America by the Numbers, Hues and Ballots
2020’s economic woes, friends separated, and lessons unlearned, beckon us before drowning in thanksgiving for Black Friday, to reflect on who we’ve lost, what we’ve gained and the wisdom to recognize the difference.
Donald Trump’s election was not a Russian caused fluke. It was Republican Gerrymandering, Georgia’s Brian Kemp, and Conservative Caucasian males’ hatred for the female lesser of two evils.
It was an overreaction to an oral in the Oval flashback justification of American youth maimed and dying in Cheney/Wolfowitz forever oil wars.
It was Hoover’s faith in privatization relegating government to a corporate line item, though losing to FDR New Deal, becoming the smoldering infrastructure of Corporatism: selling out America from within.
It was failing to follow the money of Nixon’s Watergate to, Government is the problem impregnating Reagan’s fantasy, Welfare Queen.
It was allowing one embittered vengeful paleface Kentucky curmudgeon, cloaked in demagoguery to urinate on America’s, Checks and Balances.
It was young black men, understandably waiting weary for what their grandparents’ Democratic Party failed to deliver, and those Latinos taken in by marketing in-your-face Trumpism, concealing the secret’s in the sauce ingredients: stir-fried McCarthyism and Mussolini’s thumbs down.
2016 was less foreign hackers in our electoral process and more domestic Jim Crow reincarnation: closing darker hued polling places, tampering with voting machines, straining the ignored. Nonetheless we persisted.
Unlike, 2016, 2018 was a course correction, and 2020, a putting away of childish things — not, however, if we delude ourselves into believing America’s ill-gotten swamp gains is a one-man bog.
It is our insistence on habitually basking in the simplicity of simple answers to the complexities of United We Stand.
It’s our post moment of courage, mesmerized by media herd mentality, convinced by Fourth Estate descendants, to ignore hyperbole proving we could fit the Grand Canyon in the abyss separating real news reporting, from conjecturing talking heads gossiping about a current event or two, to the detriment of information that educates all, on all else.
Greater factual information providers have no Cronkite follower than this, that a standup news reporter wannabe network anchor, lay down his, Breaking News misleading leads, for the education of, just the facts ma’am, leaving showbiz to talented actors, rather than a reality show host hoisted up, by the laziness of repetition, masquerading as news worthy.
2016, 2018, 2020 reveal: it was us.
Prioritizing beyond mass appeal, what we count and ignore defines us:
- Glazed over by TV’s stagnant electoral votes, 123,000 new COVID-19 cases hardly noted
- 9.83M American COVID cases due in part to super spreaders, not wearing masks
- 237K COVID deaths due in part to unpresidential criminal negligence
- 545 refugee asylum seeking families dissected by our 45th president
- 37,085–37,878 Veterans experiencing homelessness
- 20 Veterans committing suicide, every day
Proving the only poll that counts, both Democrat and Republican candidates won more votes than their predecessors, which says more about We the Divided than either candidate.
Continuing to succumb to Red States v. Blue States manipulation yields self-victimizing. Victory, strength and wisdom come from unity of purpose, thinking for ourselves — but for and about all others.
If only we didn’t need to label everything, especially as the .1% of the top 1% goose us with that cattle prod every time we swipe a credit card. Because we out-number those whose existence depends on dividing us: pitting Right against Left is the means to end our balanced core values.
It is not radical when both Republican and Democratic Governors defy Trump to protect the integrity of our vote counting process. What’s radical is allowing corporate factory farms to decimate family farms.
It’s not radical to want affordable healthcare for everyone, everywhere, but denying millions this common good is radically anti-American.
Radicalism isn’t Left or Right, but people centered on the falsehood that another’s good, diminishes their opportunities.
Believing in protecting the planet isn’t radical, but Biblical.
Embracing Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ Rights and Gender Equality, is evidence of, Love thy Neighbor as thyself — not QAnon.
Corporate air polluters and Nestle’s attempt to privatize ownership of water is what’s radically inhumane, not society’s working together to guarantee all have clean drinking and bathing water, safe from coal ash and oil spills.
Healthcare pros and caregivers are radical Good Samaritans, but not wearing masks, recklessly irresponsible.
To survive transition and pandemic, best we choose peace over conspiracy and unity over violence, and for individual protection, familiarize ourselves with Public Services’ reality check: Public Schools, Post Office, Fire Departments, not defunded Police Departments but supplementing them with mental health professionals, united for the collective Public Good is Socialism.
It’s our right to worship a sore loser, but voting is a privilege.
Better we count like, 89-year-old veteran and share in post voting tears of 104-year-old, patriots.
