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Armando Vazquez. Courtesy photo.
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
Get Rid of the Ballots…That is what he said, that is what he will do, and who is going to stop him? We are less that 42 days away from the most cataclysmic, potentially apocalyptic, American election in our lifetime. However the election results turn out, approximately half of the American electorate will be enraged, convinced that the election was rigged. The evil tyrannical genius of Trump, is that in less than four years he has been able to consolidate all federal power under his control and in the process is annihilating all semblance of American democracy. Trump with his tyrannical power grab, along with the considerable help of all his well-placed and well-paid henchmen/women, has turned us all into a pathetic nation of cowards, haters, doubters and conspiracy theorists. Make no mistake all of us, by omission or commission, are responsible for the creation of this monster that now occupies the White House.
Some will attribute the unlikely rise of Trump to the Presidency due to a growing and desperate segment of the American electorate becoming completely disillusion and distrustful of government in general and the federal government in particular. This argument is punctuated by the so called “fear of them” and the “loss of our American way of life” narrative that permeated the minds and hearts of the spooked and panic stricken white electorate that drives them with an acute white “Messiah” savior madness into the Trump political orbit. A white backlash, this cowardly narrative continues, white folks have had enough! And Trump is our man to stop all of this minority whining and demanding equality and justice!
My question for this pathetic argument is what fear and what loss, when white folk have had their way, in every way for at least the past 244 years in this country? No dear reader this election year has nothing to do with fear, but it has everything to do with cowardice, greed and power.
As Professor Eddie S. Glaude, in his brilliantly scathing new book entitled, Begin Again, won’t give white folks an inch on this backlash copout and states, white “Backlash mistakenly views demands for fundamental dignity as demands for privilege, and, worse, suggests that creeping incrementalism is a legitimate pace of change when it comes to remedying the devastation of black lives” So in Professors Glaude’s view Blacks and minorities of this nation are demanding and fighting for nothing more than fundamental human dignity. For half of the American electorate that demand is simply too great.
Professor Eddie S. Glaude also speaks about the American Lie that is a the heart of what is tearing this country apart, and of course the Lie that he is talking about is our collective inability to face our violent horrific past. On the enslaved, tortured, raped, lynched and murdered bodies of Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow women and men American was built and became the country that in 2020 will elect a President that says “Make America Great Again”, code for this is a nation for white folk; or a Presidents that is perhaps at least willing to acknowledge that we have an acute race and equity problem and if we do not honestly reconcile this racist Lie it will probably destroy this country. I do not trust either of these two old white politicians! After 244 of complete and total control of our federal government they have demonstrated that minorities can’t trust them, not any one of them! To the contrary I believe that these old white politicians readily stoke the fires of hatred, racism and segregation in a cowardly and greedy country that need very little prodding to go into full-blown white nationalist “they are coming to rob, rape and kill us” madness. Quite the irony que no?
Here is what James Baldwin said, in a speech that he made at Kalamazoo college in 1960, that later appeared in his seminal book entitled, Nobody Knows My Name, about white fear and madness “They do not really know what it is they are afraid of, but they know they are afraid of something and they are so frightened that they are nearly out of their minds. And this same fear obtains on one level or another, to a varying degrees, throughout the entire country. We would never, never allow Negroes to starve, to grow bitter and to die in ghettos all over the country if we were not driven by some nameless fear that has nothing to do with Negros… It is only too clear that even with the most malevolent will in the world, Negros can never manage to achieve one-tenth of the harm which we fear. No it has everything to do with ourselves and this is the reason that for all these generations we have disguised this problem in the most incredible jargon” We have disguised the Lie for 244 years. Trump the tyrant has weaponize the Lie to further foment cowardly national racist white fear and the despicable white backlash.
This is what got Trump elected disguising the race problem, or worse, denying that a race problem even it exists in America. All White America has been drunk for 244 years with privilege, if not power. And like the true alcoholic or addict White America sees, understand and know that their source of privilege and power comes at the expense of the minorities of this county, and when confront with it as they were during the Civil War, the Jim Crow Era, The Civil rights Movement of the 1960’s and currently with the Black Lives Matter Movement they flat out deny there is a problem. This type of denial is outright dishonest or lying and it never, ever, helps heal this nation’s racial divide. But that the whole point with Trump and his followers is an unapologetic and defiant denial of racial injustice in this nation.
In Bob Woodward, new book, “Rage”, he writes about a type of hypocritical and sinister denial that Trump’s former, strategic communications director Hope Hicks, concocted to fit her boss’s Emperor wearing no clothes madness and paranoia. Woodward writes, “Hicks was convinced that the media had “oppositional defiance syndrome”, which is a term from clinical psychology most often applied to rebellious children. “Oppositional defiance syndrome” is characterized by excessive anger against authority, vindictiveness and temper tantrums” As far as Hicks was concerned that described the press and not her boss. Quite the irony, que no? Turn everyone that no is not a loyalist to the mad King an enemy.
The closer we get to the 2020 national elections the farther we get as an American electorate around to the national business of reconciling the Lie. Trump and his follower have no interest in reconciling the Lie. Why should they? Trump and his followers have absolute and total power. Today, Wednesday, September 23, 2020 Trump proclaimed nationally, “Get rid of the Ballots” as in get rid of the 2020 presidential election. He meant it and his follower bowed at the tyrant’s feet and crown him King of America!
So the Lie will continue to be played out in some kind of disguised permeation no matter whether Biden is elected president or Trump is crowned the King of America. Be assured that this nation will survive the election come November 3, 2020 and beyond. Also be assure that we the Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people of this country we call home will continue to confront White America with the Lie, and we will not rest until genuine reconciliation, reparation and redemption federal government legislation is enacted that assures Blacks and other minorities that the horrific crimes of the past are fully and officially recognized, that reparation is the remedy for harms committed and that federal government through it immense power and authority will enact the justice and necessary laws to assure life, liberty and justice for all in America. Until that day come on justice, no peace. After 244 years the ball is in your court White America, again!
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.