MPaulamrams writers blog: Congenial-speak #8

Friday, March 24, 2017

Congenial-speak #8

Fools rush in

A scrap of a babushka, a yellowed corner of a dossier, a sip of toxic tea prove something. Years of friendship with Paul Manaford sound incriminating, closer, closing in on the smoking gun or, if you choose to whiff, the poisonous pot of tea. He protested vehemently. Too much for any private dic to think otherwise. It could have been the poor 300-pound man in a bed, the guy Sarah Palin's saw in her window to Russia who sat on the Bering Strait. He tapped into America's electoral process, its tabulators, its electronic voting time machines quite accidentally. He confused his remote while trying to raise his bed.

Geo-politics earns the odd bed fellow, the effervescent prostituted shower and intelligible dossier. Trump, I believe, has a Putin fallacy, an admiration, an impractical emulation. Trump wants to be Russia. He likes its onion towers and plaintive democracy. Putin is three times the billionaire Trump ever claimed to be. His people fear him. They dare to revere him, and one rises up rarely to go away. He has the KGB track them, say its just, and shoot them in a Moscow street. But that is how Russians are, that's their oppressive, one voiced, oligarchical history.

America has always—I fear until now—been the land of the free. We also claim home of the brave in that war-worthy sobriquet. We are free to flip the president off if we choose. We don't even have to hide behind a blue bird tweet and could presently tell the president to take his policies and stick them. We fear no reprisal with non-threatening words, and even then our life is not at stake. It is a tough call—if you discriminate at all. From the beginning, in descending order of severity, the groups of Americans who were not free are; Native Americans, Afro-Americans, heretics, Jews, Asians, women, GLBTIA....who am I leaving out? The point is that, in essence “land of the free” is a half (or less) truth. Although maybe, like I am still learning about Christians, it is a work-in-progress. Freedom across the board is a goal, a benchmark, a tug-of-war prize, or just a subliminal patriotic message to remind us how good we have it compared to Putin's Dem-oligarchy.

Rarely in America are peopled killed protesting a government. They will be beaten, maced, gassed, hosed, whipped, but usually left with breath to protest another day. People do die, incidentally, provocatively (Kent State, 1968 DNC) in modern history. Killing was meager, controversial, tried, even before (Boston Massacre) we were a paper democracy. The CIA and FBI fathom justice. They miss information, or classify it to facilitate assassins. They bury their dead under so much bureaucracy, so much conjecture and hearsay, that after 53 years it is still argued who killed John Kennedy. Yes, presidents do end up dead in America, usually the ones who are trying to do, or have done, something good. JFK, RFK, MLK, Lincoln and all either did, or wanted to, advance America, disrupt the status quo, to bring the country beyond the bible-bound, tight-lipped, 20$ Andrew Jackson, convoluted sense of equality.

Black men still get killed, inordinately, indiscriminately, in the 21^st century. If MLK were alive he would say its an abomination. He'd be sad at the irony, the pages of blister footed history that pushed a black man into a white house, only to have his successor (a racial opportunist) hate all his work away. I say it is back to a Crowish mentality, a lynch-mob sentimentality has crept back to America. The violence is captured on personal cameras, i phones, body cams, and other surveillance of individual space. It seems disproportionately black, and a buck says it is, but I do not make those decisions. I did not decide that Zimmerman was acquitted.

I believe, in spite of these discrepancies, America will never be Russia, never has and never will. Trump will never be Putin because we are the land of the “free.” We are a work-in-progress, like some hypocritical Christians (I conclude), it is something we strive to be. We are aspirants and freedom's just a theory, an AA chip, a reason to call this mess a democracy.

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To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a fair Democracy- review

I thoroughly enjoyed To the Front of the Bus, a must read for the politically curious and anyone who is paying attention to our current state of the country......who we as a nation, and how we got here. As someone who is not well versed in U.S. history, I found Amram's book refreshingly easy to read, the sort of book that can be fodder for discussion for the political novice or political savvy----there is something for everyone on these pages. The "Author's Note" and "Afterword" bookend the social movements which are humanely detailed in the book, and provide moving context for the how the political is always personal. In his latest book, Amram has expanded on his previous Ten Years and Change: a Liberal Boyhood in Minnesota (another excellent read), describing the struggle for equality which has consumed our nation since it's inception. What is most interesting is how Amram seamlessly weaves historical and current events, tying the two together in an effortless read that belies the painful sacrifice and struggle for human rights that continue to this day. There is an incredible amount of research contained here. I often find historical/political non-fiction interesting, but too dry for me personally to get through. To the Front of the Bus is the opposite reading experience, as this book is a compulsively readable page-turner, balancing well documented fact with personal and societal ramifications. I wish I could order a copy for every high school and college classroom in the country, as the truth telling of the "movement toward a fair democracy" is important. Thanks to Michael Amram for his words, which are an inspiring call to action for each one of us to use our voting power wisely and not squander our political and social power. Highly recommend.

Premise of Bus

There is a bus, careening through history, through decades of people moving, being transferred toward a fair Democracy. Like attaining Democracy, seeing it work, reaping its sporadic benefits, a bus stops and continues on, each time furthering a majority, growing stronger. But it also wanes as people are let out, and an interminable cycle of an unfulfilled Democracy (bus) ensues. In To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy bus is a metaphor as a method of movement, of protest (freedom rides). It speaks of the forced and willful movements of people throughout history, from the slave trade to the Native Americans' “trail of tears,” to the “great migration,” to the current deportation of immigrants. Bus is used in the literal sense of black Americans' ascension to the front, or anywhere they choose, on buses.

To the Front of the Bus: Movement toward a Fair Democracy follows the transports of three major groups who were denied basic rights as Americans. Their evolutions, their respective revolutions' order was left to be written in history as having been subconsciously prioritized. It was pre-destined, each having made a fluent transition, a natural selection, a humanely appropriate ascension, to the next. First came the removal of chains, the freeing of feet and minds, to fighting a Civil War and decades to win civil rights. Then came the women in their defined movements through decades for suffrage and equal rights. Time had come to pass. The abrogations of blacks and women's injustices readied the minds and streets for the disabled. Both cleared the way (as people on buses often do), expanded human consciousness enough, removed guilt of oppressing the prior groups enough, for the disabled to come out of the institutions and almshouses, to be accepted in society, to speak out for certain rights, and to be able to sit to the front of the bus.

To the front of the Bus: Movement Toward a Fair Democracy

“To the front of the Bus: movement toward a fair democracy follows the transports
of three major groups who were denied basic rights as Americans.
Their evolution, their respective revolutions' order was left to be
written in history as having been subconsciously prioritized. It was
pre-destined, each having made a fluent transition, a natural
selection, a humanely appropriate ascension, to the next. First came
the removal of chains, the freeing of feet and minds, to fighting a
Civil War and decades to win civil rights. Then came the women in
their defined movements through decades for suffrage and equal
rights. Time had come to pass. The abrogation of blacks and women's
injustices readied the minds and streets for the disabled. Both
cleared the way (as people on buses often do), expanded human
consciousness enough, removed guilt of oppressing the prior groups
enough, for the disabled to come out of the institutions and
almshouses, to be accepted in society, to speak out for certain
rights, and to be able to sit to the front of the bus.”

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Friday, March 24, 2017

Congenial-speak #8

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To the front of the Bus: Movement Toward a Fair Democracy

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