The Age of Redestruction

In the run-up to the voting of this past Nov 8, I expected these days afterward to be moments of relief that the Republican campaign, with all its pugnacity and its “down is up and up is down” approach to everything, would be finally over.  But such was not to be, and instead every morning since then I have awakened while literally wringing my hands in agony at the takeover of the U.S. Government by what I consider to be a stupendous mob of subversives who have always fought to cut that government down to being nothing more than a conduit of unlimited funds going to already filthy rich people with off-shore bank accounts and to anything having to do with shooting at populations, especially those filled with darker visages.

If I were the least bit important, which I definitely am not, a lot of people in the U.S. would be pleased to hear that I and so many others have been rendered so uncomfortable by their votes.   That was their goal, and it means that in effect that segment of the population has declared war on their fellow Americans who may outnumber them in quantities of people and of ordinary decency but not at all in the possession of guns and the will and maybe even a burning desire to use them.

The current Nobel prizewinner for literature, Bob Dylan, included in one of his songs the memorable words, “Got a knife.  Got to cut something!”  I forget whether he was referring to predecessors of today’s Trump fans, but I’m certain that just recently another Dylan, last name “Roof,” most likely had had that same urge ringing in his head for a long and finally unbearable time, before he walked into a church in Charleston, South Carolina while carrying considerably more than a mere blade.

I’m in severe discomfort because it seems to me that all the pieces are now in place for a variety of outcomes that would please those people with splinters for souls.

One is to finish rolling back measures that officially ended all the injustices against people my color that prevailed all through my childhood and up through 20 or so years beyond that.  I’m speaking of the more obvious wrongs.  The more subtle ones still have not vanished, and now both types promise to be firmly set back into place and sealed there just as tightly as they were so long ago.

When the Civil Rights laws were enacted, we who had long had to walk the back roads into the towns of Jim Crow all knew that our troubles were not over.  Those laws changed a lot of customs but not much in the way of minds, and we are at least grateful and even a little surprised that so far Obama has not fallen to an assassin’s bullet.   Instead Trump’s victory tells us that now we are in for a form of Chinese water torture that figures to last for a while.   So much for the keeping of promises in America, for all those who have visibly been even just a little “too long in the oven.”

That Age of Redestruction had already started when, not long before this vote took place and while Scalia was still alive, the Republican Supreme Court, which is supposed to be there for the benefit of all Americans, crippled the Voting Rights Act.  Now, under D.J. Trump’s smug and satisfied eye, that dismantling can be easily finished, before going on with aiming wrecking balls at Obamacare by putting it in the private hands of businessmen with a taste for avarice as strong as Trump’s.

For example: he tried to set up three gambling Meccas (3) in one town and all at the same time!  That fitted him to be President?  Building comfort zones in which to conduct activities in which it is well-known that only the “House” wins and that creates serious addictions and is especially attractive to mobsters?  And of course in return he all too likely expected a grateful Atlantic City to rename itself in his honor.

And so,  on and on it will go.  The winners of this most recent election will keep dreaming and pushing their agenda of injustice, in hopes of finally hearing what would be music to their ears – the sound of freight trains shaking themselves out and beginning to roll and consisting entirely of slatted railroad cars filled with wailing, desperate souls instead of their usual occupants, unsuspecting cattle, but with no difference in destinations.