American History in Trump’s Rearview
Mama said there’d be days like this. What she didn’t tell me is the days would become weeks and the weeks months and the months years. Welcome to the Trump Era. You might have noticed that lately I’ve steered away from politics. Not that I’m not paying attention to the nasty little tweetstorms, the mounting evidence of impeachable offenses, the constant and blatant lying and bullying, all those now familiar attributes of this petty little man. What more can you find to say about him? What more can you find to say about his Republican apologists? What more do you want to say to half your fellow Americans who think the guy is making the country great. Again. The facts are in, the jury has already made up its mind, the President might have acted in an unseemly manner, but hey, nothing impeachable. So far.
What I suspect, deep down in my roiling bowels, is this is how it feels to be black in the USA. Oh sure, we emancipated y’all, but hey, don’t start getting uppity now. Don’t figure on voting or getting paid equally. Freedom won’t make you free, boy. Or, maybe this is how it feels to be a woman. Virginia just flipped blue and ratified the equal rights amendment which provides the last state needed to certify that women are equal under federal law. Course, the Justice Department claims the statute of limitations has expired and now all those 38 states need to start over. And some of them have already voted to keep women unequal. Equality isn’t always equal, girl. Some of us are more equal than others. Or maybe this is how it feels to be a Moslem in 21st century America, the country supposedly founded on religious freedom. You know, if your religion is Protestant. If the God of some folks isn’t the God of the majority, well, can you say Heathen? Maybe if you’re an immigrant you got a first hand dose of the Welcome Wagon. Work for us, get paid peanuts, live in the shadows. . Maybe the First People know how it feels, right from the get-go, everything they had taken away, stolen, no apologies, to the victor belongs the spoils, all that claptrap. And quite possibly this is how the country feels to the LGBT community. Or to any minority. Or to the poor. Or to the Japanese interns in the POW camps. Or to any people who think different, look different, talk different.
We the People, the preamble states, but it doesn’t make it clear who We are or who the People are. Lately, a lot of us are learning it isn’t us. What we ought to learn is plenty of folks have known this all their lives. Maybe Trump and his apologists and sycophants are teaching the rest of us a valuable lesson. We the People, maybe it’s time to include everyone.
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Tags: American History Revisited, That Not So Shiny City on the Hill