Fires and Fury
I wrote this a few days after one of my heroes, Rep. John Lewis died. I didn’t initially post it, because I often feel there isn’t space for rage as a woman. When we touch our anger, our fury…we are labeled as “emotional” while men are afforded the positivity of being “intense.” But I am tired. So very tired. Tired of the racism and misogyny on full display coming straight from the People’s House…The White House. I am done playing by the rules and being “nice.” This is not a time for niceness or complacency. Since I wrote this piece, another 27,000 fellow citizens have died from the Coronavirus, bringing the death toll to 167,000. Take a moment and think of each of those deaths…they are someone’s brother, sister, father, mother, child, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend…the death of each one impacting the lives of the many left behind. Then tell me there’s no place for my anger.
Some say God put the world in motion and then free will took over. That we humans determine our fate. Our actions spin the globe and move us closer to freedom or destruction. These days it feels like the later. The hope within my soul dying as I watch my nation on fire burning like brush woven in the undergrowth. Setting our country aflame with a pandemic claiming 140,000 victims and counting. A blasphemous liar and sociopath in the White House. The White House, whose name has never been more appropriate than now, when a racist president, a white supremacist dog whistler occupies it. Full-blown white supremacy inhabiting the house that slavery built centuries ago. A man incapable of empathy or leadership. Who spends his days lost in grievance and victimhood, whining at the unfairness that has befallen him. Never accepting responsibility or accountability. Choosing to blame, smear, and point fingers at others, never himself. He spends days on the golf course, driving, swinging, chipping, and putting, while citizens suffer. Loved ones dying, alone without the comfort of a recognizable face before their last breath. Medical personnel in protective wear, gloved hands holding their hands. No last human touch allowed. My anger lost in recognition that our nation is held hostage by the votes of 77,000 people in an election bloated with white grievance by an Electoral College created to uphold slavery. The majority are ruled by the minority. A minority lost in a cult of personality that in a pandemic has become one of death. A death cult. Who proudly claim their individual rights and ignorance trumps public safety and scientific fact.
My frustration and fury, only made worse by the heartbreaking death of John Lewis. The unfairness of life on full display, with the injustice of losing a hero, while Trump still breaths and huffs. His crass words the antithesis of the soft, melodic voice of John Lewis. Who spoke of hope and love. Of possibility, not purgatory.
I try to make sense of it all. I try to have hope and believe goodness, the righteous, equality, and justice will prevail. I remember my hero speaking of losing all his fears, the day his skull was fractured by a police baton on a steel bridge in Alabama. Not one fear, but all of his fears, left his body that day. He claimed it made him impervious to criticism and pushed him to stand with strength in the face of any and all discrimination. I hear his whispers of loving your enemies. Of taking up the good fight. Of wading into good trouble. A leader of a movement that saw progress but not the promised land. I scream at a God that would take such a soul when we need him most. When his quiet voice of conscience is required but has been replaced by the ramblings of a buffoon. A troll whose life of ease and privilege was served to him on a golden platter. Ease and privilege that a simple boy from Troy never knew.
I seethe with the reality that had racism and misogyny not been on the ballot in 2016, our fates would be different. I look towards November and count the days. Knowing even if my favored results should come to pass the time between November and the Inauguration will be the most dangerous. A man with no moral compass, without conscience, who has annihilated norms and rules, and admits to being a sore loser, will burn this nation down before he gives it away. A second fire in less than a year. How much heat, how many flames can one nation and its people endure?
I do not know how the next six months will unfold in the thick of a pandemic, an election year, and a boy King screaming for law and order. What I do know, is never tell me that life is fair, that things work out for the best in the end. Because a world where John Lewis is gone, and his last years were spent resisting a President and party who stood against the work of his life is not a fair one. A world where Donald Trump is above ground and John Lewis is beneath it. That is a world that may have reached its end.
