"The other night I was talking with my friend Cinque, he was over at my place, we were out in the greenhouse together. And he was explaining to me how when a member of the Mende, that’s his people, how when a member of the Mende encounters a situation where there appears no hope at all he invokes his ancestors…tradition. See the Mende believe that if one can summon the spirit of ones ancestors that they’ve never left, and the wisdom and strength they’ve fathered and inspired will come to his aid.
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams… (Long pause). We have long resisted asking you for guidance, perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality, which we so revere, is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But, we have come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding, that who we are is who we were. We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the power to do what is right, and if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does may it be finally the last battle of the American Revolution. That’s all I have to say." - Amistad
What are you doing here, in front of the computer? I'm at work. I'll be in this cubicle until 11 p.m. tonight. But I have plans for the drive home..
I haven't written here for awhile because I am losing my patience with my fellow Americans. Not just the fucking sheep who believe FOX News or the well-meaning hypocrites lulled with sex, consumerism and celebrity worship.
I'm disgusted, bored and angered most by the cynical hipsters who shake their heads at my naivete and go back to reading that Osama's Book Club selection that confirms all their most superior and paranoid fears.
I'm disgusted by the intellectuals paralyzed by their own irony. And I'm pretty fucking sick of people 'too busy' masturbating while Rome burns to take a look at their own nascent extinction.
That's right. Extinction.
"Understand this, congressional Democrats, and understand it well: you are not dealing merely with a body of political opponents in the GOP. You are dealing with a group of people that want you exterminated politically. The days of walking the halls of the Rayburn Building, sharing a bourbon with a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and hammering out a compromise are as dead as Julius Caesar. Collegiality is out. Mutual respect is out. They want you gone for good. Erased. Destroyed.
And you have been far too polite about this. The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Back in 1995, Republican Senator Phil Gramm said, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." That was eleven years ago. If you listen close, you can hear the beasts baying in the distance, waiting to slip the leash. Your limp tactics in the face of the assault upon you, your vacillation, your strange hope that maybe the GOP will be nicer tomorrow, has left you all smelling like Alpo."
It wasn't that long ago that certain people I am descended from were wiped out by rich white men with a plan.
And I'm sure that some of the people on the Middle Passage or during the range wars or the coal uprisings were annoyed by all that yelling by the people who were being wiped out.
I'm not talking about complaining without purpose, or philosophical playing aloud with ideas.
I'm talking about saying "This is rape" when it is. That's all.
I'm talking about not being a punk ass for once.
There are internet filters on my work computer or I would have copied and pasted the entire text of the "World Can't Wait" State of the Union Press Release.
But if you're feeling, (like the Native Americans smelling gunpowder, or the Hawaiians burning their sarongs and putting on muumuus that the Missionaries brought, or the Temchic Indians falling to their genocide one by one in the Spanish mines,)
if you feel a definite chill of your own eradication in the air, you will do what you can where you are.
Or you will roll over and get punked.
John Adams: ...the test ahead of us is an exceptionally difficult one.
Cinque: We won’t be going in there alone…
Adams: Indeed not, no, we will have right on our side, we will have righteousness at our side…
Cinque: I meant my ancestors. I will call into the past, far into the beginning of time, and beg them to help me at the judgment. I will reach back and draw them into me. And they must come…for at this moment I am the whole reason they have existed at all.
