In December 2021, I went to the Frist Museum with a friend. I took a picture of the above because it resonated with me. What control do we really have over the forces hurtling us into an unknown future? We may initiate the forces, but our control is illusory and the forces will answer not to us, but to their own capricious will. This picture is by Johannesburg-based Mary Sibande who creates sculptures, photographs, and virtual reality installations that address inequities of race, gender, politics, and economics in postcolonial South Africa. Excerpt from the Frist Museum website. If you get a chance to see an exhibit of Sibande’s art, make a date. You won’t be disappointed.
“Color blind” is just a dog whistle for this century’s version of Jim Crow. If you have the choice of many, many educational institutions that were created for you, why are you concerned with the one educational institution created for the “Other”? The zero-sum mindset of white people is not sustainable. Their greed is not sustainable. White people always denigrate others for having a victim mindset, but no one panders to that mindset more than white people. If white people don’t get all the slices of pie, then they are the victim that screams the loudest.
We need to change the way we elect our representatives. Why have a years’ long process? Why not, like some other countries, have a short campaign season? Wouldn’t six weeks or even a month be time enough for any candidate to get their point across? And restrict the amount of money spent on any campaign and the donations from any one individual. Further, such donations must be from the candidate’s constituency. If outside money is found to be funneled through a constituent, then that candidate would be barred from seeking any office for a number of years.
What is going on now and in the past is insane. The amount of money spent on campaigning is obscene and it compromises the candidates who might, if not for the campaign donations, act in the best interest of their constituency. In this country, money always comes with strings attached. Get rid of the money and we, the citizens, might have a representative who might actually represent we, the people.
We have a candidate for president talking about a “blood bath” if he is not elected. When his defenders say that he was not talking about this country, they are either naive at best or lying to cover up the slip-up (could be intentional) at worse. You see, sometimes context matters and sometimes it does not. When the leader of a cult uses trigger words before a captive audience, the audience has no care for the context of the spoken words. What they have heard are the trigger words and their warped minds will supply the context. The cult leader and/or his handlers know this. And they hide behind the ambiguity of context.
Ms. Willis, the Georgia DA handling the former president’s election interfering racketeering case, shall remain on the case. Are the people of this country so devoid of entertainment options that they have endured the spectacle of the diversionary tactics of the former president’s lawyers and co-defendants for the past two months? Where are the justices who were elected or appointed to uphold the rule of law?
The Republican members of the 435 members of the House of Representatives of the 117th Congress should go down in history as some of the most non-intelligent, do-nothing, obstructionist, argumentative, divisive, fear mongering, amoral group of representatives (or should we say non-representatives as some of them claim their only guidance is from their god) of their constituents that have ever been seated. An aside, an observation–I saw a picture of the Republican leadership and I thought I was looking at cadavers. They looked like something had sucked all the life out of them. Death eating crackers, that old saying…at least those people were merely extraordinarily skinny…I never thought they were walking, talking, dessicated flesh-covered bones.
There are two questions that the former president asked that I want to answer. The first–Am I better off today than I was four years ago. I have a nuanced answer to that. Because of the tax breaks that the former president gave to the ultra rich and corporations, I am paying more in taxes. It began under him and has continued. If he were elected, he would do the same and on a grander scale, so I would never vote for someone who has dealt me a financial blow that benefited the wealthy and the corporations. So many other things are better–the middle class is benefitting from the current president’s initiatives which I have written about in prior Posts. Grocery prices are high, but that is corporate greed.
The most angst I feel is because of the former president’s hate filled, vile ad hominen attacks on all he and his followers consider “Other”. So, if the former president was not in the picture and the policies put in place by him were not still in effect, I would be doing much better than I was four years ago.
The second–What do I have to lose by voting for the former president? Another nuanced answer. My great great grandfather fought in the Civil War. He was young and he traveled over fifty miles to a state where he could join the Union Army. He served his time and was honorably discharged. He fought so that his descendants would be free from the yoke of slavery and economic deprivation. He didn’t see the benefit of his service during his lifetime as he died during the height of Jim Crow. My father and his brothers and other male relatives fought in WWII against Nazism and Fascism. A cousin was killed in the Viet Nam War fighting a war fought because some corporations thought there was oil to be had in the region and they wanted the profits from that oil. However, we were fed the propaganda that the Viet Nam war was about the spread of communism.
What do I have to lose? A flawed democracy where some ( too few) of my Ancestor’s convictions have come to fruition for his descendants. However flawed this democracy…that is where the full fruition of my great great grandfather’s hopes for his descendants is. The males in my family did not fight for their descendants to be subject to a dictatorship based in Nazism and Fascism and theocracy and a suspended Constitution. They were not losers. They actually believed that by their service that the blank check dangled for so long would finally be filled in and they could cash it. They fought so that I could have the freedom to live my life as I choose. A vote for the former president is a vote for tyranny. Tyranny will never have my vote.
For some reason, I re-read The Prince by Machiavelli. The following passage caught my attention:
A prince…should appear (emphasis added) all mercy, all faith, all honesty, all humanity, all religion.
Now we have those who would be “princes” who don’t even bother to hide their true colors–their disdain for mercy, faith, honesty, humanity, and religion. Instead of banning books, there should be a campaign to encourage people to read more books.
Because, at present, this country is again codifying ignorance. They say fashion repeats itself every twenty years or so and apparently ignorance has a cycle, too. Sad…the cycle appears to be less than 100 years and we see the same vicious, racist and sexist tropes repeated and codified.
...infinite diversity in infinite combinations…Mr. Spock Star Trek
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