Ask not for whom the bell tolls

The president's de facto Muslim ban and the closing of the borders to foreign-born Muslims brings this poem to mind. Again.  

Twice this week. this poem has seemed a propos. First, it was during the ugly public squabble between Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and the US president and then again yesterday, with the announcement of the Executive Action on Immigration.

Truly, no one could have said it better than Donne, but let me ask you:

No man is an island, 
Entire of itself.
Are we an island America? Entire of ourselves? Needing no one, wanting no one, harming no one, seeing that no harm is done?

Every man is a piece of the continent.
A part of the main. 
America, a nation of immigrants, each of them a part of the main.....or perhaps not. I wonder, our dual citizens from seven faraway lands, are they not 'a part of the main'? Should they simply be 'washed away by the sea' as if they were of no import?

If a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less. 
We are the less when we cast them aside. Do we choose to be less? Out of fear? Ignorance? Rigidity? Bigotry? Spite?

As well as if a promontory were. 
As well as if a manor of thy friend's 
Or of thine own were: 
Are we not 'less' when we speak of our brothers and sisters in dismissive, ugly language? Are we not much less than or simply unequal to our values? 

Any man's death diminishes me, 
Are we not diminished? Thinking on this now, I wonder if this poem isn't also relevant to the whole ACA debate but more of that anon and elsewhere.

Because I am involved in mankind, 
We are involved in this, worse, we are implicated. We are implicated in the refugee crisis and we are morally implicated in our failure to act to solve it. 

Our faiths, all of our faiths, are founded on the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Are we doing as we would like to be done to? Do we care if we aren't? What of our great values by which we have always set so much store? 

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee.

The bell is tolling America, ask not for whom it tolls, it tolls for thee. 

The bell. I hear the bell. Do you hear it America? It's playing your song.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Miss me with that BS

Whenever I hear people talking blithely about their respect for the Office of the President  and the part that that respect plays in their attendance at or watching of the inauguration to end all inaugurations, I want to cuss, loud and long.

Help me to understand what this "respect for the office (of the president)" is. And after you've explained what it is, please tell me where it's been since January 20, 2009 cuz I'm pretty sure I ain't seen it in a while. 

To my mind, if you're respecting the office you also should be, at the very least, respectful of the office holder. This was not the case during the Obama years so I'm beginning to wonder whether respect rights only accrue if the office holder is Republican because for the last eight years, respect surely has been in very short supply.

And no, I am not saying that you can't challenge the office holder's thinking; his/her policy prescriptions; his/her comportment in the office if his/her behavior is egregious, but you sure as hell don't write a letter to an enemy state asking them to refuse a deal (and dancing damn close to breaking the law) deliberately and publicly undermining my guy and then later demand that I respect yours. Nuh uh. That ain't gonna work.

Is it "respectful of the office" to set on a course to deny people access to the polls (through which that office is obtained) on arbitrary or racially motivated grounds? Y'all been doing that for generations and yet now you want to tell me about respect? Remember North Carolina's Supreme Court voter ID decision?

Is it "respectful of the office" to gerrymander the hell out of districts, thereby making one side's victory assured irrespective of voters' wishes? Hell, that ain't even respectful of fair play, but now you want to tell me about respecting the office of the president? Nah. 

What part of meeting on Inauguration Night to collude (yeah, I said 'collude') to frustrate  every good faith effort at working across the aisle, can we describe as "respect for the office"? 

What part of rejecting a health insurance purchase mandate (which was an idea that came out of your own people at the conservative Heritage Foundation), translates to "respect for the office"? You reject your own idea to make a point about rejecting the president. Oh yeah, that sounds like R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Your guy (45) questioned the president's place of birth - steadily, loudly and mendaciously - for 90% of his presidency, but now you want my "respect for the office"? Yeah, y'all can kiss my entire Black arse with that respect talk. 

You demand "respect for the office" but you never respectfully allowed the outgoing president to perform the job the way he/she believed was best. You were free to argue or disagree, and you did. You were free to mount a vigorous debate against the officeholder's policies, and you did. But you lied, lied, lied and lied some more to sell your snake oils to the unsuspecting, ignorant masses. Claiming to "respect the office" while behaving in the ways in which certain groups have behaved these last 8 years, is anything but "respect" for either the office or the officeholder. Such "respect" is but an empty veneration of the title. Empty. Entirely devoid of meaning.

Frankly, I'm of the view that all the current calls for respect are a neat way of saying, "Respect us never mind how we disrespected you! That's all in the past". Well I, for one, am not here for it.

Respect is far more than just using the word in a sentence. Respect is a series of actions and little to nothing that has occurred in the last 8 years bespeaks respect, IMHO, so don't be expecting my respect any day soon. Respect is earned and your broke behinds ain't have a clue how to start earning.

In the meantime, 'respect'? For this guy? 

DJT tweet, on MLK weekend no less

Miss me with that BS. Please. 

Survival of the Fittest: the Trump Years

When next you hear someone claiming that "We will survive" or "I will survive" the Trump years because others have survived worse in the past consider this: 'we' certainly will survive but 'we' won't all make it to the other side. 

Here's how I know......

1. Thirty years ago, there was the piss poor HIV/AIDS response, and still we survived
HIV positive people survived Ronald Reagan's cavalier attitude to the early appearance of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Reagan himself is said to have laughed off the growing crisis and Mrs. Reagan turned her back on longtime friend Rock Hudson when he was diagnosed.

St. Ronnie and his administration laughed off the crisis, kinda like the President-elect laughs off climate change. The world was slow to recognize the gravity of the situation (then as now) or to begin working on treatment and prevention protocols. The greater 'we' certainly survived, but we haven't all made to the other side have we? The AIDS quilt is proof of that fact.

2. Thirty years later, there's Flint & Standing Rock, and we will yet survive
In Flint, as in Standing Rock, calls for a potable water supply have been shrugged off. In Flint, early alarms raised by pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Atisha were shrugged off as "data" (which apparently is a bad thing). It was more than twelve months before anything like an admission was forthcoming from the powers that be. That probably explains why there are now public officers facing felony charges.

Ultimately, the greater 'we' will survive the Flint crisis, but the children of Flint will not survive unharmed. Lead poisoning has lifetime consequences and we can be assured that they won't get the financial, emotional and/or educational support they will need. 

Thirty years from now, Flint's children will be struggling to find their way, Governor Snyder will be long gone, and we will all have conveniently forgotten what malfeasance and classist + racist Republican politics visited upon them.

So yes....
The greater 'we' will survive, but some of us won't make it to the other side: lives will be shortened, prospects will be dimmed or lost, families will be destroyed. 

We are entering an era of conservatism. Remember where the last one left us? 'Compassionate conservatism' my ass. There's an ox and a moron (oxymoron) if ever I heard one!

Did Black folk survive Jim Crow and slavery? Yes they did, but ask the good people at EJI (Equal Justice Initiative) how many people were murdered by mobs. How many lynching sites are they now trying to recognize? How many victims are they trying to remember and recognize? How many Neil deGrasse Tysons did we lose? How many Hadiyah-Nicole Greens?

Did Jews survive the Holocaust? Yes, they did, but ask any Jewish friend how many of their relatives didn't make it. How many Elie Wiesels did we lose? How many Anne Franks?

Did Native Americans survive the Trail of Tears? Yes indeed, but talk to an elder about the stories of loss. How many Joe Medicine Crows did we lose? How many Elouise Cobbells?

When we say "We will survive" we're also saying that a survival of the fittest approach is acceptable. It isn't; we're saying that entirely preventable human losses are acceptable. They aren't. 

Preventable losses are a criminal waste of human potential. We're in a compassionately conservative time. Brace yourself. This version of 'compassion' will leave some of us dead. We will not all make it. Sorry to be the harbinger of those sad tidings. 

Can you hear me now?

I see and hear people's pain over the outcome of this election, and as much as I too am pained, I want to scream, "Can you facking hear me now?!" It's a bizarre thing to be caught between Schandenfreude and grief.

If, as a nation, we hadn't made such a practice of marginalizing people and then dismissing their wailings; if we hadn't made such a practice of enshrining our bigotries in law and social practice, we might have avoided this pass. But no, being ugly to those not like us is what we do; it's who we are and so here we are. How're you liking the view so far?

There's plenty of talk about identity politics now in the post-election period but what is that exactly? Is that expressing concern for and crafting solutions to the problems of specific groups? Cuz that just sounds like 'politics' to me but I could be wrong about that. It seems to me that the only reason we would need identity politics is if we still believe that some identities are more equal than others......but I could be wrong. Identity politics is the name we've come up with for the politics that gives a shat about non-white people. 

Rather than attend to the needs of the working and middle classes broadly, politicians have been scrambling to attract one segment or another by offering goodies and benefits and subtly downplaying the legitimacy of other groups' demands. We run a zero sum politic that results in a nearly-zero-for-everybody-but-the-one-percent outcome and then act all surprised when folk retreat and vote along tribal lines? 

My assessment reamins that our troubles go back to our original sin (which I've already written is not slavery but White supremacy). Our refusal to treat every citizen/resident equally has had and will continue to have consequences but we are committed to our three monkeys approach....because it's working so very well!

We will not face the issue of race like adults. We run from the challenges like an African distance runner closing in on the finish line of a marathon: with a burst of incomprehensible speed, racing as if there were a gold medal awaiting us at the finish line. Hint: there ain't, but carry on.

As a nation, we're yet to accept that all citizens are equal. Oh we talk about "with liberty and justice for all" but those are empty words. They have absolutely no meaning and they never have in this society. When have we ever tried to live them out? Name me an era. We talk about them but we have zero interest in putting them into practice.

This nation started from a place of inequity, dismissal and oppression. The Naturalization Act of 1790 opened the door to immigration to "any alien" who was "a free white person". That's where America's ideas about who could be American began and while much has changed, we continue to weaponize our bigotries [i] every chance we get. 

And so now, when I see latte liberals [ii] sounding the alarum bells, beating their breasts and wailing about what these next 4 (8?) years will bring, all I really want to say is, "Welp, I guess you can hear me now huh? Shoulda heard me sooner. Shoulda stood up for the right thing sooner. And now, we can watch what little we've achieved be destroyed together. You comfy? You got popcorn? Cuz the show is about to start."

And if your takeaway is that I blame mealy-mouthed liberality for the pass in which we now find ourselves, you would be correct in your assessment. 

The responsibility for pushing back on ignorance was not the sole purview of POC, but it was left to them primarily. The responsibility for handling bigoted aunts, uncles, mothers and/or fathers was not POC's but you did not take it up. The responsibility to purge Town Councils, Boards of Education, PTAs and leadership councils of all kinds of gross racists and racialized policy-making was not ours alone but those best placed to repudiate hate simply did not stand up in large enough numbers. Rather than stand and call ugliness out, some of y'all chuckled quietly behind your hands and enjoyed the warmth and comfort of your privilege. Welp, I guess you can hear me now, huh? I guess you had to have some skin in the game before you felt a need to play. Well the court is all yours. Lemme see whatchu got. 
  

From http://bennorton.com/mlk-on-white-moderates/

It is, as MLK Jr first said in his Letter from A Birmingham Jail: the White moderates' approach to the slow liberation of minorities is more harmful to progress than the intolerance and angry resistance of the bigot. Why? Because the coddling of bigots made bigotry feel welcome rather than loathed and in the damp and welcoming space you gave it, it grew. And so, here we are. Now, that there are acts of ugliness everywhere, I guess you can hear me now huh? Cool!

Still, I don't expect your newfound awareness to redound to my benefit in the long run. When the shit hits the proverbial fan, I'm pretty sure you're gonna do what you have always done: retreat into the comfort of your privilege leaving me, my kith and my kin to fend for ourselves. Self-preservation and all that. I hear you Boo. 's OK.

Note to self: nothing much has changed since 1963. Many are still moderate and me & mine are still Black.

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[i] weaponized bigotry: public policy that enshrines bigoted beliefs into actionable steps to keep people of color locked into circumstances that limit their options and progress

[ii] Liberals who want me to believe that they and I share a philosophy but only as long as that philosophy ignores all notions of intersectionality. So should I wish to discuss my pocket book issues in reference to or in conjunction with my race, my gender, my sexual orientation, my gender identity or my national origin, the question will likely be asked, “Why you gotta bring into it??”

Democracy is work

What is this thing called democracy? How easy is it to create, to sustain? What are the factors that undermine it, strengthen it? These are the things I've been forced to think about since election night turned out way differently than I'd expected. 

Here are a few thoughts I've had about the fragility of democracy since that night. 

1. Every democracy is an experiment. Sometimes experiments fail, abysmally

We don't talk about this enough, nor do we respect this notion enough, but every democracy is a series of experiments. Every time we go to the voting booth, we are saying (and actively doing) something about democracy. We're taking control of it and staking our claim to it. When we fail to participate, we're doing precisely the opposite. When we shrug and walk away, we leave the door open to those whose version of democracy is anything but democratic. Those people are motivated. They show up every time. Those who have opposing views must be equally so.

It's tough to overstate how easy it is for this experiment in democracy to fail completely. With every tweet, every Thank You rally utterance, we are given further reason to question PEOTUS's suitability for high office, but we stumble on. We must. 

The American election process gives us an escape hatch in the form of so-called faithless electors of the Electoral College, but I'm pretty sure we won't use it (and, unsurprisingly, we didn't) but even if we had, then what? We would then have been in completely uncharted waters if the required 37 electors had said “Nay” to the Donald. 

And so we're a-stumblin' on because the people have spoken, though to whom and what exactly they said is an open question. 

The experiment continues. 

Whether the experiment will ultimately prove successful remains to be seen. 

2. Functional democracy? We have one of those?

This US democracy[i] may have been around for 240 years but it's not perfect; it never was, attestations to the contrary notwithstanding. After two centuries one might think that most of the kinks would have been worked out by now. Not so, mon cher! Equal rights? We're just not there yet. Equal justice remains a (largely elusive) dream; Civil Rights for people of color are barely 50 years old and are being undermined every year; equal marriage recognition is barely two years old - and could easily go away with the 'right' appointment to the SCOTUS; and the rights of LGBTQI people are still not completely protected under the law and such protections as do exist can be easily undermined; and prisoners are still technically enslaved and that's upheld by the Constitution. And that's after 240 years. 

Real democracy isn't like evolution, moving from one stage to the next, pushed on by necessity. No, democracy is art and with an unskilled painter, the outcome is no Mona Lisa. 

A relatively functional democracy is what the majority of Americans have always known. Because of that, none of us has any idea what it takes to establish this thing we call democracy from scratch; what it takes to create something from nothing. 

We've never had to consider that process before since we discovered our democracy in relatively good working order (hence the italicization of the word democracy) and generation after generation has mostly left it in slightly better order. Our job, generally, has been to 'perfect' the union not create it; mind the store not build a startup. Four years from now, things might be  a little different.

We look at places like Grenada, Syria, Iraq, Libya  and much of Latin America (places, coincidentally, where our government has had a hand in destabilizing or removing governments) and cast aspersions on the character and will of the people and their leaders to establish a lasting peace, a shared prosperity and a participatory democracy. We've had the temerity to judge others' efforts at establishing democracy when we haven't the first clue what it takes to create political and social order out of chaos. We have no idea what it takes to rebuild a failed democracy, especially one broken by an authoritarian, but we may be about to find out. 

Let's hope that our years of sneering at others don't come back to bite us in the arse.

3. When it comes to democracies, 'functional' ain't the default setting

We've been lulled into a false sense of security thinking that after 240 years, 'functional' was the default setting on our democracy and that all we had to do was (i) show up from time to time (even if halfheartedly); (ii) depend on the news media for factual information and all would be well. Those days are over. 'Functional' isn't the default. There is no default. If we want functional democracy, we're going to have to work for it. Hard. Every day.

We've presumed that what obtained yesterday - politically-speaking - would necessarily obtain tomorrow, because We Are America! We've assumed that what we were experiencing was the baseline; the low water mark. We've assumed that gains, once made, were permanent. Yeah, NO. 

My great takeaway from this election is this: democracy is not sustained by the disinterested. You have to show up. For every one just barely interested citizen, there are at least two or three passionately engaged folk whose aims are direct opposition to your barely interested aims, so the onus is on both sides to show up, and may the bigger side win. 

Those who object to growing freedoms are eternally vigilant, concerned as they are about the erosion of their standards of decency. They stand ever ready for a fight. Those who complain about big government and social programs - but never about the ginormity of the defense budget somehow - are registered to vote and show up at the polls without being asked or coaxed. Those who object to rights for LGBTQI persons; protections for criminals/suspects in police custody; recognition of rights for undocumented persons and all manner of other things, have no trouble getting involved. Democracy is a fight between ideas. If one side fails to show up, its ideas won't see the light of day. It's really that simple. Worse still, if one side fails to show up, there are no longer any guarantees of good faith actions on the part of the other side. cf North Carolina's legislature this past week.

Tomorrow, as people of faith are fond of saying, is not promised, yeah well, neither is democracy. Tomorrow's democracy is the work of today's participants in the democratic process.  If you want democracy tomorrow, you'd better show up today.

The election of 2016 has proven to me that we have casually and cavalierly presumed that democracy would continue without our express efforts to ensure same. We now have proof that it will not. 

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[i] The word democracy is italicized because so much that has occurred here in the last 240 years really is the antithesis of democratic. 

Held in the thrall of potent emotional forces

As I have tried to comprehend the election result, I came to a single conclusion: that Shakespeare was right. "There are [indeed] more things in heaven and earth, [sic] than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

Thinkers and writers everywhere have tried to make sense of the outcome, particularly in light of the polling data that led us all to believe another outcome was all but inevitable. In our efforts to process, much has been written about the White women's vote; the White working class men's vote; the Whites who make more than $70k vote. Writers have split the voters primarily by economic status (the list of articles on White working class male rage and dispossession is quite long) while ignoring the thing that to my mind makes the most sense to consider. It was, as far as I can tell, potent emotional forces (PEF's) that allowed voters to overlook behaviors and utterances that would, in a 'lesser' candidate, have been unoverlookable. It was those forces, that once again, got White men and women to vote for a clearly unqualified character with temperament and ethics challenges galore. It was PEFs that will keep us all from finding a firmer and more equal economic foundation for this nation.

So what are these forces? By my assessment there are at least three. First, there is the deep-seated fear of majority-minority status of Whites; an attendant concern about a shortage of resources and a (perfectly reasonable) worry about allocation of same should such a shortage actually occur. Second, is a willingness to tolerate the intolerable if that ‘intolerable’ targets some group other than my own. Third, there’s plain old odiosity*. The basket does indeed, contain some deplorables. Who knew?

PEF #1: Becoming a majority of the minority

The real psychological challenge isn’t the majority part of the maj/min status, it’s the min. 

White folk are generally very coy about racism. Many practice it on a daily basis in ways small and large, but like to pretend to be either colorblind or otherwise immune to the effects of supremacist thinking, training and a lifetime’s worth of subliminal inculcation. Never mind any and all pretense to the contrary, the current majority is well aware of the taxes that it regularly levies against POC. That knowledge alone is a sufficiently potent force that it may have driven some to vote perhaps against their own economic interests but definitely in favor of their supremacist interests. Their worry is simple: will I be treated in minority the way I’ve treated others currently in the minority? It’s a reasonable worry . There’s no telling what folk will do when the equation flips. No one can soothe frayed nerves or offer any guarantees, which, I imagine is why many voted as they did. Heaven knows, it wasn’t the Don's clearly articulated plans for dealing with income inequality or any of America’s other ailments.

PEF #2: The intolerable is tolerable if the intolerable befalls others and benefits me.

Some voters made the simple calculation that they could afford to ignore the candidate’s (now president-elect's) blatant disrespect, bullying, a history of mismanagement of companies and the willful harm done to contractors only because (i) in their heart of hearts they wish they could do (and get away with) the very same kinds of acts or (ii) they care not one whit for anyone other than themselves. The vote wasn’t about country, state or county. Nope. The vote was wholly self-preservative, and was made with the knowledge that such self-preservation would come at their neighbors’ expense. Such is the nature of the colonizer mindset I suppose - me first and if you have to die for me to be first then whoopsie. I’ll shed a tear over your grave and remember you fondly or I’ll demonize you in death and claim it was your own fault. Either way, I win.

These voters might be separated into two groups: the It’s-the-Economy-Stupid Group 1 (who don’t care about the President-Elect’s ethical and business failures) and the It’s-the-Economy-Stupid Group 2, who are too poor to care about niceties like common decency. 

Group 1 (the I-don’t-give-a-shits) has strong economic concerns, to wit, their taxes. These voters are simply not interested in any other considerations. A candidate can be as odious as he wants to be, if he’s going to positively affect their economic situation, that’s all they’re interested in. The rest is of no import. This explains why there are so many Trump voters whose average income is $70,000+. These folk don’t even notice Trump’s odiosity quotient, because nothing is of greater significance than their taxes, their pocket books, their stock portfolios. Them. If I end up brutalized in the street as a consequence of forces unleashed by their candidate, well, that’s my problem ain’t it?

Group 2 (the I’m-too-poor-to-give-a-shits) is too far gone economically to be overly concerned about integrity, decency, politesse or the rise of the alt-right. At the end of the day, these two groups’ concerns about problematic behaviors were insufficient to resist the draw of the economic argument (such as it was) being made to them. For them, the voter calculus came down to either “Where’s my (refund) check and how much is it?” or “How soon is the coal plant gonna reopen? When do I get my job back?”. 

This “Me and mine first” thinking has been at the heart of every single act of brutality in this nation’s history. America’s history isn’t past, it’s present continuous. And it’s continuing even as we speak. Some folk are lucky enough to be untouched by it, I suppose, but those people are always very few in number. Such is the power of politics. Whether we sign on or not, the winning party’s policies touch us.

  

PEF #3: Is the hired killer any more odious than the one who hires him?

If, as a voter, you were able to put your economic concerns above the real human decency challenges that the former candidate, now president-elect, presented day after day, then you may well be precisely as odious as the man you have chosen as your leader. This is not really surprising, bands of marauding jackals are not typically led by lambs.

The voters now out "Heil Trump"ing; hijab snatching; swastika painting and generally making others miserable are indeed held in the thrall of some pretty potent emotional forces, the most potent of them all: White supremacist emboldened hate. Let us not pretend. Let us also not pretend that there aren’t way more of them than any of us might have previously guessed. And they, their anger, their guns and their righteous odiosity are  a potent force with which we are going to have to deal for the foreseeable future.

Much has been written about the pain of middle America; about the anger of White men (and by extension, their wives, partners, mothers and sisters who also voted for 45 in droves) but what has not been said is that this is the very group that has, from time immemorial, benefited from the pain of others.

The reality is that ever since Christopher first Columbus'ed his way over here, the forebears of today's angry White voters have been reaping where they did not sow; planting on land they did not own; and building a nation with bricks they did not themselves fire in the kiln. 

Angry middle America was granted all manner of state and federal benefits, all of which were routinely denied and are still being denied to people of color. 

In the South, the forebears of today’s angry White voters grew rich on cotton they neither planted nor harvested off the labor of human beasts of burden whom they barely fed. So while author after author has demanded that the world acknowledge and feel their pain today, we have heard little about the pain of the oppressed groups who have largely remained oppressed; the oppressed whose boats have little risen, no matter how high the tide. White male anger is nice and all, but it ain't the only anger out there. But as always, theirs is the only anger or pain that matters. The earth screeches to a halt in the face of White pain and dispossession.

And so, here we are. 

From all indications, America is set to begin yet another era of dancing on the bones of others and expecting to feel no consequence. That right there is a whole other essay, but I'll leave that for another day, month or year maybe. 

At the end of the day, I refuse to accept that this election was based purely on economics. It was not. In the election of 2016, economics and decency were in a barroom brawl and voters picked their sides. Now, we must own the sides we chose and clean up the mess our choices will surely leave behind.

*Odiosity: hatefulness

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 [JPC1]It is also a long-standing worry.  Thomas Jefferson, in his "Notes on the State of Virginia" argued that emancipation of African people would require providing us separate land and inviting Whites from elsewhere to come to the US, because in his view, "Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race."  The first part of this remark speaks to odiosity element, while the latter represents the fear Whites had of Black reprisals.  This was 1784, just 8 years after the Declaration of Independence. 

Thoughts on the second presidential debate

I don't know about anybody else, but the second presidential debate of the 2016 campaign  triggered a profound feeling of hopelessness. I watched an experienced (you don't have to like her experience to agree that she has it) woman 'debating' an imbecile and it looked like my life on steroids.

To be clear, I've not debated many imbeciles but the sense of being more than capable but that you're just missing that one thing - some particular appendage; the right skin color; the right nationality; the right 'look' - some f*cking thing over which you have zero control, that'll put you over the top? Yeah, I know that feeling all too well.

I'm not the smartest person I know, but I'm good at what I'm good at, and I gotta tell you, I've had more than a couple of interactions that were similar to what I saw a few weeks ago. Watching Sec'y Clinton basically re-litigate my own life was deeply disturbing. It just showed me (as if I needed showing) how completely out my control my world (the world?) is. It was depressing. Deeply depressing.

Mornings like this, I wake up knowing that my professional life is over. When a man of Donald's obvious incompetence, moral turpitude and overall stupidity is being held up by even a single person a some kind of model? When his millions - largely inherited - are the measure of his 'success'? Yeah, I don't have a f*cking shot. I know why people drink and I know why people act out. I know why the caged bird pecks out eyes. F*ck singing.

I don't trust Hillary, everybody knows that, but at least she's intelligent, does her damn homework, and is ready for the job - even if I think the war with Russia drum is already beating. But Donald, Donald is the quintessence of knowing nothing but having ever been given the benefit of the doubt. White male winning. Dumb as a box of nails and as useful when there's no hammer in sight, but winning and grinning anyway.

Donald is just like f*cking Columbus: lost no arse but receiving acclaim five f*cking centuries later for having 'discovered' the New World. And I, little brown me, with my $50 words, an accent and a vagina, think I could have something to add to the world? Not this century.

It's going to be hours before I purge this from my system.

History repeats: Miss Universe '78

This article was originally written on 4/30/2016. Like various other pieces I've written, I changed my mind about sharing, deciding that the idea was deeply flawed. I'm publishing it now because apparently, the idea wasn't flawed at all.

Miss Universe 1977: Janelle Commissiong

In 1977, the first Black Miss Universe was crowned. She was Janelle Penny Commissiong and she was a West Indian, like me.  A year later, in '78, the new Miss Universe was Miss (Apartheid-era) South Africa. I remember it like it was yesterday and it's nearly forty years ago. I remember hearing the announcement, being jarred by the juxtaposition and filing it away in my mind never thinking I'd need to refer to that incident again. At the time, it really didn't signify anything. At the time it was just a, "Huh, how weird is that" kind of thing. No more. I understand it all too well now. 

Until fairly recently, I hadn't really thought too long or hard about President Obama's successor but in light of the way the race is shaping up, that 1978 Miss Universe suddenly seems relevant. What, if anything, does this political equivalent of Miss Aprtheid-era South Africa portend?

For the last seven years, certain voices have worked assiduously to make sure that we knew who the enemy was; who it was who hated America; who was trying to 'fundamentally remake America’ in ways that were unamerican. Over these last years, those and other voices have also eschewed the more delicate approach of using dog whistles and have gone straight for bellowing the dog's name at the top of their lungs. Now that the dog is coming galloping at us, and folk are getting a little nervous. The dog is very large and seems unpredictable, rabid even.

Until not too long ago, I had thought that the successor to the first Black president of the US would be someone reasonable. I'd thought that after eight years of cerebral leadership, we'd move on to another clear-thinking person. I thought that both sides would field candidates who would talk to the populace as though we were intelligent, informed voters. Boy was I wrong. Instead, it's looking increasingly like it's going to be another first Black Miss Universe crowning an Apartheid-era Miss South Africa situation. 

Miss Universe 1977 crowns Miss Universe 1978

November 12
So now, here we are. Where exactly is 'here' I'm not sure. I'm still waiting for my intestines to settle. I've wept, for myself, for this nation, for the planet. And now, I wait to find my footing in this Brave New Trumpian World. Stand by. Be ready. Brace yourself. More to come.

This kind of outcome is not new. It's happened before and until we get some things sorted out, it'll happen again. And again. And again. It's just a restoration of the 'natural order of things'. Carry on.