A future of Juneteenths (American Revelation IV, Part Eleven)

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; ~Exodus 20:3-5

It's Juneteenth.

On June 19th, 1865, United States Army General Gordon Granger read a proclamation at Galveston, decreeing that all slaves held in the state of Texas would henceforth be free.

It's 2020, why in the fuck are we as a country still having this argument 155 years later?

And why is it, that between a quarter and a third of us are, even after all this stuff that's happened, Impeachment, COVID-19, the George Floyd killing and protests, and five years of dumb shit since Trump declared himself a candidate for President...why in the hell are there people, still, who are basically ready to bow down and worship this dude?

Is it really that important to these people, to have a President that says racist shit?

Apparently it is. "Conservatives" have turned on basically everything they ever said they believed in, as of today that includes Rule of Law, the Judiciary and the Supreme Court.

Admittedly, Trump has not had a good week legally, the extension of civil rights protections in employment to LGBT people, DACA protected, among other things. But that's the thing, isn't it? If we don't have a system of laws and protections and rights, that's independent of the whims of whoever the President is...we don't really have anything at all, do we?

It's been a bedrock principle of Western legal theory since the 12th century that even kings should not be above the law. How is it, then, that it's the "Conservatives" who seem to want to undo every check on the power of rulers all the way back to the Magna Carta?

Conservatism itself, as a philosophy, is based on the principle of "Things as they are."

How they got from that longstanding belief to "Conservatism is what Donald Trump says it is" in so short of a time, I'll never know.

Or maybe I just don't want to.

How we got from Republicans being the party of Abolitionists, Lincoln, and the Union to Republicans being the ones waving the Confederate flag and the ones who, if they could, would put everybody they could reach in chains and force us, as a society, to re-fight every battle of the last 160 years simply because they want to protect their power and racism for just a little longer, I will never understand. And no, I don't want to, not really.

They wish for us not a future of liberation consisting better health care and trans rights and a more equal and just America, but a post-Apocalyptic hellscape where America has been torn asunder and people are again having to liberate their neighbors from the yoke of chains and slavery because some dipshit economist told these fools that if they could work out a couple months worth of free labor, it would rev up the stock market..

There is such a thing as God, and such a thing as right and wrong, and facts and reality are most definitely a thing. Republicans used to be the party that understood...and yes, often literally preached this stuff.

Now? It's LOL Wut MAGA Bitches Trump 2020!!!

That rumbling turbine sound you hear is Abraham Lincoln, spinning in his grave.

And the Republicans' collective attitude is that anybody who won't support whatever the hive-mind decides, from Geraldo Rivera all the way up to the Supreme Court itself, not to mention Abraham Lincoln, and every former President still living, gets voted off Republican Island.These fucking people don't want to live in a functioning country, they want to have their ears tickled by false prophets on a constant basis. It is, in fact, even worse than that. All too many of these fucking people believe the lie is their right.

And as of a couple days ago, now, Republicans are, in fact, basically declaring Trump to be their God.

Mike Huckabee, of all fucking people, Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, is effectively declaring that Trump is some kind of equivalent to Jesus.

I can't help but feel like something bad is going to happen, if nothing else, the virus will get worse. All Trump has to do is drop a few racial slurs and these fucking people will fall down and worship him.

If we want a better nation, if we want to start fighting and winning the future instead of constantly fighting to liberate ourselves from the chains of the past, we are going to have to start, and keep, being better citizens. And this ain't it. I can't put it any more simply than that.

There's this scene in the Civil War film, Glory, where as the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers marches by plantation houses near Beaufort, South Carolina, Sgt. Major Rawlins (played by Morgan Freeman) approaches a group of Black children. He says to them "That's right, ain't no dream. We run away slaves and we come back fighting men! Run home, tell your folks how Kingdom Come, this is the year of Jubilee!"

And that's our choice, Jubilee, the freeing of slaves, the canceling of debts and the settling of accounts, or Juneteenth...which, don't get me wrong, was in it's own way a great and wonderful day.

But remember how much those slaves in Texas had to suffer, and for longer, in order to be freed. It seems to me that we can do better than this cycle of subjugation, suffering, and liberation, again and again, and the "Conservatives" would see it never stop, because they would profit from the conflict.

Liberation is good, but why not address the underlying issues so that war and subjugation and liberation aren't necessary at all, or are less so? This is America, either we are all free in the first place...or none of us are.

Part Ten.
Part Twelve.