The Tan Suit Diaries (American Reformation II, Six.)

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

...

He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. ~Barack Obama, RE: Donald Trump.

(Full disclosure this made me laugh my ass off.)

...

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.

So the other day Barack Obama made a joke about Trump having the White House looking like a Cheesecake Factory restaurant opened by Saddam Hussein.

Again, LOL.

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.… The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

Barack Obama, Remarks Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October, 2002.)

And the Wall Street Journal is covering that shit in about the same breathless disingenuous-panicky way some John Birch Society local rag of a paper in the Idaho panhandle must've covered it when Nikita Krushchev banged his shoe on the podium at the UN.

Imma call it Obama Derangement Sydrome.

I mean, sure as fuck they need something to distract from how this week has been going.

I mean, damn. 

It's a good thing he didn't wear a tan suit.

Here in America the numbers continually look grim as fuck for Republicans, and rightly so.

Flava Flav Bolsonaro, facing charges for corruption (what else?) fled to the US following his election loss the other day.

Netanyahu lost in Israel. I have to wonder how long before he turns up in Florida?

And when the hell did Florida become some kind of Sanctuary State for political criminals, anyway??

I mean, come on, what the fuck??

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation—not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That is the true genius of America—a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles. ~Barack Obama, DNC Speech, 2004.

I mean, hell, I thought America had better standards than this shit.

Apparently not, as the Bobby Jindal/Newt Gingrich "Racism Against White People" ad sort of proves. Sorry, but it's kind of hard to be racist against the people who are the ones that basically get to be why racism exists. Bobby Jindal didn't name himself "Fred" after Fred Sanford or "George" after George Jefferson. Motherfucker didn't even name himself "Bill" after Bill Cosby (which would be the more 'conservative' option) or any of the many able, famous and storied Black actors of the 1970's or the characters they played.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

Christ, he could have named his ass "Archie" after Archie Bunker and been scoring (misguided, yes, but still) points with Those Fucking People even now and for all of Eternity for it as opposed to being a nobody making racist AI ads. I cannot stress enough, that was THE pop culture reference for my Grandpa's generation, and not a small percentage of my Mom's generation, too. My Grandpa used lines from All In The Family on the day he fucking died. But of course Archie Bunker usually came around to doing the right thing, whether he necessarily wanted to or not. So, that's out. 

No, Piyush named himself after Bobby from The Brady Bunch.

Whatever. Normally I wouldn't make an issue of someone's chosen name but that one makes no sense to me, and when people do shit like make lying ads claiming there's discrimination against White People, I don't feel obliged to respect them that way, and I am a White People.

The moment stretched into eternity as both men brought their weapons to bear. He saw the man's eyes. It was a young face there, immediately below the emergency light, but the eyes . . . the rage there, the hatred, nearly stopped the Colonel's heart. But Bondarenko was a soldier before all things. The Afghan's first shot missed. His did not.

The Archer felt shock, but not pain in his chest as he fell. His brain sent a message to his hands to bring the weapon to the left, but they ignored the command and dropped it. He fell in stages, first to his knees, then on his back, and at last he was staring up at a ceiling. It was finally over. Then the man stood by his side. It was not a cruel face, the Archer thought. It was the enemy, and it was an infidel, but he was a man, too, wasn't he? There was curiosity there. He wants to know who I am, the Archer told him with his last breath.

"Allah Akbar!" God is great.

Yes, I suppose He is, Bondarenko told the corpse. He knew the phrase well enough. Is that why you came? He saw that the man had a radio. It started to make noise, and the Colonel bent down to grab it.

"Are you there?" the radio asked a moment later. The question was in Pashtu, but the answer was delivered in Russian. "It is all finished here,"

~Closing moments of the battle at the Soviet laser installation, from The Cardinal Of The Kremlin, by Tom Clancy.

And when that don't work, These Fucking People are gonna start lying about some nonexistent threat to Christianity, as if half the freaking people the Democrats are running against them aren't very loudly and outspokenly Christian.

Yes, yes, I get it, they're not Evangelicals. Well, I don't think Evangelicals are Christians anymore. You don't get to kick Jesus out, replace Him with Trump, and then get to still keep the title and the respect.

Maybe with different Christians in politics we'll get the American Reformation we need, and follow the Word of Jesus, not the hankerings of Empire.

I have people that I love that keep getting targeted by this shit. My Mom, my Partner, my Kid. Why the fuck would I vote Republican at this point??

And I'm not gonna Hate just cuz you tell me to Hate.

Not sorry. I have spoken.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

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

Five

Elisabet Sobeck: I remember yelling that I didn’t care. And that’s when my mother took my face in her hands and…spoke.

GAIA: Query: What did she say?

Elisabet Sobeck: She said I had to care. She said, “Elisabet, being smart will count for nothing if you don’t make the world a better place. You have to use your smarts to count for something, to serve life, not death.”

~From the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.