How's It Going So Far?
the twenty first century in a cup of coffee
This century started out rough when some remarkably hateful people destroyed my least favorite structure in New York. Being the tallest didn't do much for me.
Then Dick Cheney twisted the president into a really poorly advised engagement in Iraq. Things got better after that, though. As the Bush years blended into the Obama years, you could see things get better. Maybe twelve good years is all we can hope for.
People started saying lock up Hillary. I never liked her, but I was pretty sure they wouldn't lock her up. I wasn't convinced she actually committed a crime. It's been a long time, and she's never been charged. I swear the next time somebody says "but her emails" after what Musk has been up to, I'm gonna slap them till they come to their senses. You can really dislike somebody without them being a criminal. Hillary is like that.
Then, this bumbling idiot from New York started saying crazy things about Obama and his wife. Even Mississippi peckerwoods were scratching their head on that one. They just wanted to hang the guy, not prove his wife was a man.
NBC intended "the apprentice" and "celebrity apprentice" as a joke because they've been making fun of Trump at the Rockefeller Center for 20 years. They figured it'd be like Honey Booboo or the 9000 lb sisters.
New York television executives can sometimes be too sophisticated for their own good. Americans became sincerely interested in the Honey Booboo family and the 9000 Pound Sisters, even though the intent was to make fun of them, and now it was happening with Trump.
People in New York knew that Trump was a joke as a businessman. New York papers were filled with his weird ventures and huge failures. The rest of America didn't know that, though. They thought the facade he showed on Celebrity Apprentice was real, so when he came down on that joke of a gold-colored escalator, they thought, "Hell, yeah," because they didn't know any better.
I ignored the guy till Charlottesville. I was still pretty sick and weak, but boy, was that a wake-up call. Young white boys, carrying Home Depot tiki torches, shouting, "You will not replace us," reminded me of newsreel footage from the Battle of Oxford before I was born, and I realized I'd better wake up.
It'd been twenty years since I was politically active. All my mentors and heroes were dead or in nursing homes. If I didn't start fighting, I'd be dead too. I had no political contacts. I had no business contacts or contracts to give. All I had was my words.
So, here we are. It's just you and me and my words. Things have gotten considerably more serious since Charlottesville. The boys with tiki torches are now working with the electric car guy to dip into your social security and destroy any agency that ever investigated him. He's been screaming, "You will not replace us," on Twitter since before he bought it. A white South African obsessed with white genocide. Imagine that.
At the quarter point of the twenty-first century, things don't look so great. Do you know what gives me hope, though? The Obamas and the Bushs sometimes grill hamburgers together. Their wives play pickleball and go shopping together. Dick Cheney's daughter is one of the loudest voices telling Trump to shut the hell up. A Puerto Rican bombshell is one of the loudest, most respected voices in the house.
This weekend I saw a sixteen year old white girl in Fondren wearing a RBG t shirt that said RESIST. Seeing that this glowing child knew who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was gives me hope. That she wore a Jackson Prep cap made me rethink what might be happening out in Flowood.
We don't get to choose these things. We can fight like hell to influence them, but there are no promises. I wonder if they make RGB shirts my size.
Great summation and of course I'm with you 100% on the conclusions you draw. Just one thing, when you slap the next idiot who mentions the emails, please record it. It'll go viral.