Fifty States, with more than three-hundred million people, and yet not enough of us to seal the airflow in this punctured Zeplin. The country is reeling; she is unable to duck from the punch she had herself thrown. The end could be near…imminent, that is…at least if the speed and trajectory the country is traveling stayed the same. Even the one who convinced her to wind up and throw that punch was aware that if her opponent slipped the punch, America would knock herself out. The same wily, foul-mouthed man predicted that the end is near. Half of the country is standing on the sideline watching this heavyweight boxing champ staggering from the hit, with her feet about to give way under her. Maybe, they want her to fall on her face.
If one is broke…meaning if one has zero cash balance in his bank account, one feels naked in every sense of the word. If you left your house to travel one thousand miles away from the city you live in, and halfway to your destination, you discovered that you did not bring along your cell phone, chances are that you would feel naked too. You would be, undoubtedly, angry at your clumsiness. Cell phones, credit cards, and for the hot-blooded man, condoms, are the first things people embarking on long journeys would pack first in that hold-all bag. Consciousness-of-must-not-forget-items should remain on your mind, as a singsong, until you are locked and loaded, and out of the house.
That journey of one thousand miles begins with you hoisting the carefully stuffed luggage across your shoulder for the long haul. Anything short of that, and you would be forced to make purchases you hadn’t planned on making when you entered that city on the Hudson, The Big Apple, The Big Easy, or the one farther west…the one with her Mediterranean cool winds coming from as far away as the San Francisco Bay. You should ask yourselves this; if I were cloaked with the fabric of abject immorality…and I had been declared to be notorious, and morally bankrupt, should I feel naked? Should I then feel like I was hopelessly broke? In every aspect of the phrase, yes, you are naked and broke. With no beacon of morality about you, you have, inadvertently, become the lowest breed of human. A scavenging cur would score better…morally, of course.
I have said this before, and I will say it again; the tide is continually shifting, and it is drifting in the wrong direction.
The great United States started its slippery slope slide into that pantheon of decadence and despicable form of hallowedness on the 20th of January, 2017. That formless mote of ugliness has persisted, rearing its indistinct, debased articulation of Patriotism in that vale of misfits. The echo is huge, deafening in some parts, and it carries in her scaly brawn, the same lies Lucifer told his minions about God. I have said this before, and I will say it again; the tide is continually shifting, and it is drifting in the wrong direction. Where it is headed is where the obscurity is as thick as goo…and palpable as you would imagine a fluff of cloud. And hence, from the Divine Comedy Author, Dante Alighieri: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis”–
Only these ardent followers of Trump are not maintaining their neutrality; they are waged in a bitter war against those who dared to reject their chosen, dark-visioned prophet. They cajole. They make threats to kill politicians on the opposite side of the divide. Roman chants in the days of Julius Caesar are common here: ‘Kill Cinna for his bad poetry verses’, the Romans against Caesar shouted. ‘Kill Kamala Harris for not being black enough,’ the Floridian shouted. ‘Kidnap and kill the Michigan Governor for certifying the election’, the Proud Boys hollered. The echo from their war cry, that ‘Democrats should be burned at the stakes’ has reached a feverish pitch. Are we sure Nostradamus did not foretell the debilitation and break-up of the American enclave? If he did, I hope it never comes to pass. The best-nuanced opinion prescribers couldn’t have seen beyond the Rockies and the Dakota badlands to warn us against people like Donald Trump.
The desert of pit dunes…a platform of shifting traps he brought with him on the day he was sworn in could have taken flight, had the Joint-Chief-of Staff, Gen. Milley not stopped it. Well, if he had not forewarned the Chinese about the crazy, looney-tune we had as president. Gen. Milley must have sensed that something ain’t right. Remember, he was appointed by Trump in 2018 for the position he now holds. Until the country’s worst Commander-in-Chief flew over the cuckoo’s nest did the General fire off a warning shot. Republicans are clamoring for his head. They have wrapped their minds in that John The Baptist’s head-on-the-platter-mode. He is a traitor, they are saying, and screaming for his head to roll…literally, like the whore in Herod the Great’s palace wheedled in dance to win Herod’s affection for that moment. Gen. Milley must get the Evangelist’s treatment…for doing the exact thing the cousin of Jesus did, warning the Sadducees and the Pharisees about their ways.
The Chinese are a formidable foe and partner…and couldn’t easily be annihilated by any nuclear-powered country. America knows that. (The benefit of a Mutual Destruction lives on) Does anyone believe that Donald Trump knew that then? He tasted power…and in just a short period, he was drunk with it. The possibilities that abound with having absolute power carried him overboard; the man wanted his head carved alongside George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt on Rushmore’s mountainside in South Dakota. Wasn’t his hope of being President-for-live the reason he congratulated China’s Xi when his people crowned him emperor for life? If Donald Trump had won reelection, he would have succeeded in his bid to screw the rest of us ‘until death do us part.’ This was a point-blank bullet that America dodged.
Sometime in January of 2017, I wrote to Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) that Trump would think of a way to take us all with him if he lost his reelection bid. It was the only way the man knew how to equalize things that were stacked against him. This latest bombshell would never sway those recalcitrant natives, the dyed-in-the-wool, die-for-the-man, hardcore followers, like the death-warmed-over loser, Larry Elders. Congress impeached him over a taped conversation with the Ukraine President. Republicans fought so hard for him, freeing him…claiming that he was conducting foreign policy the only way he knew how. But they will not look the other way, or try to reason out why General Milley did what he did. This was a telephone call that was within his rights as the Joint Chiefs’ main man. When history tells the story of this one scene in a crime syndicate’s playbook, Gen. Milley would be exonerated.
Why would a carefully orchestrated check on someone hellbent on remaining in power even after he lost by more than seven million votes not be applauded?
The call to the Chinese was a deliberate act to save mankind, should the president, who lacked basic common sense, pulled the trigger to start a war that would have ended the world. This war, he believed, would save his tortured psyche. Why would anyone balk at such innocence and dedication to duty and the country as demonstrated by General Milley? Why would a carefully orchestrated check on someone hellbent on remaining in power…even after he lost by more than seven million votes not be applauded? Everything pointed to that likely end-of-time scenario that Trump was planning on taking the world to hell with him if he lost. The deductions from this man’s actions, his ramblings, his moral turpitude, were indicators. How could anyone have missed that? Gen. Milley didn’t. Thank You, Gen. Milley!!!
Trump’s game plan was as bizarre and as leaky as a sieve because he was telling us, every step of the way, what he had in mind to do. For example; the nation, he said, owed him an extra term. Meaning, that he would remain for a third term had he won reelection. In the end, he would then negotiate with Democrats to reimburse him for what he believed was the big lie; that Hilary Clinton beat him by three million votes…even as she lost the election. He craved popularity. And when Biden beat him by seven million votes and won, he cried foul. Eight months out, and the man is still wailing like a banshee, whose balls are strung up, and are barely holding him up. Take this from me; the man wanted to be as rich as Putin is. His game plan was to win a second term and then unleash all the filthy, intemperate financial shenanigans he had so carefully thought out.
“America: Do you feel lucky?” Clint Eastwood is asking.
♦ Don Okolo, Professor and filmmaker, is on the Editorial Board of the West African Pilot News. He is the author of many books.
