A Reckoning

“…So Foul A Sky Clears Not Without a Storm.”

William Shakespeare,
circa 1594-96, published 1623.



As I sit here trying desperately to achieve some sort of calm, of understanding, searching in vain for Order, not even for the World, or my bloody and besmirched country, but myself, it occurs to me that this latest atrocity – the unholy and undeniably EVIL murder of George Floyd, an innocent BLACK MAN supposedly accused of a misdemeanor, may finally be the Tipping Point that brings this Nation to its knees, awash in a cleansing and terrible chaos of retribution, rough justice, recrimination and a re-start.
I’ve been struggling for days to find the words, to temper my rage and disgust into something useful. Honest. That I have sat, paced, shaked and cried and screamed and stared into the void, knowing that I was in that vast conglomeration of well-meaning white people who alternately sign petitions, patronize African-Americans with displays of our store-bought and practiced ‘Wokeness,’ and ostensibly declare that they are in solidarity with People of Color and their reality in this post-colonial experiment in faux-Democracy and Free Market Capitalism – both obvious lies so laughable and scarcely believable grade schoolers instinctively grasp the scam – that it occurs to me,for not the 10,000th time, that everything we have said and done before this, the Civil Rights Act, to Affirmative Action and corporate commitments to Diversity have done nothing to truly address the vast and seemingly inexhaustible well of insane hatred, love of violence, paranoia and guilt that are hot-wired into our collective DNA that fuels our systemic racism.
To assert that we have even begun to look our history in the eye and acknowledge that the New World was seen as tabula rasa, an open playing field for rank exploitation of the abundant natural resources of the land by European Monarchies, to be serviced at first by Indigenous People, and later, as we (perhaps) inadvertently killed off too many of them through attempted genocide & treachery, Africans, is absurd.
I’m not even at reparations.
White America is still unwilling, for the most part, to even put in the time to learn about their own history as taught and mythologized in the various textbooks, entertainment and cultural landscape, let alone an expansive and critical look at the larger reality; the vast free labor that was slavery drove an unprecedented economic engine that not only powered the nascent Southern Aristocrats here and in the Caribbean and Bahamas, but also the “better educated” cities and town of the North, allowing them to accrue incomprehensible wealth through the incomprehensible crime of forced slavery.
That these were free and innocent men, women & children, forced at the point of a gun to throw their lives away for their sadistic, amoral abductors all to create a newer form of feudalism, who had done nothing – as if any human being could ever deserve to be a slave – never occurred to these twisted, power-hungry scum.
I assert little has changed.
I am endeavoring to find my words. Those who know me well, especially in real life, may be surprised at this; I regularly throw out emotional rants devoid of much structure or skill in a mere few moments, all because I need to say something, to get out whatever is pressing me. I am not shy.
I care about my own Real Writing and take more care with it, trying, albeit poorly, I might add, to strike a delicate balance between effectiveness, a strong point of view and hopefully, even if in small dosages, something to think about, or even just something that might resonate with someone else.
Reading saved my life as a child while sick, and for better or worse, books and writing are my everything, so if I can possibly share some of that with someone else, even if its just a joke, stray comment or opinion, even if its just a brief distraction for someone scrolling, I feel of service.
So when I say I have fretted about this entry, its no small admission.
My ability to relate to minorities is limited by my upbringing and white privilege; my empathy has been noted by others, but I can’t claim to know what kind of horrendous, constant shit that African Americans and other People of Color experience. I can ask questions, listen more than anything, and try and be as little a part of the problem as possible.
I’m furious. I’m sad. I can’t stop thinking about this man’s final moments. Harassed, handcuffed and interrogated in public, on the street like a dog. For the POSSIBLE crime of passing a fake $20.00 Bill.
He died for $20.00. $20.00 that wasn’t even “lost” by the store, as the cashier refused to take it. There does not exist a more preposterous reason to call 911.
We only know most of this story. We have video from concerned onlookers – onlookers who may very well have been worried he would be killed – and today, a heavily redacted bit of footage from one of the four co-criminals’ body cam – but exactly what happened between his removal from his car, his questioning against the wall and then when he was laying face-down, his head pressed against the curb while his veteran killer slowly forced the breathe and life from his prone body through placing all of his weight upon the INNOCENT VICTIM GEORGE FLOYD with his knee, has been obscured.
This is what his life boiled down to: An alleged misdemeanor, of a possible attempted crime. Somehow, the cashier felt the need to call 911 to track down this dangerous criminal mastermind.
For $20.00.

So the Country erupts in spectacular if miniscule proportion to the collective crimes just of recent, fresh vintage, and some buildings are set afire. Looting. Trash, detritus – smoke – the all-important Property Values are threatened. Cue the hand-wringing – ‘Why are they burning down their own neighborhoods?’; ‘Why can’t they be peaceful?’; ‘What does this solve?’
Of course, many would vastly prefer that any protests, or complaints of any kind, of standing up, be simple, non-threatening and most of all, accommodating to the delicate sensibilities of the willfully ignorant, culturally bereft hypocrites and “moderate” people of All Parties – be the guiding principle.
Cue the clutching of pearls. Somber, serious Talking Heads preaching Peace, Unity and Patience.
I have long believed that the ever tumescent and intractable love and belief in the right to bear arms was rooted in our Colonial Past. Peace through superior firepower – alongside your land, the beasts of the fields and oh yeah, your way of life. Your right to exist a mere problem to be solved.
Since the rapacious and wholly evil and unquestioned pioneer Villain Hernan Cortes and his fellow conquistadors slaughtered countless Aztecs centuries ago, The Way of The Gun became a central belief among the competing Old World Empires for the prize of the Americas – and the corollary to that is to kill the natives, that they are subhuman. Fit to be slaves, nothing more.
Again, I assert nothing has changed.
White America knows something of their collective guilt, of the 500 years of genocide, oppression and cruelty.
It may lay dormant, located somewhere in the so-called Lizard Brain, the Brain Stem itself, hiding yet serving as a guide and forever reason, of justification – “The natives are getting restless” and for that, more than anything else, they worship the Power of the Gun.
FEAR.

The dam may have finally broken. If anything positive comes of this – far beyond the satisfying yet ultimately inconsequential possible prosecution and imprisonment of the most recent examples of State Sanctioned Murder – our only hope for any sort of Redemption and Renewal would be to see a wave of Reform, or perhaps a “Wave of Mutilation,” yes, ‘That’s the ticket,’ to burn through the palaces and safeholds of the Elite, the multi-generational Corporate Gargoyles who have fed off of, and profited from, the parasitic practices inherent in the banking, educational, religious and cultural enclaves, sowing divisive tactics and unequal social structures among all of the oppressed and suffering people.
Racial injustice and inequality, maintained through the patriarchal system that guarantees Capitalism and rewards bigotry, hatred and paranoia cannot be solved, or fixed, if such a possibility exists, without first dealing with the Original Sin of Slavery.
Nothing will change until this Reckoning is over.


“You can’t have a United states if you are telling some folks that they can’t get on the train. There is a cracking point where society collapses.”

Bruce Springsteen