Never Forget

Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 15, 1929  –  April 4, 1968

April 4th is like no other day.

It is my mother’s birthday.

My mother.  What a character.  She’s an odd combination, as are we all, but my mother’s dramatic predilections write her many idiosyncratic qualities in large letters.

Very large letters.

Through character and circumstance, she’s always been a woman ahead of her time, a pioneer in word and deed, rarely zipping her lip when it would have served her

She is also a quirky kind of Christian, fundamentally conservative for fear of fire and brimstone, yet socially progressive for love and compasssion’s sake.  She was a very  odd fish, for her time and place, for she early and enthusiastically supported Reverand King.  “A prophet of God.” she’s always said. “We’re all God’s children. King  taught that, he was the greatest of our lifetime, a prophet of God. God’s spoke through him. You could hear it every time.”

I’ve never have been able to convince her of Gandhi’s influence on Dr. King, hoping that the link between them might get her beyond that soteriological fear animating so much of her imagination.

And when I casually brought up Dr. King’s documented character weaknesses during a conversation, she nearly disowned her only begotten to honor the Lord’s chosen one.

I’ve since decided that bringing up Dr. King’s humanity is not the best thing to do.

Dr. King’s assassination forever changed this day, my mother’s birthday.  It seemed unusually cruel for Providence to foist this on her, a single working mother with not much more than faith and hope to her name.  Seemed she could have been born on the 6th or the 7th, maybe the 10th.  The arbitrary nature of cruelty, perhaps that was the point, and why she so thoroughly embraced Dr. King’s message, and perhaps why she was able to fearlessly speak so, against the nice white bourgeios conventions that we lived on the fringes of.

She’s never forgotten that day, what it meant to those living on hope and the Lord’s promises, when that’s the best life has to offer.

April 4th has never been the same.

My mother’s birthday.

And the day a prophet and one of this country’s greatest leaders was murdered.

From Dr. King’s last speech, given the night before his death.

Quadrillions!

This afternoon’s epiphany:

Million.

Billion (prefix = bi = two).

Trillion (prefix = tri = three).

Quadrillion (prefix = quad = four).

A quadrillion dollar deficit . . .  just around the corner, folks!

Kinda like measuring the speed of light, only a lot more confusing.

His four year mission, to win reelection and boldly go where no one has gone before . .

I’m thinking the O-man will have to pull out a Vulcan mind meld with the nation at some point — come to think of it, he does have Spock like qualities.

Related or Not?

Frank Rich’s Op-Ed today reminded me of an article a friend sent me about a month ago.

You decide if these two articles are related or not.

Obviously, I think they are.

But then again, I am just a renegade with an intense disdain for authority, and rarely jump through anyone’s arbitrary hoops.

(Read: bad attitude and no common sense.)

Frank Rich: Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?

Chris Hedges: The Best and the Brightest Led America Off a Cliff.

My thanks to Zacca for sending on what I think is the most succinct and insightful commentary on what continues plaguing this country.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — commonly attributed to Einstein

Rush The Tragic White Boy

I try to steer clear of the obvious, and I give few of my life minutes to people like Limbaugh and his ilk.

But Timothy Egan’s piece in the Times today warrants this short entry. Mr. Egan makes excellent points that go beyond the usual diatribes against Limbaugh, and his column today is insightful and well written.

Link: Fears Of A Clown.

Two points which struck me, impressively written by Mr. Egan:

As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.

(bold face added)

We again see why Barack Obama is the man for this job at this time: we need leadership skilled enough to deflate those self-aggrandizing toxic hot air balloons that have floated too long over the land.

And it was this paragraph which I thought brilliantly summarized our current economic state of affairs, and crystallized reality as few have to date:

But therein lies the main tactic of Limbaugh, an old demagogue technique: create a straw man, then tear it down. The latest example was Saturday, when Limbaugh presented himself as the defender of capitalism, liberty and unfettered free markets. Obama, he has said since, is waging a “war on capitalism.”

There is a war, all right. We are witnessing the worst debacle of unfettered capitalism in our lifetime brought on by — you got it, capitalism at its worst. It cannibalized itself. Government, sad to say, had nothing to do with it — except for criminal neglect of oversight.

Now that government has been forced to the rescue, just who is insisting on taxpayer bailouts? Who is in line for handouts? Who is saying that only government can save capitalism? The very leaders of unregulated markets who injected this poison into the economy, the very plutocrats that Limbaugh celebrates.

(bold face added)

Capitalism cannibalizing itself. Perhaps the most succinct summary of the global economic meltdown yet articulated.

The corrective will be a cannibal like swing to government regulation and nationalization, until the equilibrium is restored.

It’s the world’s way.

“On The Edge” by Paul Krugman

Before the stimulus bill was agreed on in the Senate, I wrote the following Friday evening, with plans to post it late Saturday.

I hope that the Senate’s agreement is enough, given Mr. Krugman’s comments.

A fact that I thought smacking of more than a little irony (is it too soon after my previous entry to use the term?), was the Republican’s insistence on cutting Federal funding for school construction. In a snippet I saw on CNN last night, the Republicans argued that “building schools isn’t the Federal government’s job,” and some of the biggest cuts in the agreed on package came from this program.

I could be mistaken, but aren’t these usually the same folks who vigorously defend and promote the “Pledge of Allegiance” in the state built public schools?:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

Just a guess . . .

For those who haven’t done so, I recommend reading Krugman, as a stimulus bill hasn’t passed yet, and this week may well be a tedious and exhausting circus for our public servants.

Real life for America, a circus for Congress.

We The People

Frank Rich gives a superlative Op-Ed in Sunday’s New York Times.

I’m pleased to write that his column “No Time For Poetry” coincides with my entry this past week “Give The Devils Their Due.”

It goes without saying that Mr. Rich is more nuanced and thorough than yours truly. And, of course, he eschews the “creative phraseology” that I relied on.

But in The Times you don’t get a Nina Simone YouTube audio, an incomparable treasure.

His must read essay persuasively defends President Obama’s less than enthusiastically embraced Inaugural address. In so doing, he portrays a Republic in need of psychic repair as much as economic recovery.

Frank Rich: No Time For Poetry.

***************

On the subject of defending the Inaugural address, Stanley Fish’s column this week adroitly examines Obama’s rhetoric in Barack Obama’s Prose Style. Another good read, informative and engaging.

Give The Devils Their Due: YouTube Find Of The Week

With Obama’s inauguration and the end of an error, I got to thinking this past week about how easy it is now for so many to trash and thrash George and Dick.

But who is really to blame for eight years of madness?

Notwithstanding Diebold, voter disenfranchisement, hanging chads, and the rest, the fact is no real revolt took place over the Republic’s rapid demise among vast numbers of its citizens, until the economy tanked.

For the most part, America just rolled over and allowed itself to be sodomized for eight years, thinking that the backdoor raping of its Constitution and values were necessary for “safety’s sake.”  (Yes eight years, not six and a half, because nothing really changed after 9/11.  For the same cynical, unquestioning pragmatism that allowed We The People to let the Supreme Court pick our President, allowed us to led by the nose into Iraq.)

But when the pimps quit paying the bills, things changed.  Suddenly, sodomy became intolerable.

Individuals sometimes have to hit rock bottom before they are willing to take on the responsibility for change.  Seems the same holds true for nations.

Change has come.  And We The People are that change.

It’s “Nobody’s Fault But Ours.”  Let’s give the Devils their due.

I discovered a YouTube upload of Nina Simone’s version of the classic “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” this past week.  Incomparable.

Nina Simone’s bio on Wikipedia.

A Conversation With My Mother

I spoke with my mother on the phone last night.

It’s the first talk we’ve had since the election. I called her and asked how she felt. I haven’t had the time or emotional wherewithal to speak with her before yesterday, as I’ve found myself experiencing so many emotions in between the demands of my schedule.

“So how are you feeling, Mom,” I asked. “You know,” she said, “I can’t talk about it it too much. It makes me too emotional, and I can’t really do that to myself right know. But you know, this isn’t only a victory for blacks. Some of us have had this dream for a long time, some of us have been fighting for this for a long time, in our own way, as best we could, and I can barely believe it.”

My mother, a single working mother in the sixties, was packed and ready to go to Selma. She told me the story again last night. I remember it well. It is one of those I treasure, one of my favorites.

“I would have gone. I would have been right there with Dr. King. Lots of whites were marching, but your grandmother wouldn’t babysit. She refused. She said, ‘Florence, you’re a woman alone with a child. You have to think about your baby. If you go down there, you might end up dead, those racists will kill a white woman standing up for blacks. You can’t leave your child alone.’ And she was right, but I would have gone. If I didn’t have a baby, I would have gone. I wanted to be there more than anything in the world. I wish I could have gone. If only your grandmother would have babysat.”

She then proceeded to tell me about her Sunday school class, full of nice polite white folks learning about the Lord and the Bible. The adult Bible study turned to a discussion on “mixed marriages,” and most were against it, for the most thinly veiled of reasons. My mother’s white, married, middle class church friends were shocked when my mother announced that she “didn’t care if her only daughter married a black man. No black man could be any worse than the blond haired, blue eyed son of bitch that I married.”

Honesty, you gotta love it in middle class America.

Her pastor politely turned the conversation, “well, I think Florence has made her point,” after my mother’s bombshell. She easily remembers the “hoity-toity” racism of the church members, and her need to drop the bomb to make her point. “I wasn’t raised with a Bible that taught racism. That’s not my Bible, never has been, never will be. We’re all God’s children, period. End of story. I just won’t tolerate racism in the church, just won’t.”

Every so often, dogmatism has its redeeming values.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on my mother’s birthday, April 4th.

My mother spent the night crying, said a prophet of God had been murdered. How could we survive the death of a prophet of God? What was the nation coming to? She still believes that the U. S. government was behind it, knows it without a doubt.

That evening, everything just sunk into an abyss of desperation. And hopelessness.

She couldn’t talk too long about Obama last night, didn’t want to cry too long or too hard, as her health is not good these days. “A lot of whites had that dream too. It’s too hard to talk about, but I can’t believe it’s happened.”

The shadows of April 4th haunt her today. But she won’t talk about it. It’s the underbelly of inexpressible joy, what so many are thinking but refuse to say aloud, fearing the country’s history and its demons.

“It’s too hard to talk about.”

Indeed.

Remembering Lincoln

Despite injustice’s tyranny and the seemingly merciless ways of the Universe, I don’t believe in random occurrences.

I’ve never fully brought myself into modernity and its insistence on the quantifiable and rational; I defer to the unseen and inexplicable.  It keeps my sense of wonder alive.

So I don’t find it a mere coincidence that Obama’s rise started in Illinois, the political home of Abraham Lincoln, as though the President himself looked on this young man and helped him forge a path, behind the curtain of reality.

Obama’s political genius is entierly his own, but the better angels of our conscience and creativity are usually served by circumstances and events beyond our control. Some call it synchronicity, some “God’s will,” some call it karma. And some call it destiny.

Obama’s acceptance speech at the DNC, as most people know, was given on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream Speech,” a speech given under Lincoln’s shadow. On February 20, Obama will take the oath of office, and further realize the dreams of King and Lincoln, that all U. S. citizens should be legally and spiritually free and equal, no matter their melanin (and presumably their gender, but that’s another discussion).

Lincoln issued the first Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863. The original Proclamation only covered Union states. No slaves were freed immediately, but it changed the character of the Civil War. The second Proclamation eventually lead to the ratification of the 13th Amendment and the Constitutional abolition of slavery.

I stumbled across the following picture today on the New York Times, and I thought it was particularly poignant.

While many of us were glued to our televisions and computers Tuesday evening, a handful of individuals wandered mecca like to the Lincoln memorial, and waited for the election results under the watchful gaze of Abraham Lincoln, Obama’s political and spiritual forefather.

Below the picture, I post the text of The Emancipation Proclamation, in its entirety.

“Memorial Day” by Matt Mendelsohn.

The Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863

A Transcription

By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.”

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

The Emancipation Proclamation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The World Speaks

I’ve tried several times to offer something on Obama’s election last night; it’s all been truly foolish and mediocre at best. But then I ran across the following.

So I offer these voices from around the world, courtesy of the BBC. They say it best:

The World Speaks on Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States of America.