So, I'm thinking that it's not so healthy for the American people or a democracy, if the citizenry must constantly wonder whether its President's words are serious, a joke or simply insane.
Anyone?
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Stand-up To Trump
Which side are you on?
While The Poor People's Campaign was celebrating its "National Call For Moral Revival" in a virtual march on Washington, DC, this past Saturday, President Donald Trump was performing his self-gratifying, demagogic, stand up comedy act in Tulsa -- mocking the nation's plight as it awakens to systemic racism and battles an unprecedented pandemic that has killed more than 120,000 people in just a few months.
The contrast between the two events couldn't be greater.
The choice between which movement to support, couldn't be more grave.
While people are still dying from Covid-19, and others are still grieving the deaths of loved ones at the hands of the lethal virus and racist, militarized cops, the President went up on stage and played the class clown for a let down crowd of some 6,000 or so.
"You know testing is a double-edged sword," Trump said, bragging that the United States had tested 25 million people. "Here's the bad part ... when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please."
Ba-dump-bump.
Whether he was kidding or just further muddying up his criminal role in exacerbating the virus, by pretending that he was kidding about something he very well may have done, it doesn't much matter.
It's a creepy, shallow, damning thing to say. But that's Trump. As I tweeted when he said it, he'll say he was kidding. And his camp did. Hey, it's all part of the Trump schtick.
And it's just another reminder that the press should pay little mind to his clown show, stand up rallies that are devoid of substance or anything redeeming, and pay closer attention to his actual war on law and order in this country.
So, which side are you on?
Join the right movement:
Friday, June 19, 2020
Trump's Tulsa Hate Rally
President Donald Trump is escalating his war against decency, common sense, compassion and justice to a whole new level.
Trump will hold a rally Saturday evening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the ravages of endemic racism and a spiking Coronavirus will collide in an unpredictable, in-your-face, volatile mix that strips away any remaining vestiges of the crumbling facade that Trump gives the slightest damn about anything, or anyone, but himself.
In other words, Trump is holding a divisive, delusional rally, revealingly, at precisely the wrong place and exactly the wrong time.
While Tulsa and the state of Oklahoma have seen Covid-19 cases spike in recent weeks, the Trump campaign plans to pack a 19,000-seat arena with rabid fans without requiring they wear face coverings to protect them from the virus' spread.
As health officials from every walk strongly advise against such insanity -- Trump doesn't care.
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany,
Descript
Trump's own personal Squealer the pig -- who in Animal Farm constantly and enthusiastically twisted the truth for the leader pig, Napoleon -- assures, temperatures will be taken at the door, sanitizer handed out and masks supplied.
The Trump campaign, however, won't mandate that the masks be worn. Trump is thumbing his nose at science, rejecting all reason, misleading masses so he can satisfy that Realty TV-shtick impulse to shock, delude and incite.
So, why would a demonstrated demagogue like Trump, amidst national racial upheaval, decide to hold a rally on Juneteenth (Fri., June 19) weekend that celebrates Slavery's end, and in a city that, this same month 99 years ago, was ground zero of the "Tulsa Race Massacre" which left 300 black people slaughtered and an entire wealthy black community destroyed?
Some 35 blocks of America's wealthiest black community, known as "Black Wall Street," was burned to the ground and estimated 10,000 black citizens we're left homeless in one the gravest acts of racial violence in American history.
The answer is clear. Just as he has done -- ever since this country saw the misfortune of Trump entering the presidential race five excruciatingly long years ago -- the divider-in-chief is stoking the fires of hatred and violence.
In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified four different hate groups active in Oklahoma: the American Identity Movement (White Nationalist), Patriot Front (White Nationalist), Patriotic Brigade Knights of the Klu Klux Klan and Proud Boys (classified as "General Hate").
So what further pain will Saturday's hate rally bring?
Whether he's aware of it or not, Trump has abandoned any pretense of caring about racial hatred in the country or the Covid-19 virus which has claimed more than 120,000 lives in America.
Trump never gave any indication that he genuinely cared, of course. While Covid-19 was clearly incubating death across the homeland, Trump blew it off, downplayed it. He's never embraced the full magnitude of this pandemic. He only went through the motions of pretending to care.
And now, when it's simply too damn inconvenient to his re-election hopes and his narcissistic drive to grandstand and bamboozle the desperately gullible, the President is hedging his bets, irresponsibly, criminally, throwing caution and the health and safety of Americans, to the wind.
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Time To Make This Land A Land For All Of Us
"This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me."
- Woody Guthrie
Those lyrics from Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land is your land," ran through my head as I awoke yesterday morning.
Great song. A great reminder that this land, this country, under the great Democratic experiment of America, is supposed to be the home of equal rights and justice for all.
But it's a idyllic notion, that's never been realized -- for all of us.
This land has never really been black Americans' land. African Americans never have been made to feel welcome, dating back more than 400 years ago, to 1619 in Jamestown, VA, when Africans were first introduced to American soil as slaves.
And before this land was claimed by the white man as their own, the land, for all intents and purposes, belonged to native Americans until so many of them were slaughtered at the white man's hand.
So whose land is it, really?
Like many of us, I've been pondering the vast injustices of "our land."
From California, to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me."
- Woody Guthrie
Those lyrics from Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land is your land," ran through my head as I awoke yesterday morning.
Great song. A great reminder that this land, this country, under the great Democratic experiment of America, is supposed to be the home of equal rights and justice for all.
But it's a idyllic notion, that's never been realized -- for all of us.
This land has never really been black Americans' land. African Americans never have been made to feel welcome, dating back more than 400 years ago, to 1619 in Jamestown, VA, when Africans were first introduced to American soil as slaves.
And before this land was claimed by the white man as their own, the land, for all intents and purposes, belonged to native Americans until so many of them were slaughtered at the white man's hand.
So whose land is it, really?
Like many of us, I've been pondering the vast injustices of "our land."
The intense hatred and engrained racism is borne of fear. And that fear is covered up by the pathetic political posturing of ruthless, alarmist, greedy, elitist, controlling miscreants, posing as heroic defenders of righteousness, so they can satisfy their obsessions with self, and have their way.
So much has been written about the horrible killing of George Floyd for the past three and half weeks. What is there left to say? Plenty. Hundreds of years of oppression, discrimination demands it.
How does a cop crush the life out of a man for more than eight minutes, seemingly without a care in the world, while being video-tapped doing it?
What makes Floyd's killing so unfathomable was that it wasn't the result of an impulsive, adrenalin-fueled, act of fear, where a cop fires his gun at an unarmed black man.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with Floyd's murder, acted like a wild animal, a jungle cat which, after it initially takes down a vulnerable Gazelle, firmly clamps it's jaws down on its prey's throat, patiently squeezing out its last breath.
Chauvin's act, coupled with the look on his face, was evil. Period. It was cold-blooded murder, which is how I described it when I first saw it on Twitter, shortly after Memorial Day.
When I watched it again, incredulous, like many of us, I cried.
On Tuesday, Minneapolis state police filed court documents, indicating it too is reviewing former cop Chauvin's actions.
Now, amidst the inspiring peaceful protests, demanding police accountability and serious reform, all across this land and the world, it feels like real change, real justice is finally possible.
Jesus Christ, who preached love, truth and forgiveness was crucified on a crude cross, to save man, according to God's plan. God's righteousness demanded such a price.
George Floyd, who once told a friend "I want to touch the world" and who mostly spread love and joy during his 46 years on earth, was also killed by hate, it seems, to save the rest of us.
(I wrote the piece below for Counter Punch a year and a half ago, amidst racial tensions surrounding a Mississippi senate race. It relates my experience with southern racism when I lived in the Magnolia State in the late 1990's.)
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