Over the last year or more I have grown to respect Missy Comley Beatty as perhaps the most plain-spoken opponent of the Permanent Government in any media to which I have access. Although we have never met, we have corresponded quite a bit. I am going to post her most recent Counterpunch article Stirring The Melting Pot, a crie de coeur that starts by condemning Donald Trump in no uncertain terms and rapidly expands to include the entire U. S. government, DemRats and RatPubs alike.
But…before I do so I want to mention that Missy is a fairly recent widow, a quite recent grandmother, a middle/upper middle class urban white woman and normally a very…refined…writer. Tough-minded but not a screamer in any sense of the word.
Until last week, that is.
Why do I mention this?
Because when someone who generally writes in fairly reserved, well-considered prose posts something this direct using the language of the streets, its shock value its even greater when taken in context.
Read on.
Stirring The Melting Pot
Posted By Missy Comley Beattie On December 11, 2015Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
The latest Donald Trump controversy is a call to bar the influx of Muslim immigrants into the United States until “the nation’s leaders can figure out what’s going on.”
Let’s assume that these “leaders” do know what’s going on, that there’s method to their madness. And that this method is madness, insanity that places us on the brink of WW III.
Aside from that opinion here’s a fact: This isn’t the first time the melting pot has boiled over, staining the country’s conscience. United States history, from day one to the present and to what is intended for the future, is disgraceful. Native Americans were shunted to reservations, African Americans were and continue to be subjugated, and during WW II, the Japanese living here were forced into internment camps.
At this particular Trump moment, it’s Muslims, although Trump is also unsupportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. Fuck Trump.
As I write, we’re hearing from past as well as current politicians. Republicans challenging Trump for the party’s presidential nomination are strategizing, expressing outrage, jockeying for higher poll position. Fuck them.
Dick Cheney said Trump’s opinion “goes against everything we stand for.” And, yes, we know Cheney’s stances, his calling the Torture Report a “crock”, his endorsement of torture methods, and that he’d “do it again in a minute.” We know that he was one among 25 signatories to the Project for the New American Century whose principles shaped the Bush Administration’s brutal and conquest-oriented foreign policy. We know Cheney stands for permanent war. Fuck Dick Cheney.
Democrats are condemning Trump, of course. Of. Course. The same Democrats that have funded war. Fuck Hillary Clinton and fuck Bernie Sanders. Fuck all the warmongers and the war profiteers.
People attending Trump speaking events are foaming at the mouth in affirmation. These are the morons who believe they’re free and that Trump is going to protect them from their greatest fear EVEN as more and more of their civil liberties are eroded. Fuck them for being so ignorant.
Meanwhile, the country’s “leadership” is fucking each of us with aggressive rhetoric towards Vladimir Putin who’s confronting American exceptionalism and empire in Syria with attacks that are killing civilians. Putin sees US imperialism at Russia’s border. Fuck empire and fuck the emperor.
Fuck xenophobia. Fuck tribalism. And during this costly-for-all fuck-fest, think about Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, engraved on the Statue of Liberty. That Lady Liberty should either hang her head in shame or admit that she’s a symbol of hypocrisy.
Like dat.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Neither could have the late Joe Bageant, who was my former all-time favorite PermaGov-basher/truth-teller.
The question remains…what are going to do about it?
Damned if I know.
Damned if you vote and damned if you don’t.
All we can do is wake the fuck up to the realities of life in the United States of Oligachica. And then speak up!!!
Please.
Every time and everywhere that you can without risking your mortal ass.
Thank you and Merry Christmas/Happy New Year/Sacred Winter Solstice/Whatever-Holiday-You-Do-Or-Do-Not-Observe to you all.
Santa’s got a brand new bag.
Bet on it.
AG