Season of Betrayal

Do You Recall Your Last Little Bit Of Normal?

This is mine.  Karaoke Night after werk on Wednesdays.

The Blue Note Bar & Grill, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

The year 2020 has been completely out-of-focus.  I hollered on the Twitter regarding the fact of a census and an election in the same year.  Has it ever occurred like this before? I do not think so.

Americans are used to things working.  When they quit working, we are used to experts coming in to fix things.  That is not what is happening for us now.  Our people are without leadership.  We are cut adrift from our government.  American Oligarchy is on the march in our nation.  Our options, during a pandemic, seem to be limited.  When we protest, our own government steps in to brutalize us.

Donald Trump is the president, but he is mentally incompetent to serve us.  We know he isn't governing.  We know that he is gutting our clean air and water protections; we know he is selling our national heritage to The One Per Cent.  We know that he enjoyed watching George Floyd die on the national news.  We strongly suspect that "We're doing a feintessstick jaaaab" killing Americans.

                         The sense that the president of these United States is looking to kill as many of us as he can in order to remain in office and out of federal prison is palpable.  None of his golf outings dissuade us. He is spectacularly nonchalant regarding the death tolls, the suffering, the fear.  None of it seems to penetrate his insufferable rhinoceros hide of self-interested graft, nor his overweening pride in his imaginary accomplishments. Media outlets are congratulating themselves for describing his faracial grasp of facts and reality as lies. We no longer expect an "All The President's Men" moment from them.  The destruction of American democracy has become like the weather--everybody's talking about it, but none of the people in power are doing anything about it.  There are a few voices like mine, who ask what the Speaker of the House is really doing about this constitutional crisis.  She talks a good game, but the sky is still falling.  Sometimes you have to wonder precisely how unwilling the Old Guard of the Democratic Party is to give way to the Next Wave of young lawmakers.  The Squad and their supporters are asked to "keep your heads down," and "let us handle it."

That is not working for our nation.  The people we are depending upon could not live on $600 a week if their lives depended upon it. I believe that is why the Dems let it lapse.  We know the Republicans were looking to starve us into submission from the beginning.  What would it take for Nancy Pelosi to call an emergency session of the House and craft a list of demands for Mitch McConnell? What if they kicked and screamed and sat-in and news blitzed until America was GREAT again?

 Clearly, it isn't gonna happen.

The people giving you the big countdown to Election Day are relatively secure.

You may be like me--not sure how or where or IF you'll be living by November 3.  

Our elected officials seem to be completely out of touch with this reality, except for Sherrod Brown and a few others.  We know lawmakers of color know what time it is.  Nobody is listening to them. The most effective of them get death threats--and very little support from the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.

The Congressional Black Caucus has faded back into the the marbled veins of the Capitol, indistinguishable from the status quo.  Their police reform bill turned out to be a paper tiger.  All Karen Bass got for her leadership was doxxed for the Communist Party and the Church of Scientology.  She appears bewildered and embarrassed and ineffective now.  I can't even be mad.  I had hoped the CBC would surprise me this time.  Their agenda has been the same since I was a child.  The players have changed, but the game is as insular and Beltway-bound as ever.  Black people largely perceive the Caucus as black politicians politicking among themselves.

Will This Season Of Betrayal Ever Be Over?

How will this waking nightmare end?  Donald Trump's ability to pivot and lie has devolved below that of a fully functioning toddler.  Anyone else in his position would have been excused and escorted out of the People's House before the second year of his term expired.  Americans can no longer count upon any of their hallowed institutions to function as they were designed.  Our elected leaders are letting this happen to us.  We cannot seem to impress upon them 'the fierce urgency of now.'

The infrastructure of our very lives is crumbling away beneath us, and the people in charge are conducting business as usual.  They don't really seem to care what happens to us outside of policy positions.  Maybe they do, but the millstones of Congress do grind slow. The fact that it takes forever and a day for those positions to be of service to the people has not really hit home to the average lawmaker, be they Democrat or Republican.

We are headed for calamity.  It has reached some of us much sooner than others.  When people who have NEVER faced utter destitution have to look ruin in the eye on a national scale, what will happen?  Who will emerge as a leader?  

So many Americans face a future so uncertain as to be panic-inducing.  When people have to beg on social media for their neighbors not to call the cops on them in the midst of a panic attack, what is to be discerned?  How far has the American ethos deteriorated?

We can't seem to pull together and work out a plan of salvation.  For the first time in my life, I am afraid of the future.  For all of us.