Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 6:02 PM
In 1915, D.W. Griffith made the landmark film, The Birth of a Nation, a silent 3-hour film that portrayed the KKK (Klu Klux Klan) as heroes, protecting White America from the degenerate Negro! This film was made 50 years after the ending of the Civil War, and about 15 years after Jim Crow laws went into effect, establishing segregation policies throughout the Southern United States! Jim Crow was another name for “niggers” back then. The laws barred blacks from participating in the political process, among other things. It was the most racist movie ever made, even worse than Gone With The Wind, 14 years later! Because of this film, the KKK, which had been more or less moribund since 1875, was revitalized, and became a national organization, no longer confined to the discredited South. It was also at a time when reconciliation and reaffirmation of white rule, throughout the United States, was seen as a good thing. Wat a ting!
This film was made during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner and avowed racist. During his administration, segregation was extended to housing and federal jobs and anything else that they could bar blacks from participating in, including sports, although men like Jack Johnson defied those limitations! Those were dark days indeed, forgive the pun.
And now, here we are: 109 years after this film was made, America is experiencing another rebirth, another era of concern, uncertainty and instability, although Mr. Trump and his allies will paint a different portrait of the future. One of progress and stability and pure blood for real Americans. Mass deportations and denial of women’s rights and book banning and tariffs and retribution for those who are not in line with the program! And even those of “lesser blood” who voted for him will suffer the consequences of his zealous policies to “make America great again”!
I am going through the grieving process. I grieve for our country, our less fortunate, for Ukraine and Gaza and Taiwan, for NATO and all the fledgling democracies, of which there are only a few left, all over the world! I grieve for our children and grandchildren. I grieve for truth and honor and righteousness! I grieve for the disenfranchised, seniors, our youths and those of different demographics, sexual and religious! I grieve for the loss of any moral compass that might have guided us in the past, held us together. I grieve, I grieve!
We can only hope that the dystopian future I see is only in the bleak corners of my troubled mind, and not a real reflection of the future. A lot can be undone, or accomplished, in 4 years! Our history as descendants of slaves can be re-casted and rewritten, and this new version taught as facts in our schools. Women could be relegated back to second-class status, if we are to believe what some of what his acolytes are saying! With the help of an indebted, transactional, immoral Supreme Court, who knows how many of his egregious pronouncements they would justify, and solidify, into laws!
One can only hope for the best, because he has promised to make America great again! But for whom?
Glen