Time to Remember

Acknowledging your wounds is a necessary step in the healing process.  When one acknowledges a wound several realizations occur. If you have a wound, it means you have been harmed either by a conscious attack or an accident with dangerous repercussions.  In either case a wound is a serious affair.  It cannot be ignored.  It must be recognized, understood, and reparations must be made.  The more volatile result is the accountability for the inflicted wound.  Herein lies a deep philosophical conundrum, whether to seek retribution against the former President for the harm he has caused the nation, or move on somehow hoping that he will just disappear and his dangerous alliance will evaporate into thin air.  Everyone in America knows the answer to this predicament.  After a heinous attack on an in session Congress, leniency should not be allowed.  Those responsible for planning and implementing this overt assault on American democracy will be held accountable.  Never has it been more necessary to instill American justice through her Constitutional and legal processes.  Joe Biden's inauguration was a metaphor for America's renewed commitment to decency, honesty, and justice.  It is startling how ready the Biden regime is.  They have been preparing for this juncture in time for almost half a century.  It is tragic and lamentable that in our current system, it could take half a century for an opportunity to present itself.  This would be the definition of hard work and dedication to one's job.  I am quick to point out that musician Jeff Lorber had to wait forty years to received his much deserved Grammy award.  His pioneering recordings of the late 1970's were ground breaking in the field of jazz and popular music, so ahead of us he had to back peddle four decades to reap the recognition of his achievements.  This seems to be the way of America.  The Academy is a fickle spinster, and if one does not satisfy the requisite and predetermined criteria set forth by a very small body of seeming professionals, one is not invited into the fold.  I have come to realize this in and of itself is the great tragedy of life.  William Shakespeare realized that tragedy is all that life is.  It is how we handle the tragedy that determines our character, and yet it gets tiresome.  The year 2020 has been tiresome, and we are in the process of assessing and mitigating our wounds.  While in the throes of battle, necessarily it is better not to dwell on our wounds.  We must keep fighting.  Now that Donald Trump has been removed from the Presidency and no longer is an immediate threat to Americans, the severity of his attack clearly is visible.  For the first time clearly we can assess the attack which has been made on the American people.  It is disturbing.  It is upsetting, and it is painful.  What is painful is the loss which has occurred.  It was not clear to me until watching the inauguration on television how much America has suffered.  It is the little things.  Donald Trump represented a type of being not characterized by the teachings of Jesus Christ.  He was not capable of human empathy, hence the last four years of the American Presidency have been rife with inhuman sentiments.  There has been little culture of any kind.  It was not until Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, and Garth Brooks sang patriotic songs again at the Capital with the Marine band I realized how much we have been deprived as a nation.  The patriotism, the pageantry, and the heraldry of American life and governance largely has been absent from our lives.  These cultural practices, these institutions, and these humanities are what augment our lives and make the meaningful.  Instead during the four years of the Trump Presidency we have had communism.  Rest assured what we have experienced is no different than what has existed in America since her inception.  It has been a "Red Scare" and that red fully is the red of Communism.  It is the red of Communist China, and the red of the USSR.  It is the red of North Korea, and our former President was a red sympathizer.  His wife's father was a high ranking official in the Communist party.  The problem is seventy million Americans who voted for Donald Trump will not admit what they really are.  As a wave of feeling floods back into the White House, a dangerous dichotomy has been created.  Bleeding heart Liberal sentimentality while necessary to restore a moral conscious for America also is a ripe target for those with Red sentiments.  It belies my intrinsic human mechanism to try and understand how the color of one's skin or the sound of one's voice in any way can be considered inferior to anyone else.  Yesterday I realized if America only had been white for her short lifetime, what would we be?  Would country music be the only voice of expression for Americans?  While there is great strength in the body of America's country music, and largely it is the soul of our struggles against great odds, it is not the only voice.  America always has been diverse.  We are a nation of immigrants.  African-Americans were captured and enslaved and brought to America against their wills.  Their presence in the moral conscience of America is more important than others, so white America never will be finished with the task of accommodating their opinions.  Their influence and deserving acceptance in the realm of American life never will change, and we are  a richer nation because of it.  American Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Gospel, and Rock 'n' Roll would not exist without black lives, and most Americans are content to acknowledge this authorship.  These things make America human and give us a soul.  With this soul comes vulnerability.  As Trump recedes from the American battlefield, for the first time we are able to see clearly the damage that has been wrought. The wounds are fresh, and the brutality of an unmitigated global pandemic is continuing to kill.  Quickly we must button up the damage, formulate a new plan, and find a way to restore health and happiness in American life.  We have been fighting so long, it is difficult to remember how.