“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.” Robert Kennedy
For the two of three of you who listen to my podcast, this will likely sound familiar. I have been religiously doing them for around four months. I started out reading my stories, which simply didn’t work in this new medium, at least new for me. Podcasts are meant to sound live, in the moment, not some like some scripted, plaster cast, immobilized by pre-arrangement. So, I decided I’d accumulate news stories during the course of a week and recount them, peppered with impromptu reactions.
When I started cutting and pasting stories, going into this week, I purposely left a gaping hole, to be filled in with the election results in Georgia and the certification of the Electoral College results by the Congress. Both stories kept moving as their respective dates got closer. I was hoping the Senatorial outcome would be what it was. The wild card was going to be the next day in DC.
Like many of you, I watched what transpired this past Wednesday and I instinctively knew this day was going to be frozen in time forever, at least in the history of this country. Something unimaginable happened, right before our eyes and I promptly threw out my prepared podcast, always recorded on Thursday. In my short history with this new format, I never imagined sitting a kiss away from the microphone, without any idea what I was going to say.
What I am doing right now is a completely different creative experience, the first being 100% visceral and this one, far more rehearsed and cerebral, if you are kind enough to call it that. However, my reaction to both is completely the same. The only difference is that I have had time to think about what I shared during my podcast. In a way, they are creative bookends for me, both dealing with the same subject.
What happened in Our House has been coming, far longer than the four years that miserable, selfish bastard has been sitting at Our Desk, in Our Office. The train tracks of inevitably led to this past Wednesday, a crushing coda, capping off the epidemic of hatred and mistrust, choking the soul of America.
Even during my seat of the pants, podcast, I was looking for context, historic anchors to provide perspective. I swear, the scenes of Wednesday were off the charts, regardless of predictably; witnessing it was something for which there is no preparation, alone in its singularity.
I know I write about being an old guy far too often, but there are moments when history is the only teacher. I tried during the podcast, but I know I came up short. The microphone is very impatient, plus I am more concerned with the idea of live than accuracy. After all, imperfection is our humanity.
Well, time allows me to cheat and appear far more thoughtful than I actually am, at least on the spur of the moment. Since that recording of my extemporaneous flagellants, I have had time to think about my personal tentpoles, ones that stunned me, immobilized me with incredulity.
I was a sophomore in college when JFK was murdered. I was in the midst of midterms and the professor shockingly announced that exams were cancelled, because Kennedy had been shot. I was all of eighteen, still living at home, because I was going to Queens College, a city school. I immediately went there and watched TV, with my mother and older brother. I was shocked and ill prepared for this kind of indescribable devastation.
Well, time has this way of moving on, no matter where it stops you. The Sixties was a pretty incredible time, kind of make believe, after the doors to Camelot slammed shut on all of us. Aside from Vietnam, which seems kind of lame to shove to the side, Civil Rights began to matter, mattering like today, but feeling fresh, like an idea waiting for that time. Dr. King was a black Gandhi, speaking a timeless truth we still can’t hear. He was silenced by the same people, who stormed America’s Church on Wednesday.
The voice of Bobby Kennedy was the only one left from the chorus of love and compassion that sang The Song of the Sixties. A bullet found him, too and hope died, at least for me. I got kind of busy after that, pretending to be a grown up, working in the broadcast advertising business, getting married and becoming a Dad, twice over. Hell, I don’t know if I ever had a compass to show me the way, but I definitely got lost back then.
I spent the Seventies, floundering in confusion, a battle between expectation and the heart. In the midst of all this unwinding and deconstruction, John Lennon was murdered. One more time, the clock stopped dead and I was frozen in that moment. The rest of my life began to matter, in ways I never imagined before.
A couple of years after that, I left NYC, because I didn’t want to be shot dead, before I had a chance to live. I moon landed in Santa Fe, NM and built a wonderful life for myself. It was an incredible adventure and in some ways, I became the person I dreamed of being. I found my groove, so to speak. To be clear, I was not some mindless idiot, eating tofu and sucking crystals for direction. I was just this guy, stumbling along and feeling these tickles of actually being alive.
My friend, Michael, called me on the morning of September 11, 2001 and told me to turn on the television. At the time, I was living in a seriously, funky adobe home, a handful of miles north of Santa Fe. I was selling Gospel music videos on BET, Black Entertainment Television. I worked pretty much in solitary, just me and my oversized Apple computer, looking like a swollen megaphone. God, I loved that life. One more time, the world invaded my private, little construct and I was iced over yet again. I have never lost my love for NYC and repeatedly watching the Twin Towers ruptured by flames, then disintegrating into temporary tombs for the innocent and the heroic, was a moment that stabbed me in the permanent heart of my memory.
You know, I could run off a list of everything that has happened to me over the course of my many years and finger all sorts of cataclysmic occurrences, but there are just some that are transcendent, bigger than my comfortable, little world.
This last Wednesday, the fists of brutality sledgehammered the Liberty Bell, the blindness of hatred graffitied the white marble magnificence of the Lincoln Memorial, while the feet of fools trampled the Church of America.
Finally, this President got what he has always wanted, another bankruptcy. This time it will be his legacy from that Wednesday that will live on, a tear in the fabric of this nation, the only memory he leaves behind.
Like many of you, I was watching the horror unfold right before my eyes. This Rape of the Republic was an inevitable wave, building upon the rhetoric and lies of his bratty, spoiled children and their minions. Worst of all, people who had been elected to uphold our Constitution and the rule of law, allowed and promulgated a complete perversion of the one-person mathematics that have anchored this country for over two hundred years.
Trump is a man, who has been treading water in the swamps of deception, since the silver spoon of entitlement was gently placed on his tongue, now spewing a kind of ugliness that finally crossed the line of breathless shock and betrayal.
The voices of his loyal sycophants will continue to gargle their hatred of all of those who are not like them. They have defiled the holiness of the American idea, one that I never truly entertained until Wednesday. I love America. Patriots are not those with MAGA hats and Glocks, they are the quiet millions, many of whom have taken this place for granted or leveled criticism at her for being so far less than perfect.
It is now our turn, yours and mine.