In this most fluid of situations, occurring in this time of great national confusion and tumult, one has to depend on Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature” to avoid slipping into what the Germans call “schadenfreude” — “taking satisfaction or pleasure at someone else’s misfortune.” But indeed, it’s hard, very hard.
In the black community what we say about someone who’s so dismissive of an obvious truth and reality is “that fool don’t believe fat meat is greasy.” Or, as Malcolm once said, “Chickens do come home to roost.”
Indeed, I could go on ad infinitum about how a goodly percentage of Americans have allowed themselves to be lead down a primrose path by an obviously delusional, narcissistic megalomaniac but to what end — what good would it do? As Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
By now it’s apparent to all who still see with unglazed eyes that some of our fellow citizens have gone through the looking glass, and are now functioning in another world, one of their own making. Again, as we say in the black community: They’ve gone “ziggity-boo.”
All of this wouldn’t be so troublesome if it weren’t for the fact that since the 2016 election we’ve been in a pitched battle for the soul of the nation. Will we remain a constitutional republic or will the far right be allowed to lead us down the path of a new form of government: American Apartheid — where a smaller group of one race (white) dominates and rules over a larger group of other races (of color).
Make no mistake, this is their end game, the reason seemingly sane Republicans put up with a clown: because they know he’s the only one that can, if he wins reelection, set up a government that will guarantee continued white rule in America forever, even if it means establishing a totally new form of totalitarianism.
Hanna Arendt displayed a brilliant prescience when she wrote, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction,and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
Can anyone in their right mind seriously argue that those who stand in opposition to a continuation of a pluralistic democracy as we now know it in this country haven’t already crossed that line between fantasy and reality? These folks are a clear and present danger.
So, while my humanity demands that I root for tRump (and his minions) to make a full and complete recovery from their self-administered doses of Covid 19, my commonsense demands that I root for that recovery to only take place after Joe Biden is safely ensconced in the White House.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsIn