Southern Ruination

I have been rambling on to my mother about why I left Columbia, South Carolina around 1990.  She turns a deaf ear after trying to listen.  Verbalizing my actions back then helps me understand.  It was a complex and difficult time.  The easy part was understanding my own situation.  I lost a job, and badly I failed to end a relationship by doing what many people do.  I let it ramble not willing to make the decision.  In this situation always it will end badly, but it not always is easy to understand.  It ebbed and flowed, but ultimately it did not return because of distance.  With no protocol for long distance love, it has little chance.  I let it tarry, and it rode in a different direction.  It took long enough to recover from that mistake and regroup for another career direction.  Those were the easy parts.  The difficult part became understanding thirty years later the real reason I left Columbia, South Carolina.  It was political corruption.  The State House in this capital city was the target of an FBI sting which exposed bribery.  Many elected state officials were offered and accepted cash bribes. They were captured on video tape.  As it turns out it was a much bigger deal for me and my conscience.  After watching Nikki Haley speak for the Republican National Party promoting the reelection of President Donald Trump, immediately I knew why I left Columbia.  While Ms. Haley had some moving talking points, and I don't think she is an evil person, it was clear to me she represents the kind of politician from which America has suffered the most.  She is an opportunist.  She may have grass roots, but her motivation is advancement in her career through the procurement of power.  She has suffered from what the rest of the Republican congress has suffered.  She has become brain washed from lobby money.  It was not until I returned to Columbia several years ago, that I realized why I had left.  Columbia was exactly the same.  Nothing had changed.  There was no apparent urban growth.  Things were  cemented in place including their politics.  This is the reason I left.  Driving back into this favorable city thirty years ago in which I enjoyed living, studying, and working for five years, Never did I notice it was white.  I noticed this time, because I have been gone working all over the world.  Columbia reveled in its whiteness.  It is sheltered and immune from the realities of color.  The politics of Columbia only recently became clear to me with the reelection campaign of Donald Trump.  It turns out where I am living is Trump land.  I never knew this before, and it explains my revulsion to this political perspective.  When we played jazz, or rather tried to play jazz in Columbia's notable country clubs, they were not happy.  Often bands were booked on causal engagements with nothing but a jazz repertoire.  These country clubbers preferred "shag" music, music to which they could shag dance.  We had no vocalist, and while I knew many shag songs the small jazz combos did not.  They also had no desire to play this music.  We were confronted by angry patrons unhappy with our musical selections.  These people are Trump supporters.  It has not changed.  They are the affluent, upper class, Southern society which always have existed in here.  Had Abraham Lincoln not ended slavery, I am sure these people would have owned slaves.  They do not understand the fortunes they have, such as the rice industry in Charleson, were built with African American slaves.  They did not toil for their money.  They relegated authority with the aid of an inhumane, unethical, immoral, and now criminal practice slavery.  There is a stark spiritual difference between me these people.  There is something so deep and so strong, that when I am around it I feel physically ill.  This is the way I have felt the last few days.  It is because these are the people involved in the Republican National Convention.  Never have I seen with my own eyes such a distorted, untruthful, and inept depiction of American political life.  Like Donald Jr. is saying, they are going to lose, and they are going to lose huge.  He is afraid Joe Biden will lynch the survivors.  I remain skeptical about the November election, because the Republican Party was able to bribe the electoral college in 2016.  Since several things have transpired.  One is the Republican Party now adopts no platform.  Their platform is, "Whatever the President wants."  They have not taken the time to formulate their ideas of American leadership or policy.  This is how lethargic and  inept the United States Congress has become.  Money has turned them into vampires.  While I do not believe in such figments of the imagination, this the perfect metaphor for them.  Perhaps that is the purpose of such literary imagery.  I never have seen it with my own eyes in the mainstream American media.  While televangelists were close, they only were two bit hack snake oil salesmen.  They scorned God and sealed their own fate with their scams, but none of them was the leader of the free world.  Watching the Republican National Convention I feel as if I am watching televangelism in its hey day.  This is the Trump Clan approach, and it is the first time America is seeing their true colors.  It is an anachronism in the greatest sense.  It is like seeing KKK hoods in the 21st century.  The depression it creates in my soul is staggering.  I am experiencing the death and destruction of America's Civil War now,  today.  Our country never has changed.  Only has it beaten back the evil beast by sheer determination, Christianity, and desperation.  With the able miseducation of the millennial generation and their contemptuous exploitation, this surviving faction of the American South, those who live in Columbia, South Carolina and elsewhere have won the presidency again and almost ruined this country. Truly it is a dark time when you democracy hangs in the balance.  Will it be God or a dead black man which tips the scales?