leader can easily drown his loyal followers in their belief in false prophets, and destroy a nation and civilization far senior to America.
Our 244-year venture has been compromised by the malignancy of Too Big to Fail latching onto America’s Marshall Plan and ACA cells, by humans ignoring, To whom much is given, much is required, who washed their hands of justice and equality for all, long ago, savoring their abandonment of planetary stewardship.
Nonetheless, from its inception, America’s democratic ideals were the golden calf for millions. Through feast and famine, Civil and world wars, assassinations and deceptions, Depressions and Recessions, our international standing was, the good: one person one vote, the bad: our over-consumerism at the expense of the less fortunate, until the ugly American: an unapologetic, inept and apathetic fake, was lifted up from the glitter of fool’s gold by the chess masters of greed for power and dominion over earth and all life upon it.
What if our 2020 elections are a revelation precipice, allowing us to look into the promised potential of either America’s self-destruction or self-renewal? Will we see the hardened heart of Ramses II or a new Moses?
Will we vote to be remembered for our majestic monuments to slave owners, catatonic enslavement to Black Friday purchased devices or for our artistic humanity and indiscriminate human kindness?
For months America’s president kept the tragic potential of COVID-19 secret from, Proud Boys and Never Trumpers, Republicans and Independents, Democrats and Undecided – from those who worship the ground he walks upon and those who wish he were six feet under it.
Why? So, he can stay out of jail, saved by bone spurs, pretending ill-gotten gain would make him in the image of Khizr Kahn’s heroic son, patriots like Senator John McCain or veterans Hunter and Beau Biden?
In 2016 didn’t we put awaychildish things: Lady Liberty’s promise, FDR’s New Deal and John Kennedy’s eagle-like Cuban Missile Crisis strategy: extending the perfect balance between arrows and olive branches to prevent global nuclear destruction?
If so, is there enough retrievable, Ask what you can do for your country, to elect civility, unity and the sanity needed to save our Constitution from the realization of a founding fear: a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power on the shoulders of misinformation and emotional mob rule?
Although armed with more information than he cared to share, Trump risked the lives of his Base by holding large indoor, and outdoor, events with supporters who, at his bidding, attended without masks or following social distancing guidelines.
Be assured I do not wish Donald Trump dead, for any reason, including, but not limited to: Mike Pence actually believes that his religious beliefs make him superior to people who don’t think, look or act as he does.
Tragically however, even in the throes of possible death, Trump enablers fear sharing truth: a White House source tells reporters, the president’s vitals over last twenty-hours were very concerning, and the next forty-eight hours will be critical – we’re still not on a clear path to full recovery, while Walter Reed military Medical spokespersons claim, the president has been fever free for over twenty-four hours, we remain cautiously optimistic, but he’s doing great.
On 25 May 2020, a 46-year-old African American citizen died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after a 44-year-old white police officer Derek Chauvin – in full view of three other lawmen, and bystanders with cells in video mode – knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes while he was handcuffed face down in the street. The name of the perp was George Floyd.
Like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Manuel Ellis, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Aubrey, George Floyd’s guilt was never in question – never considered up for discussion – indeed, making no difference, never given a thought. He was just another racial expletive.
Maybe it was our revolutionary Bicentennial that really ran aground on Nantucket Island. And possibly Reagan’s, Welfare Queen was the reef into which Trickledown collided in Prince William Sound. Or did the last remnants of American Exceptionalism die with our forgotten eleven in a Gulf of Mexico explosion?
For more than 244 years, have we, the majority, been blind to the un-prospected Black Gold in America?
Didn’t we know, one day the killing of a black person by an officer of the law, would finally move America’s moral needle from tip of the iceberg, to final straw?
So, why isn’t the murder of George Floyd less forgettable or any more important call-to-action than any other drug deal gone bad, neighborhood gang-war drive-by or Jim Crow residue?
First, America in Crisis, like an historic presidential entourage neighborhood stroll to Blaspheme both Church and State, is a Teaser, meant to shape our POV, while the real Black Gold, is redefined by paler minds, unable to see the colorfully diverse forest, for the out-of-control carte blanche trees.
America’s crisis is actually a long overdue transition, most unsettling, for Conservative Republican money financing corporate owned media, because of its demonstrative transparency in an election year, when all we have to lose is a president whose become as bored with our lack of pandemic preparedness as he is with his DPB.
Above and beyond the looting violence, property damage, brick throwing at officers who, every day and night do what most of us only watch on TV, there is a post D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation ask, rolling through the ashes of Dirty Harry’s empty chair, inflaming, Driving Miss Daisy into seeking the lessons of, The Help – emerging, enabling us to knock on the door of mature thinking, where true patriotism lives by the example of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and D. C’s mayor, Muriel Bowser.
The global freedom of expression of mostly marching, dancing, singing and kneeling in peaceful assembly, clearly demonstrates a timely desire for justice and equality, balanced atop the infrastructure of the 2017 Women’s March and 2018 students still insisting, Never Again.
This real time televised murder of a human being has ignited a complacent world into a collective Moses on yellowed lettered pavement, crying out – from the wilderness, surrounding closed White House minds, shrouded in hate, bigotry, and a self-imagined American Pharaoh: Let my people go!
Nonetheless, like Caesars, Emperors, Dulles and Koch brothers before our 45th, the journey of a thousand miles can easily begin with one photo op too far, and a murderous pill too impossibly bitter to swallow.
There was an America before Pearl Harbor and D-Day and, except for racism. a vastly different America after 22 November 1963. What we accepted as normal before 9/11, morphed us into forever oil war accomplices.
Realizing there are still Conservative Republicans who support Donald Trump despite his lack of response to COVID-19, disregard for our Constitution and desire to dominate American civilians in, the battle space, with active duty military might – any pretense that the America of Trump/McConnell/Barr/Pence is a Land of the Free, is simply, fake news.
America is much more than a red, white and blue stars and stripes symbol. It is the rainbow of nations, a multi-cultural people from immigration and slavery to a quarterback’s awakening, and NFL social justice for all patriotic enough to take a knee.
Despite the stark public brutality of George Floyd’s death, America’s new reality is not a crisis, but a conscientious moment for moral choices.
While blind to the enterprise, faith and contributions of our human, Black Gold, and failing to live the words we’ve writ large: we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness – Exceptional greatness will elude us.
Now, facing The Ugly American Trump within us, that we projected onto the world, let’s vote a joyful noise that shatters the silence of indifference to hate, bigotry and justice for all.
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