Juneteenth, 2024.

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27).Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.

...

Sgt, Maj. John Rawlins: [To a group of Black children, as the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment march through town] That's right, honeys. Ain't no dream. We runaway slaves, but we come back fightin' men. Go home, tell your folks how kingdom come in the year of Jubilee! ~From the film Glory.

It's Juneteenth.

I had a doctor's appointment today, so while I was at it, I went out to my Mom's house for part of the day. It's like I told her, when we got to talking about this day; "I'm an old White guy, my observance of Juneteenth is functionally going to be "Fuck, the Post Office is closed! But ya know, I had that one Black roommate and he thought it was pretty damn important, and in 2021 when it became an official holiday and Biden signed it into law, my roommate's church over in Saginaw had a service on that day, and it was pretty important to a lot of other people that I knew, too. So I'm good with it."

And then I went to my doctor's appointment and we got to talking about things, too, like how there's no damned good reason at this point for anybody in the world to be living in poverty and we could fix that problem very cheaply, if only the richest people would be just a little less rich. There's no reason for anybody to be struggling...and yet that seems to be all a lot of people do...because even people who have enough are so often convinced that they have to work even harder for more shit that they don't need. And that's before you get to how issues like bigotry and wealth, or poverty and race are always intertwined. 

Also, the one thing you can count on with religion is that it'll usually do the worst possible thing.

We talked about the wars in Ukraine and Sudan and how for so many people everything comes down to ideology and money, usually with a side of bigotry thrown in, and that's not much better in the Muslim world these days despite the fact that if those people listened to their Lord's Word it should be. 

There was never any damned good reason for slavery, either. But even when the war was actually being lost, or had ended and there was not one damn thing anybody could do about it, the world had done changed and it was too late...those old white Slavers in Texas and their various lackeys literally chose to hang onto that power over those people until men with guns came and took it away from them.

It's like I told Doc, I'm a union member. There's no valid reason why people everywhere shouldn't be Union members or at least have that option on enough of a level that workers solidarity can stand up to corporate greed. There's more of the rest of us than there are of these rich assholes, and time's coming where we're going to have to stand up and remind them of that fact.

Particularly in places like America where We The People have just as many guns as the State does.

Right or wrong, it is what it is. We the People are the front line, and the last line of defense.

A lot of places in the world ain't got that option if things go sideways.

There's no reason a miner of rare earth metals in Sudan shouldn't have all the same shit that an iron miner in Minnesota has, maybe adjusted a little bit for the cost of things, and it's like he said; He's a doctor in America, and because of that, even though his family is scattered all over the world because they're war refugees, he's done what he could to keep them going and get (or simply keep) them out of poverty, because he can do that and it's the right thing to do. 

In the context of Islam, helping your fellow humans because of the oneness of all people is what Allah commands, but Doc said you shouldn't need God to tell you what to do.

And there is a hell of a lot of people in the world that don't have the resources that America has given my doctor, either, and they don't know anybody who does.

And the thing about MAGA is that MAGA wants to take America and turn it into one of those kind of countries where people can't defend themselves, and where most people don't have any money, because MAGA thinks they'll be the rebels with lots of guns, something like the powerful radical Islamic forces in Sudan who can just show up, kill people and take their stuff, and that the government will be slow to respond or (like happened in Darfur) just let them do it.

MAGA wants to make everything subordinate to political Power, because they've convinced themselves that somehow they'll end up with the most of it (Even though it hasn't happened yet.) But then neither has the Rapture and they won't shut up about that either.

And, the further away and the more remote the "Leader" is, well, they seem to like the idea of that...but at the end of the day they can't get enough of seeing Trump's stupid face on TV every damn day. They just want other people to not have access to "The Boss. I couldn't do it, I wouldn't do it. It's called self-respect and self-preservation.

They can't stop blowing the narcissist, and I have a feeling that's where it's gonna go wrong for them.

Among other things they're (currently) blowing the narcissist because they enjoy it, nobody's made them do anything they don't want to do yet.

But somebody always does. That's just the nature of this Beast.

Power doesn't give a fuck about you, by definition. Russia doesn't give a fuck about Christianity, or they wouldn't be effectively outlawing it in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. Those Sudanese rebels? They don't give a fuck about Islam, or they wouldn't have killed so many of their own people and turned so many more into refugees. Kim Jong Un doesn't give a rat's ass about North Koreans, Putin doesn't give a shit about Russians, and Trump very obviously hates most Americans.

The former two have turned their countries into basically gas stations for fueling their narcissism.

And Trump wants to do the same shit here.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You're either willing to fight for your freedom and that of others, or you aren't.

You can stand up, and control your own life now, or you can keep lying and making money and partying it up until men with guns come and take the future and your life away from you.

But you ain't got 400 years to wait until somebody else gives you that shit back.

But the Republicans, once the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator??

Now it's "All you need is Trump" and they put up with this horseshit.

Now?? They'd be fine with selling America into slavery out of sheer bored, debased nihilistic rage, and eliminating the very concepts of Juneteenth and Liberation (After all, what do you think they're banning books for?) So long as they got a cut of the profits.

So vote these motherfuckers out now, but then also, you have to be prepared to fight them off after you do that. It's better to stand up now. It'll be much harder to do later.

It's the right thing to do, and you shouldn't need God or Joe Biden or some bullshit "Inspiration" or somebody like me to tell you to do it.

Like, either you care about your own life or you don't.

Слава Україна!

Youu can't separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
~Malcolm X.

Last Post

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning.

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran