Thurs. Apr. 6, 2023
As we observed on Thursday, April 6, the day before Good Friday and the observance of Holy Week, the racism that was once the fuel for the Democratic Party up until the late ‘60s, is now the domain of the Republicans, and unapologetically so! I watched with disgust the way they have tried to silence two young, black legislators in Nashville, Tennessee, while young people, mostly white, were protesting the Republican legislature’s ambivalence towards any effort to stop the murder of young children, innocent people, with weapons of war! With Soviet-style tactics they decided to expel these two black men while letting the white female representative keep her office! Blatant racism in its highest form. Everything changes, while everything remains the same! They did all this in front of the whole world watching, who were probably wondering what these mostly white middle-aged men were thinking. All this because they were protesting the inaction of the legislature after 6 people, including 3 nine-year-olds, were gunned down with AR15 rifles, weapons of war, weapons of death!
The Republican Party is slowly withering on the vine of irrelevancy, slowly and surely! From Florida to Texas to Tennessee, throughout the South and even some parts of the Midwest, they’re doing their darnedest to stop that change which will overwhelm them like a truck running over roadkill, much sooner, rather than later, than they suspect! They are going for short-term victories, in their twisted minds, against the inevitable forces of nature, the young and the progressives, Democrats and Republicans, who demand change, not cosmetic change, but the real and lasting kind! They are trying to cling to an idea whose time has long passed. They know that they’re losing control and will grasp at anything that they think will slow down the progress that is hurtling across the vista, to borrow a phrase from Raymond Barrow.
When I migrated to America some forty-something years ago, I felt that promise, that implied assurance that life would be better for me, for my budding family, even though it was a time of uncertainty, of upheaval! And for a time, through Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, I was positive that everything would be alright. There were times when the country strayed but quickly corrected itself, and that optimism prevailed. In the last 7 years we have seen the disintegration of our society. We have seen the rise of political violence, of fascism and authoritarianism, and now the resurgence of unapologetic racism! In their last desperate grasp to hold onto power, they are shedding their skins and showing us the kind of vermin they really are.
While I have lost faith in politicians, I will never lose faith in the people, the voters who can make this insanity stop. I am very hard on the younger generation for their selfishness, but they, along with the women of this country, will save us from this scourge of ignorance and stupidity and antediluvian ideals of middle-aged white men who think that they are still in charge of our bodies, our minds, of our fates. They are not, and in the next few years they will have to accept the rude awakening that they can no longer dictate, but accept the changes that are unstoppable not only in America, but worldwide. Changes, hopefully for the better.
The only reason Republicans have the dwindling power they wield is because of gerrymandering, stifling and obstructing people’s ability to vote, and having a Supreme Court that caters to most of their whims and caprices. The people are watching, in horror, at the boldness with which they ignore their wishes, whether it’s gun control, or abortion, or voting rights or civil rights. The will of the people is being ignored for their personal, and absolutely Neanderthal beliefs! Power to the people!
Glen