Optimism Is A Beautiful Thing
We have so much on our collective plate and as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Thinking back to some of the clear signals directing us to our present destination can be seen clearly now, though the compass points were always clearly defined. There are always events and situations which lead us both directly and indirectly to our current location. We can take the meandering path, or we can go as the crow flies. Sometimes that choice is dictated by whether or not the road is blocked, or if there even IS a road. If there is no road, then perhaps we have to build one. We’re human, and it is understandable to make wrong turns, run into dead ends, and even drive the wrong way down a one way street. This is how we learn. By making mistakes and then by rectifying those mistakes, right?
We hope and wish for many things in our lives. Things like good health, prosperity, happiness and safety for ourselves and those we love. Most of us work long and hard, for a great number of years. If we are lucky, some of us attain safety and are able to maintain our health. Fewer of us attain happiness, and even fewer, prosperity.
I’m not saying that all of those things are unattainable. In fact, I believe all of those things are quite attainable, with the added bonus of the time to enjoy them and the space to explore deeper and more profound levels of existence. If that is truly the desired outcome, then the bricks must be laid for that foundation. Peace, seems to be the most unattainable, if we continue on this all too familiar path.
Falling back and depending on the things that have not worked in the past will not move us forward. As everyone has read, or say they have read Einstein’s quote - “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”, it doesn’t seem as though the words have penetrated. Falling back into blue v. red, will in fact move us much further behind. When we support people and methodologies which have proven themselves to be ineffective to the agenda of the people, yet we continue to do so in fear of an uglier spectre, we are only defeating ourselves. To continue to believe the deceptive words dripping from the mouths of people who we know truly believe in the opposite of what they say, we are actively choosing to remain in the comfort of our womb-like cells; prisoners of either the blues or the reds. There is no room for a green or any other colour of the magnificent rainbow of possibility.
In 2008, the blue people secured the ‘victory’ of electing the first black president of the United States. This was heralded as a miraculous and gigantic step by people all over the world. USA was seen as taking it’s place amongst other countries who had already elected women as Presidents or Prime Ministers, or who already had large percentages of women and/or people of colour with seats in Parliaments, General Assemblies or Senates. The election of a black man was seen as a gigantic leap for the USA; which had a major issue electing a Catholic, let alone a Jewish person to the highest office in the land. Yet, it was of course, also assumed that because he was a member of a ‘racial minority’, that he would come to office with a different set of principles and a fresh perspective. At least by quite a number of people. He was highly intelligent and his manner of speech was smooth. He made the blue USA feel good about itself. He made them feel secure; packing a well respected Ivy League education and having some history around the fringes of political organising and semi-believable ‘cool’. He had a bright sunny smile and a classic all American family. He was a perfect choice. He ticked all the right boxes, AND he was melanated!
So the people rejoiced and took a deep sigh of relief. They’d replaced the previous red dynastic choice who at the time of the end of his second term had embroiled the country in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan, in what is was known as the ‘War on Drugs’, and Iraq because we were intentionally led to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 horror. We now know (some of us knew then), that the Iraqi invasion had nothing to do with 9/11, and that Bush Jr. was cleaning up after Bush Sr.’s inability to destroy the rogue Hussein, who was once a USA poster boy of cooperation (or the ultimate tool) during the Iran-Iraq war, and was NOT on the list of public enemies, until… he wasn’t anymore. Bush also stoked the flames of evangelical christians, by supporting ‘faith-based’ initiatives on everything from social services to education to food accessibility. Basically trying to create a religious tier, which in addition to not paying taxes if they were affiliated with a church; would receive federal grant money in exchange for taking the weight of the care of the people off the tax table, and therefore redirecting it to the military~what else would they do with it besides maybe giving themselves raises?
So all hail St. Obama. He who would simply by occupying the oval office; salve all of America’s wounds. He would, in one sweeping move, erase centuries of racial injustice. With his soaring intellect, he would right the wrongs of governmental abuse, balance the budget, create a healthcare system that would allow access to medical treatment and diagnosis without people having to sell their homes or liquidate their savings; much like any other civilised country. Hooray!!!
The blue people didn’t take red America into consideration. Or did they? Didn’t they understand that the red people are overtly racist, (as opposed the the covert blue people), and would NEVER allow a black man to lead them? Didn’t they understand that every possible method to block the few things he did try to implement, would be employed against him? Did they know, but not care, as it was the cosmetics of the thing that truly mattered? We’ll never really know I guess.
Yes, it was a long day of rest. An eight year Sunday if you will. A Sunday where people enjoyed pots of coffee and omelettes and mimosas while reading the funny papers and the arts & leisure section. Where the populace experienced a new feeling of respect and camaraderie on the world stage. Watching the news, it became a pleasure to see world leaders smile and shake hands with the USA's president of colour, and the people were proud to hear him speak on their behalf. Not all the people of course. There were the reds who despised him and let him know via photoshopped images of he and his wife as monkeys (an old standby), name calling, and a sharp uptick in racial attacks throughout the country.
Police violence against blacks increased, and murder by police continued to climb during Obama’s administration. Yet somehow, it was never addressed. Even when asked directly about the murders of Sean Bell and his two friends on the eve of his wedding. This was during a visit to NYC where the incident had occurred. His response to questions from the press? - “Sean Bell's death reached into the presidential campaign. Barack Obama, visibly ill at ease with the subject, tersely advised that, “The judge has made his ruling, and we're a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down." Obama then counseled that “resorting to violence...is completely unacceptable and counterproductive." - Obama on the Murder of Sean Bell
Keep in mind that while the police were gunning down regular ordinary run of the mill black people, he DID answer the clarion call of his Harvard friend, Henry Louis Gates in 2009.
Mr. Gates, returning from a trip abroad, arrives home and discovers that the door to his home was jammed. Fair enough, it happens. With the assistance of his driver, they attempt to force the door open. So Mr. Gates decides to try and break in to his own home. A neighbour sees a man of colour trying to break and enter a house. They obviously have never spoken to the man who lived there, or they might have recognised him, no? So the good neighbour calls the police. They arrive and do what the police do. None of the Cambridge police recognised him either apparently even though he is a familiar figure in the City, around the campus, on Public Television and in the papers occasionally. No one recognised him. Words ensue, tempers flare and the inevitable ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ flows from Gates’ mouth.
Now, unless international flights are allowing people with no identification to fly, he HAD to have his I.D. on him. THIS episode is the one that Obama chose to speak about. The ‘horrific’ and unfair racial profiling of his Harvard mate. The mate who could have simply shown the police his Harvard I.D., which would have had his address on it, especially as the house was most DEFINITELY owned by Harvard. End of story. THIS is the way we saw how committed he was to dealing with race. The infamous ‘Beer Summit’. Yeh.
He never really addressed the big issue until 2016 - the end of his two-term presidency; then to state that police murders of unarmed black men is ‘not just a black issue’. Stating this at a funeral/memorial service held for 5 police officers who were killed by a sniper, angered at the number of blacks killed by police. The World is Watching and Wondering
Naturally, from there, the people elected Trump aka - Twitler, Cheetolini, The Orange One. Tapping into the red people’s need to avenge themselves, and to fix the country by putting their vision of god at the helm. To give a revival to the still not quite dead Jim Crow. To approve and applaud the fact that after eight years of life under a black president, the only things that had really changed were a cosmetic lift to healthcare insurance; and that we had gone from wars in two countries, to wars in SEVEN countries. At the end of his administration, the USA defence budget was at over $520 billion.
Then along came Bernie. A man of unquestioning integrity. A man who has had boots in the struggle since he was a student. Who has supported civil rights and who marched and was arrested with the folks in Chicago in 1963. He worked with the young people at CORE (Congress for Racial Equality). and continued when CORE and SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) collaborated, while he was attending University in Chicago. He has always been an advocate for the people; ALL of the people.
He has worked on and stood for all the important issues. From bank reform to anti-gmo, to fighting racial injustice, for a truly equitable healthcare system and better educational opportunities. He has fought to get a real agenda going to fight climate change/disaster, and most importantly, he is a lover of peace.
Unfortunately, the push to continue the ‘appearance’ of American enlightenment in the eyes of the world by trying to elect a woman (apparently ANY woman) to the oval office, derailed the chance of getting the better choice. A long season of bullying and desperation ensued. Celebrities told us we were stupid if we didn’t vote for the dnc selected vagina. That we were traitors to the cause if we didn’t support her. That if she lost, it would be all our fault. That it was ‘her turn’, as if it were a game. Even though they played dirty. They lied about Bernie and smeared his history. They painted his anger as a sign of senility, when that anger was well placed and justified and HONEST. All of that in order to elect a ‘woman’ who has proven that the strap-on she has worn as first lady, telling us that even though her husband was the one who had been elected, that their term would be a ‘co-presidency’; through her carpetbagger years as a Senator from New York; through her years as Secretary of State, where she and Obama collaborated with France’s ex President and national horror Nicholas Sarkozy. They proceeded to destroy Libya, a country with the highest standard of living on the continent of Africa; BRUTALLY assassinated it’s leader (who’d been planning an African bank with a trading currency based on gold), and plunged the country into an open-air slave market. “We came. We saw. He died.” - Hillary Clinton.
Well, she lost.
We can all remember the Trump years, which included a sharp rise in public Neo-Nazi activity, proud boys, continued school shootings, continued police killing of blacks, his general ignorance of public policy and total lack of understanding of how NATO actually functions. The blue people were humiliated every time he spoke in public. Unbelievably, he somehow managed to appoint THREE justices to the SJC. The world’s journalists complained that he was impossible to translate because his speech patterns made no sense. His followers compared him to Christ and said he was sent by god.
Then came Bernie again, but instead of learning any lesson; we again allowed him to be trashed. This time the most heinous blow came from Elizabeth Warren. The blond ‘Cherokee’ with the high cheekbones, who refused to meet WITH a delegation of Cherokee women, who had travelled to Massachusetts JUST to speak with her. She just didn’t have the time. She who not only couldn’t be bothered to show her face at one of the most important Indigenous protests of this century, Standing Rock; to show solidarity, or give support. Her strongest virtue being that of a fence sitter… Until the issue has been resolved, then chiming in with the expected false outrage.
“I don’t know how anyone could watch the news and not be horrified by what’s happening at Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota,” wrote Senator Elizabeth Warren in a Facebook post on December 4. But Senator Warren kept her horror and outrage to herself until she could reap the maximum benefits from it.
“For months, the Standing Rock Sioux and thousands of others have opposed a pipeline that many believe risks contaminating the tribe’s water supply,” Warren said, without acknowledging that for months, Senator Warren failed to support the Standing Rock Sioux and thousands of others to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.” - Warren does her thing.
Warren accused Bernie of an ultimately ridiculous and unbelievable statement. Saying that he ‘whispered’ to her (during the 2020 dnc primary) that, “She could never become president, because she is a woman.” Even Bernie’s enemies knew that was a lie. A blatant and pathetic one at that.
Still, the people chose the tried and true blue road, and now we have Biden who is ONE YEAR younger than Sanders, yet Sanders was considered too old. Even though Bernie has more vitality, passion and genuine ethics than Biden ever did or will. Even though Bernie REALLY WANTS to fight for all those things the people SAY they want. The people preferred to follow the blue brick road. Biden, who was a proponent of anti-bussing, who was on board with lying to the people about Iraq and who WROTE the ‘Crime Bill’ which has hundreds of thousands of black men in prison for selling Marijuana, and which gave the police impunity to stop, arrest, detain and apparently shoot to kill unarmed people of colour. This was the people’s choice. Coupled with the VP, yes, a woman of colour; who is responsible for the intentional detaining of non-violent and even INNOCENT prisoners well past their release dates. The state of California would benefit from their labour. Throw away the Key
Now, dealing with whatever stage the pandemic is in, we are saddled with a military budget of over $800 Billion, out of control inflation, NO action on Climate Change, women are about to take a huge hit if the SJC succeeds in reversing Roe v. Wade, we are still killing people in long forgotten or ignored war zones, we are in a new and dangerous place where our journalists are being censored and disappeared (leaving us with news readers and mouthpieces), and we are teetering on the brink of WWIII. Somehow, continuing to support either blue or red seems to only get us further away from where we SAY we want to be. Not only is the nation not taking one step forward, but it is taking FIVE steps backward.
Radical change requires radical action and choices. A nation cannot and will not move forward with ANY agenda that includes taking ALL of the people with it, by continuing walking the same path and choosing the same people. I understand that the familiar can be comforting, especially after a huge shake up; but that’s not really the case here. There was no shake up under Trump. Simply an unveiling. The USA is the only ‘secular’ nation to mention god on its currency. This is since 1955. USA has ALWAYS been steeped in racism and an apparent ease with genocide, and its own personal view and ‘relationship’ with Jesus. That is nothing new. The unveiling of it however; the bright shiny overhead light on how deep and wide these feelings are, indeed shook some people to their core. That much was true, however, believing that these monsters appeared out of thin air is a fairytale.
The USA prides itself on ‘pulling itself up by its bootstraps’. The nation of self-made people. The adventurers who ‘tamed’ a continent. Land of the free and home of the brave. Well, the path the nation has long been on and is currently still following, is circuitous and only serves to make sure the people spend so much time treading water, with a new manufactured crisis every day, a new enemy, a new threat, even as the old ones are piling up in the background; that the people will never reach the shore. We watch a national tennis match between blue and red, while the issues on the table do not change, mitigate or disappear. They do however multiply. As they do so, the other side promises to ‘fix’ those issues, yet, they never do. There is no need to do so as long as the people accept only two choices, and both of those choices benefit by maintaining the status quo. As long as the people are afraid to try something new, to take a risk; life will be the same as it ever was, until inaction and fatigue from constantly treading water, will allow the sea of mediocrity and hypocrisy to drown us all.
I’m optimistic. I hope perhaps if we do NOT blow ourselves to bits, that maybe the 2024 election might look a little different. That the people might just be sick of war enough to consider making a change. That this time the women just MIGHT burn down the SJC, which would certainly get people’s attention. I sincerely hope that something gets serious attention on the healthcare front, as we have already been warned that more pandemics are on the way. It would be AWESOME to see people demanding less money spent on the military, which is used to insure that we have the power and the might to destroy the world ten times over; and maybe using that money to create transit systems that actually function and might be preferable to taking an hour commute to and from work every day. Some of that military budget money could be used for childcare or education. Race relations? Well let’s not stretch the realms of possibility. Though it would be REALLY awesome to see some progress on gun control. In Colorado, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Indiana, a person with a mental illness can legally purchase a gun! Guns for Everybody
Mostly, it would be fabulous to elect a leader who takes Climate Change and pollution seriously. Currently it is a tagline. Lip service, spoken at the end of a long list of issues; many of which (like war, oil, and gas) are the main contributors TO Climate Change.
It would be nice… That’s about as far as my optimism will take me though. I hope your optimism will take you further. At least a few steps down a different path. However, beware of Lucy and her football. Charlie Brown fell for it every time too!