POLITICAL THEATER
This digital periodical will question the ridiculous nature of those in power constantly trying to convince us they have our best interests at heart. Thinking the worse about those you govern won’t endear them to you. Until you’re beholden to everybody I will call your 3rd grade attempts to make us believe helping the rich isn’t welfare but helping the poor in any way is welfare or an entitlement state to be fought against at all costs. Calling you on it will be my honor…
“I cannot accept our economy, or basically our society, moving towards an entitlement
mentality.” Senator Joe Manchin.
Keep that quote in mind for me as I explain why that old trope is still in play that those with ‘eyes that cannot see afar off and ears that cannot hear’. My story began in the projects of Tom Browne Village in the community of Avondale in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ve heard those words spoken in various forms for many years about the aspirations, motivations and desires of the poor. That the poor doesn’t possess or place those pocket rockets near their heart to use them to accomplish things in their lives.
When I understood that my father couldn’t give me the desires of mine heart; I nurtured an inferno in my heart to explode at the moment I was free to make my own way in this world. Constant hunger, fatigue, malnutrition were not going to plague me much longer because now I am in control of my life. This is what people who may have started out in life with modest means, but the acquisition of power and money has ‘sprung up’ around their humble beginnings and choked it out. Must be nice to peer down at people from the top. ‘Maybe he should get closer to the people for a better look?’
I know what it’s like to be ‘flapping wildly on a clothesline like a shirt with holes no longer possible to sew together on a windy day’. Those holes, metaphorically speaking, can’t be mended anymore so a new shirt must be acquired. There was no way I could make my way through life the same as my father, so I had to chart a different course than he chose. Now back to the Senator’s trifling, asinine and presumptive assessment of making the way clearer of a few obstacles to success which he obviously has lost all faith in humanity with such an insulting conclusion.
Where I began in life is how I am perceived, and this is by the people we’ve elected to govern us? My advice to President Biden if he would listen to a citizen that grew up in adject poverty is to stick to the numbers he already negotiated down. If 3.5 trillion is too much then I would ask the good Senators to come up with a way to propel this nation forward. Ask them how the climate crisis will be solved? Ask them how we’re going to educate the next generation of our citizens to replace those retirees? Ask them how we’re going to maintain our food supply if every acre of ground is on fire? Ask them where will all the cures for the afflicted will appear if we don’t invest in human infrastructure?
Ask them why their lack of a vision demands the country follow them and perish? President Biden should remain firm in the numbers he has already lowered (I say he should have stuck with 6 Trillion) and have those holdouts come to him with achievable solutions if they chose to remain intransigent. ‘Entitlement’? I’m glad Senator Manchin thinks highly of the citizens he confesses to represent. Maybe he needs to sleep in the projects with roaches constantly jockeying for the crumbs falling from a hand me down table while sitting in a creaky chair?
Forgotten where most everybody else came from have we?
P. S. Oh, I haven’t forgotten the United States Supreme Court. You’re not political? How else would you want the country to interpret the Texas abortion ruling? Before you say it the U. S. Constitution isn’t and never was a righteous document. Never was it equal to the Holy Bible so get over yourselves. I frankly don’t know what higher moral authority your ruling resemble, or more appropriate wording you’ll understand ‘bear semblance to’.