Election 2020: Chief Thief
Flags are flown from buildings and parks, boats even. Flags occupy passing air, and ground dwellers are treated to a symbol.
So we notice how bits and pieces of America’s flags are proliferating these days at political “rallies.” Republicans and Democrats use lots of America’s flags as backdrop. I am not speaking to this messaging of legitimacy and patriotism. No, I am speaking to the bits and pieces of America’s flags appearing as masks, headpieces, scarves, you name it.
Perhaps this “accessorizing” fashion trend began with Trump, our master of appearances, hugging a flag a few months, days, moments ago. The smirk, the cheesy gesture, the feeling of revulsion this flag incident enabled. The bits and pieces of red stripe and blue field began to proliferate.
As Clem, my retired farmer friend warns between pulls of tobacco, “when they start lookin’ cute, be prepared.”
Message delivered: ‘we’ve got a piece of you.’ Indulgence of the sinner.
Trump’s sin is that he STOLE America, has locked her up and is charging admission.
Trump has ripped protections away, exposing America’s assets and institutions, proceeds to liquidate them, starts auctioning them off, and blames others for devaluation.
Futures are subsumed in yesterday’s bromides and revisionism. Alice, the plucky wonderland traveler would blush and stamp her foot.
Labeling Trump a racist and a fascist misses the point: racism and fascism will still be of our choosing to perpetuate after he leaves. These are not diseases and we are not immune, despite what Trump and his sidekicks bellow from the swamps while they twitch with the fevers they are spreading.
No, Trump is a thief and we will be spending a generation at least in retaining, restoring what he has stolen. America will thusly become a restoration project with Biden as Chief Architect. This is the subtext of Biden’s campaign: like it or not America, we’ve been ripped off and I’m the guy who will start restoring what we’ve lost. Don’t expect miracles. This is restoration and it’s gonna’ take time. ‘More later.’
Election 2020, drilled down, becomes a choice to acknowledge what we have lost, what we want restored, protected, revived.
Some call this the election for America’s soul. How do they know?
Some call this election a vote against white supremacy. Wasn’t that the last election, too, and the one before that? Did Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. proclaim from the Lincoln Memorial, “I have a vote?”
What we do know is that this is the election to speak to the suffering, the lives lost, the careers shredded, the family farm in hock.
In other words the America, part and parcel that has been ripped off.
October 13, 2020
