In places like Florida’s retirement community of The Villages, population 120,000, where twice as many people are registered as Republicans than Democrats, Republicans could fire away their views at the 19th hole of a golf course, and who would dare disagree? In 2016, Trump carried The Villages by 70%.
Unspeakable Injustice
In a dueling demonstrations in June, a Villages pro-Trump golf-cart motorcade to mark his birthday clashed with a memorial demonstration for black Americans we've seen on video-tape being killed by police. Unspeakable injustice loosed tongues in that white enclave. One woman pulled a Tiananmen Square move to block the birthday parade. People yelled.
Online, some Villages’ Republicans reportedly deliberated about counter measures if the community’s Democrats dared to hold their own golf cart motorcade. According to The Daily Beast, they would reconnoiter in advance of such a motorcade and throw roof nails on the path. One commentator pointed out everyone used the path, so everyone would be suffering flat tires. Oh. Talk about teed up.
Brainless Storms
The Villages-News claimed the birthday motorcade attendees represented less than one percent of residents. The community’s other 69% of Trump voters may have been golfing.
Yet, that online brainless storm about a roof-nail offensive is indicative of wrongheadedness across the country. As a Boomer, I thought by now we'd be the wiser. If people of this militant mindset even acknowledge the data on the spread of the pandemic, they shrug off the rise as hitting a vulnerable population. And success in reducing the outbreak with social distancing and mask-wearing - is not provable. So, wearing a mask signals political party affiliation and stifles freedom.
Ah, Freedom!
One sunburned young beachgoer interviewed on TV Memorial Day weekend said it was his family’s business if they got sick. “My family will take care of it.”
Impressive. Home pandemic services. His family must have its own hospital, ventilators and staff. M95 masks? And disinfectant wipes? That is privilege.
Fox News 19th Hole
To end a month dominated by peaceful protests in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and around the world, Laura Ingraham fired away on Fox News' 19th hole with countermeasures against the “riots.”
“You must be willing to suit up for this battle,” she concluded. “In school board meetings, town council meetings, maybe even a parent/teacher conference and, of course, state and federal elections. It is time to do or die!”
Ingraham got carried away. Her demographic has not attended a parent-teachers conference in decades. They do vote. It is an audience seemingly disposed to scare tactics broadcast or dog whistled to them and ready to suit up. But this audience will not acknowledge the wrong being done to blacks right before our nation's eyes, whether for eight minutes and 46 seconds on a city street or in 20 rounds fired into the apartment of a young black EMT worker.
Dimmed by Human Tears
To calm things down, how about we hold vigils? Like the violin vigil for a slain 23-year old masseuse – violinist in Colorado. Ah, maybe not, after seeing the video of police storming it. The tear gas stung and the violinists performed, “Killing Me Softly.”
The country seems to have careened from the vision of spilled human blood to historic human folly. Anyone aghast about the removal of confederate statues should read a New York Times opinion piece: You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument
The author wrote: "The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?"
The effects of a slavery mentality is the point. With tear gas, brute force and a siege mentality, America the Beautiful’s alabaster cities are dimmed by human tears.
Alabaster Cities Gleam by Vincent Mancuso