Red-haired woman with a deadened expression stands in a kitchen. The caption reads “Oh, I’m in a mood.”
Hey, Team.
Targeting the figurehead, the icon and symbol, is a centrist strategy. Maybe liberal. At the very least it’s becoming less and less fringe. It’s the act of someone desperate to remove the unsightly thing they believe is what’s halting the Return To Normalcy. It betrays an individualist mindset, an expression of the deeply American belief that all men are, in fact, islands. That it’s the single public face that makes the choices, alone and fully propelled by nothing but their own audacity. It is cousins with signs reading “If Kamala were president, we’d be at brunch.” It’s spraying bleach on bloom of mold to hide it, never once paying mind to the poisonous spread behind the wall paper.
The Vietnam War dragged on pointlessly in a deluge of blood and chemical burns not solely by the choice of the individual, the figurehead, Lyndon B. Johnson. It scored blades and flames and bullets through the land under the decision of a committee. Advisors, experts, intelligence leadership. The poison behind the wall paper. Every president is complicit, of course. They, more than anyone else, have the option to halt these “projects,” but they never do. They defer to their committees, their advisors, their experts, their intelligence leadership. Their poison behind the wall paper. Do they even know they could do anything else? Does the goldfish swirling a bowl know about the sea? It’s as if no one realizes it is possible to eradicate mold. It’s just a period of inconvenience as the room dries out. Why does no one try drying out the room? Why do they continuously splash and wipe at the smudge? Doesn’t any of us understand this just lets the mold grow even more?
Trying to kill the president is stupid. It makes a martyr out of a monster while the truly guilty duck from view a behind a casket they bought with our taxes. Don’t mistake me. I’m not instructing anyone to carry out death. I’m just noticing no one is aiming correctly.
You know he’s actually flattered how often people try to kill him? He has the narcissist’s understanding of death, that somehow he’ll be able to watch his own funeral. Do you really want to give him something valorizing, even in a fantasy? I’m begging you, let his bowels do the job. I’m telling you, his bowels will do the job. A death that gets displayed in a museum is not what he deserves. Think hard. Dig deep. You know what’s fair is bloating in a puddle of his own shit, utterly alone and unattended. That only when someone stationed in the hall cannot stand the stink any longer is his passing finally noted. Why aim at him, why waste any time on a symptom? What about what’s around him? The poison beneath the wall paper.
I want to believe in a world, in a time, in a realm where death isn’t the option. I want to believe in restorative justice, in reparations, in land returned and moral debts repaid. I want to believe in an environment wherein nothing poisonous can flourish beneath the wall paper. I have to believe in it. If I don’t, then what is it all for? All this love for my neighbors, for strangers, all this desperate need to reverse the deadly harms inflicted upon my fellow man at home and abroad, what is it all for? I have to believe in it because otherwise I’m just a pile of meat rotting for nothing. And if that’s true of me, then that would make it true of everyone. And I refuse to see the rest of the world as nothing.
We do need revolution, we do need community. We do need upheaval, we do need kindness. Why bother? I will die breathing these spores, I know it. But no one else needs to. The walls will dry out, they must. And after I’m gone someone will breathe good, clean air. I’m doing what I can. It might not seem like much and I’m only able to reach a few people at a time, but one person is a world. It all adds up. It has to.
Anyway. I’ve read eleven books so far this month. I’ve barely practiced my Spanish. I saw Chuwi at The Roxy and spent the weekend at Madonna Inn. It’s nice to be alive, and I’m literally always saying that.
Okay, that’s all for now, Team. Talk soon (threat)!