Four lost years.
Except, not lost, if you choose to see this as that moment when we flipped on the kitchen lights and realized cockroaches ruled the darkness. Armies of them swarming across the linoleum floors.
We need to have learned something from that sickening midnight epiphany.
Black people - emphasize ‘people’ because on the day our country was founded there was a raging debate going on as to whether or not Blacks were fully human and, when all of those famous papers we like to endearingly refer to were penned, they were not considered people - might say four hundred years have been lost.
Except, for those four hundred years, no people have been more willing to die for America’s ideals than Black people.
In spite of every road block, every hurdle, every epithet, every slight, every bloodthirsty mob, every oh-so-subtle sideways glance, every putdown, every smear, every noose, molotov cocktail and sniper’s bullet, Black Americans continue to believe in those words written by privileged white men in the eighteenth century.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
They voted in droves to repudiate a man who, in another era, would have been indistinguishable from your common, garden variety plantation owner. Jowly, red-faced, beady-eyed and as unscrupulous as they come.
I’ve wondered before and I’m going to wonder again about where this country would be if we had actually believed those words from the Declaration of Independence applied to all people.
I was reading one of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ New York Times articles related to her 1619 Project and she wrote how the twelve years following the Civil War in the American South, known as Reconstruction, there were thousands and thousands of Black voters, dozens of national Black politicians, hundreds locally and you could arguably say it might have been the most progressive moment in our nation’s history.
Black people were embracing their newfound civic duty - voting, running for office and serving the public.
It was during this period, public schools were introduced to the South. Not only did the children of former slaves benefit, poor white children who had never had an education benefited.
White Southerners expected newly freed slaves to turn violently against them but instead they mainly threw themselves into learning what it was to be an American and reveling in their rights.
This is what I envision going forward. My enmity for ignorance, intolerance and bigoted intransigence runs deep but I want to drag those who thought there was a time when America was great into a America that is truly trying to become great and allow them to share in the largesse.
What else are we going to do with them?
I want to see a rising tide that is, indeed, lifting all boats. Cockroaches and all.
For the moment, I want to bask in knowing the king of the cockroaches has been squashed. But I am no fool. Cockroaches are the most resilient creatures known to man. We will not be able to eradicate them.
I’m just ecstatic we get a chance to go on offense.
Let’s vow to not fuck it up. We don’t have years to lose.
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I’m not making this up. The campaign for the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, held a press conference in Philadelphia today at the Four Seasons - not the hotel! - Total Landscaping center! It looked like this.
And, if that isn’t a metaphor for the past four years, I don’t know what is.
Today the presidency was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris by every major network, including the propaganda network known as Fox News. . . meanwhile, the president’s henchmen held a press conference at a landscaping business which is located next to an Adult Store and a Cremation Center. Holy shit! You couldn’t have written a more fitting ending.
Also, THIS is the article I was reading today. I highly recommend following Ida Bae Wells, aka Nikole Hannah Jones. Here is her personal website.
Thanks for reading and sharing. I’m slowly coming out of my post election stupor. - JLM