Two guys I care about got into it pretty bad yesterday. I made me think about the Presidents of my lifetime. There was never any love from me for any of them. Maybe at times an allegiance, never worship, never adulation.

My father hated Kennedy with a passion. I started to become aware during Nixon. I hated him more than my dad could have ever hated JFK. The dead girl on the ground and Kent State will never leave me. Nixon turned the military on us that day—May 4, 1970.

Ford — was a weak cartoon, a placeholder while we recovered from Nixon.

Jimmy Carter — May have been a decent guy, but his one term was held hostage by the Iranians. I had little respect for him or his policies. I think he’s an exemplary person, just never a great president.

Reagan — His “trickle-down economics,” was the beginning of the end of the middle class. Even with that, I thought he was a calming voice during tragedies like the Challenger explosion. He was a capitalist stooge, but he wore the decorum the office required well.

That decorum wore thin and I grew to hate him when he spat on his heritage and sided with Maggie Thatcher. Reagan took a knee for the Queen of England and was knighted while boys like Bobby Sands starved and died in Irish prisons. It makes me happy to wake up every day in the world where Reagan and Thatcher are no longer poison the air with their breath. If I ever get to England I will piss on that rancid bitch's grave.

Bush I — was a former director of the CIA, that told me more about him than I needed to know. He may be somebody’s, “Gampy,” and he jumped out of airplanes at 90. Good for him. CIA is no better than KGB.

Clinton — I never trusted him. There were too many sketchy skeletons in his closet. Bubba and his wife were a pair I had little use for. It was during the blowjob impeachment I came to realize that we look to these thugs as moral leaders. That is our biggest failing. Using power to get your dick sucked was never, to me, an impeachable offense, but it was not something I could, or would, admire.

Bush II — an easily manipulated idiot who probably stole the election from Gore. I’m not sad about that. I think Gore would have been a disaster, but he probably wouldn’t have sent 4000 American kids, and countless Iraqis to their grave, so Dick Cheney could score a cool $34.5 billion. Cheney is a vile son of a bitch, just slightly ahead of the dead Thatcher in my book. Tipper Gore running around deciding what music we should listen to always struck me as a little disconcerting.

In 2004, John Kerry ran against Bush II. That was the first time I thought I’d seen the bottom of the barrel. I wonder to this day if John Kerry walks around with a pair of Jayne Fonda’s panties in his back pocket.

Obama — I voted for McCain. I didn’t dislike Obama, I didn’t care he was black, in fact, I thought it was past time this nation put its racist history behind us and elected a black man. I liked that Obama was a constitutional scholar. I voted for McCain because I believed then, and still do, if you are going to send young men to their death, you should fully understand war, on a personal level. Sarah Palin, concerned and confounded me. I’d no idea what she’d become.

I’m still pissed off that NOT ONE bankster spent ONE HOUR in jail for almost destroying the world economy. And that the day after the economy began to recover the same shitheads that nearly destroyed it were right back to work pulling the same exact shit. Obama let that slide. Many, many of these capitalists, corporate shitheads should still be rotting in prison.

Trump—voting for HRC almost made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t vote for her, I voted against Trump. I think the current president is a disgrace. I think he’s not a bright man, he has no values I share, thinks himself above the law and Is unqualified and compromised. A racist coward. I don’t think HRC was a whole lot better choice, but would have been, like Ford, I’d hope a placeholder while we healed. That didn’t happen.

I have a friend who was ruined financially by some of Obama’s tactics in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deep Water Horizon and voted for Trump. I have another friend who was ruined by Trump’s business tactics in NYC. I respect both of these guys equally. At least they know why they voted the way they did.

And then there are Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Ted Cruz, Jerry Nadler... the NY Governor, Andrew Cuomo. He just took $250,000 from the Hasidic voting block.

My point is none of them are any good. Some had some good points, None of them ever have or ever will have our backs. We need to not idolize these men, we need to not fight each other defending them. They’d not do the same for us. The best of the best men on this list, on their best day, were and are, and always will be members of an elite club, we can never belong to. I registered as a Republican in 1975—an Eisenhower Republican—By 2012 and Mittens Romney I knew that party was forever gone. After Trump, I knew I could no longer be affiliated with that party, even by name, ever again.

I voted for two Republicans in my life. Reagan and McCain. I’ve never voted party line.

I’m sorry Dad, I liked Ike, and I joined his party in your honor, but John Kennedy and how he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis is why any of us are here today having this conversation. Barak Obama’s policies somehow saved the economy from Bush II and the banksters. These three are the best I’ve seen. The worst, choose any others from the list above.

As another July 4th approaches we really need to stop the lie once and for all and examine the alleged greatness of the “Founding Fathers,” Washington owned human beings, Jefferson, the man who penned the Declaration of Independence, owned people and regularly fucked them. You can’t whitewash this stuff, you can’t say, “That was then and blacks were property, not people.” Bullshit—they knew exactly what they were doing and they did it anyway. The founders were such cowards they shelved the entire discussion of slavery until the 1830s, knowing full well they’d all be dead and gone by then. Gutless, fucking cowards who orchestrated and participated in a power, money and land grab that we celebrate, still, with fireworks and some baffled ‘pride.’

There are so many things worth fighting for, worth fighting over. We will lose 80,000 this year to opioids, 40,000 to gun violence, the system we live under is one of institutional and systematic racism, it’s been a fundamental part of the system since day one. Our healthcare is a mess and getting worse and less affordable. We have kids going off to war and coming home and sleeping in cardboard boxes. We have a militarized police force, killing us on the streets for selling untaxed cigarettes. We have kids going to bed at night starving, in the ”greatest nation on earth.” We jail babies. The list is endless. Go fight about that stuff!

I have no issue bloodying a knuckle to fight anyone, I’ll be goddamned if I’ll fight any of you defending any of these men listed above.

These men, Democrat and Republican, right-wing and left-wing are playing a part, knowing full well what they are doing.

While we fight each other they take more power and control.

Every day as we fight each other defending them, they are golfing together, dining together, laughing at us. Laughing their way to the bank.

We need to stop giving away our precision breath, and energy fighting for them and start standing up for ourselves. I see this nation about to bust open into civil war. How many of us are going to die defending men who would step over your dead carcass on the way to get lunch.

The old woman pressed the flat palms of both her hands along her lap, trying to straighten the creases in her old, faded blue and white cotton house-dress. Then she looked back up at me and continued. ”Late July was a slow time, life kind of moved like mud up in them hills. A sweaty hot month, and nobody wanted to get goin’ too fast to go pickin’ in that hot sun.”

”Jimmy was fresh home from the big war. He went and got his-self lost in France for a year or two, we figured he was dead. I suppose I was happy as most when we seen him walkin’ his tired ass up that narrow dirt path, in between them blueberry bushes, smiling and a wavin’ like a hero.”

“I know’d looking at him that day he’d changed. A lot of boys went to that war and come home different, sad, kind of broke down. Not Jimmy, he walked like a man with a big plan and a bigger dick.”

“I didn’t think much of Jimmy or his dick at the time. I turned and went back up on the hill to pick them goddamn berries. I used to like to pick up by the dead lake, Lake Maratanza, they called it. That water was crystal clear all the way to the bottom. Nothing lived in it. No fish, no weeds, nothin’. There probably some science reason. We all just said it was a magic lake. When it got too hot pickin’ I’d strip off my clothes and jump in. The ice cold water damn near give ya’ a heart attack. Way up high, on top of the mountain, not even a tree for a mile or so. We called it the ‘sky lake.’ I’d lay on my back and feel like you was floatin’ in the sky.”

”I’ll not forget that day, I just climbed up out of the water and up on a big white rock. Jimmy come up behind, while I was naked, and raped me. He said it was my fault, fer bein’ naked and pretty. Later on, after I’d run home, so did my daddy. Jimmy said he’d been lonesome what with the war and all. That’s how it was back in them days. Most men is cowards to the subject of rape and I supposed Jimmy and my daddy was like most men.”

“Amyways, up on that white rock I turned on around, still naked, as Jimmy was zippin’ up his pants. I kicked him full on I the nuts. Kicked him so damn hard he flewed off the rock like a big-ass, goddamn bird, and a holding his nuts with one hand and the other a flappin’ in the air, he went down into the cold water. The bastard near drowned, doubled over from the gut pain. I watched him struggle as I put my work dress back on.“

“He didn’t drown, I’m neither here nor there on that fact, I recon. Jimmy climbed out of the water by his-self, he never come after me again unless it wanted it.”

“Sometimes I think I married him so he’d keep that swinging dick from raping any other girls up there on the ridge.”

“So, anyhow, that’s how we come to be married and whatnot. After he come‘d home from the big war.”

He wakes up early, squinting at sunlight raging through grimy windows and ripped white curtains, yellowed from years bathed in cigarette smoke.

The room was cold. The sticky sweat of summer faded too quickly to this frigid morning.

He reached down to the floor, found yesterday’s shirt, still buttoned halfway down, and pulled it on over his head. Reaching in the pocket he found his Lucky Strikes and his Zippo lighter.

Hacking and coughing, standing and stepping on an upturned beer bottle cap, cutting the bottom of his foot, he swears. From his words it would appear Jesus dropped it there.

Slightly limping he finds his way into the dark and cold kitchen. The old woman had made coffee hours before she left for town to work her factory job. An ancient, slightly rusted and brown stained percolator turned off, the remaining black mud-like drink hours gone cold. He fills a glass he finds – probably, mostly clean – from an assortment in the sink and drinks it.

Grabbing his fiddle he walks to porch, the sunlight sets the dying summer grasses and weeds and trees ablaze.

Lighting another Lucky Strike and holding it in his teeth he brings the fiddle to his chin.

He plays a Celtic, bluegrass ode to the warm sun and the blue sky.

Down the dirt road comes the sound of a banjo, from another porch, another’s morning rising to life in these hills.

As the notes lilt from his bow on strings his existence changes. The tune of fiddle and the banjo fuse into melody.

Transformed again to a young man full of wonder and thirst and hunger for great things, he plays on.

We met online. His profile picture really showed off his beautiful eyes. I don’t usually like to make the first move, but with this guy, I just couldn’t resist. I picked up my phone and nervously dialed the number. Would he still be available? I figured a cute guy like this would already be taken.

A friendly voice answered the phone, and I asked if we could meet in person. He was available that very night for a visit, so I quickly agreed and grabbed my keys and purse. I didn’t even take time to put on lipstick.

When I got there, another woman was already with him. I felt a pang. Was I too late? Were they connecting? I peered through the window to try and assess the situation. She seemed friendly enough, but did she want a long term relationship like I did? As she got up to leave, I quickly turned away and pretended to look at a picture on the wall. I didn’t want her to know that I was interested in the same guy, but as soon she left the room, I went it and took her place across from the beautiful brown eyed boy.

As I sat down, the puppy came right over and put his wet nose on my knee. I picked him up and he snuggled down into my lap. His black fur was so soft, and his liquid brown eyes looked right into my soul. It was love at first sight, and I knew he would be mine.

Tom, a young white man in his early twenties, packed his book and his journal, into a dark olive green book bag, threw the bag over his head, and left the coffee shop where he’d spent the last hour writing out his thoughts. His father had recently told him he was on his own after declaring himself a communications major and deciding to pursue a career as an investigative journalist.

His father, a mid-level manager for Frazier Farms supermarket, had explained to him well in advance that he would only pay if he majored in one of five things: Accounting, Business Administration, Pre-Law, Pre-Med, or some branch of engineering. He didn’t want any “farting around” from his own son, he said.

Tom felt humiliated and misunderstood. He was no slouch. He hadn’t made a flippant decision. He knew that he was entering a dying industry, knew that he might spend his entire life self-employed, and knew there would be periods of time--if not his whole life--where society would ostracize him for being the bearer of bad news. It was the time of the climate change emergency, it was the time of decreasing democracy in the United States, it was the time of endless war and there was little good news to report. The kind of journalist he aspired to become--in the mold of his heroes Sy Hersh, Julian Assange, Jeremy Scahill, and the late Michael Hastings--was practically charged with reporting nothing less than the apocalypse. And yet, Tom felt driven by a conviction that there was still time to change the world.

Outside of the coffee shop, his friend José picked him up in an old, black Mitsubishi.

“You all ready?” asked José.

“Yeah, yeah,” replied Tom, raising his eyebrows and nodding, as if he was sure but not sure.

“Are you sure?” asked José, “You’re practically going for broke. Trust me, I wouldn’t fault you if you forgot about going, spent the summer at Home Depot, and returned to school after the summer. You can always start your career with degree in hand.”

Tom shook his head from left to right, with conviction.

“I don’t know that I will ever have an opportunity quite like this one again,” started Tom, “something feels very right about doing this right now. I think covering the Poor People’s Campaign, even if it’s winding down, is important and I can’t wait to meet Michael Nigro, whose work I admire.”

“Cool,” said José, as he turned onto San Marcos Avenue and towards the highway.

After a year covering the housing crisis on his scant free time and publishing his work in the Christian Science Monitor, the Real News Network--based in Baltimore, Maryland--had offered him a summer internship with the possibility to come on board as a full-time reporter at the end of the season.

Knowing that if he returned to school after the summer he’d have to take on considerable school loans--he already had $15,000 worth of them, move onto someone’s living room sofa, and eat Ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner he really wasn’t thinking about returning to San Marcos. Other great reporters had gotten started without a college degree. Why couldn’t he?

Three days later he was in the nation’s capital to cover the closing of the Poor People’s Campaign. A contingent of nearly one thousand people had reached a moment of confrontation well before reaching Congress, their planned destination. The police had blocked their path and were allowing no more progress.

Michael Nigro was busy photographing the confrontation and Tom was busy taking notes.

The Reverend Dr. William Barber, a big, tall black man in a purple clergy’s robe, spoke to a policeman on the front lines.

“We have a right to petition our government and so we have a right to continue our march into the halls of Congress,” announced Dr. Barber.

The policeman failed to acknowledge Dr. Barber and simply stared ahead of him. Other protestors implored the line of police to move out of the way and allow them to march on.

“This is for the future of your children as well. Poverty is beginning to afflict whites and the middle classes. Refuse orders to stop us!”

“Yeah!” shouted the people behind the protester.

The officer, however, along with the line of officers that flanked him remained stolid.

The police issued an ultimatum to the gathering to disperse or be arrested and after they had refused to move the men in uniform began arresting everyone in sight.

Tom saw an officer approach him with baton in hand. Tom held up his press badge and pointed it at the oncoming officer believing he would reroute as soon as he recognized the characters on the badge: PRESS.

“Everyone within 100 meters of the congregation is subject to arrest, sir!” pronounced the police man.

“But, but” protested Tom before he was tackled to the hot, sun splashed ground and handcuffed.

Three hundred people were arrested.

A few days later he sat across from Paul Jay, Editor-in-Chief of The Real News.

Paul, a lean man of Lebanese heritage in his late fifties with large, round eyes trained his eyes intently on Tom.

“You’ve had a glimpse of what this life is like. Are you sure you want to continue?” asked Mr. Jay.

“Damn sure,” he answered.

Jay smirked, nodding his head, and yelled beyond Tom, “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’ve got ourselves a reporter!”

#fiction #journalism #PoorPeoplesCampaign #comingofage

http://therealnews.com/

https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michael-hastings-rolling-stone-contributor-dead-at-33-20130618