I Have a Hammond

You work for the things you have.  I have worked for my Hammond, and it began with my father.  As far back as I can remember we had a Hammond organ in the living room.  On McGougan Road in Fayetteville, North Carolina is when I think it appeared.  It was a spinet, although at the time I had no idea what it was.  It was a Hammond, and my father, the band director at Terry Sanford High School, used an old army trailer to haul it to Seven Mountains Restaurant to play some gigs.  It was a major ordeal to move it.  He made a custom wood ramp and a dolly, and the M rolled out the back door, down several sets of steps, and up the ramp into this rusted antique of a trailer.  Later this same trailer became a boat trailer, and with custom wood ribs it would hold our Minifish sailboat.  Once traveling to Wrightsville Beach these wooden ribs vibrated loose on the highway, and the boat took flight.  That is a slight exaggeration, but all of it was an adventure for him.  The Hammond M spinet sat in our foyer when we moved to Westchester Drive.  By this time a Leslie speaker appeared.  I think it came from McFayden Music store in Fayetteville, and it was a 145.  I never played this instrument much, because I was a pianist.  The century old mahogany Knabe baby grand in our living room was my instrument.  For twelve years I practiced on it, until my senior year of high school I gave a recital which included in its repertoire George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," Aram Khachaturian's "Toccata," and several other notable piano works.  I reckon I earned my piano stripes.  I never played the Hammond, because I didn't know how.  When I was required to record a demo tape of my keyboard skills for college, I sat down at this M and played some blues.  The M spinet only has one octave of bass pedals, although its tone generator is the same as an A, B, or C series Hammond.  It only had one 12" speaker in the console, which is not enough to fill a room.  We did have the Leslie, and roughly I knew how to operate both.  I played a little blues and hit some bass notes with my foot.  That was about it.  It didn't sound like much.  After venturing to Cowtown to work on my doctorate in composition at OSU, I got the Hammond bug.  There was an active organ scene there which after several years I stumbled upon.  Oh Joy!  as the song goes.  Holy mother of God, this instrument and its capabilities.  A full set of bass pedals, and with them the ability to play a bass line with your left hand.  At the time (in the ephemeral words of Dr. Ted McDaniel) which weren't ephemeral at all.  They really were, "At that time."  Ted was the director of Jazz Studies at OSU in addition to heading up the African American Studies program.  I didn't understand the significance of this until this year.  He was an expert in Black history, Blues, and other topics relating to jazz.  Also as did Dr. Dick Goodwin, he arranged the marching band shows.  Caramba!  Guys that do it all, and I mean have their fingers, many fingers, in the pie.  This is difficult with which to compete, but okay.  This is how one acquires a college level teaching position.  Hank Marr was the jazz piano professor at OSU.  He was a skilled Hammond aficionado, and played the BeJesus out of a B3.  He deserved this position, and along with it came a rich Columbus heritage of Hammond playing including Ben Patterson.  As I mentioned previously, I was bitten and smitten with the Hammond bug.  When I ventured back to "Nam" around 1994 I convinced my father to trade the "M" series spinet for a greater model Hammond.  Of course I wanted a "B," but Carl Greeson, the local Hammond peddler, arrived at our doorstep with a beautiful Mahogany A-100.  (I was disappointed, but my father was elated)  It was his money, the price required for the acquisition of this console organ.  It looked beautiful, and that was the major concern for my parents at this point in time.  We gave the "M" to a family friend who did not play, and Carl hauled the "A" into our foyer and hooked it up to the 145.  (The MME  switch never functioned correctly, because he rigged it to work with the 147 amp which was an non balanced unit)  The A,B, and C series Hammonds have AO-28 preamps with balanced G-G terminal outputs.  These are 180 degrees out-of-phase, and when used in conjunction with a 122 Leslie amplifier create a balanced signal which cancels noise.  Caramba!  It became my legacy later to convert our 145 to a 142 using this valuble attribute.  After I returned from working the cruise ship circuit, and because my father began to decline in health, this Hammond became my instrument all together.  He did not mind, because he mentored my my whole life in the field of music.  He trusted me completely, and my musical skills under his mentorship benefited us both.  I played in his band on three different instrument, piano, electric bass, and trumpet.  When I was in high school I became the first trumpet player in his band.  I worked hard for him.  We work hard for the things we have.  I have a Hammond.  

Vindication is a Bitch, Even When It is Unintentional

 The tragedy of it all is all around me.  In the words and message of William Shakespeare life is tragedy, unavoidable tragedy.  I have lived it but worked really hard to leave the bulk of it behind.  To get on with your life, to remain viable and productive, some tragedy is necessary.  (or so many say in the arts)  Perhaps it is the tragedy that gives you your soul.  Okay.  I have enough of that, and I have been doing the best I can most of my life to leave it behind, the disappointment and sadness.  The loss.  The bereavement.  Without visiting that dead, cold, not moving horse again, it revisits me from time to time.  I have to smell it again, taste it again, and try to learn something new from it.  This time I had a few enlightening thoughts.  Never have I shirked the responsibility that I may have been to blame for my consequences.  I took full responsibility eventually for the relationship break up that accompanied the loss of a job.  I was forced to do this to achieve closure on that horrible unhealed wound.  I did not understand much of it at the time, but I found myself without a suitable support system in a foreign city once that was supportive and nurturing.  So is the way of the world, up and down.  Success and failure.  It was deemed that I was to pay for my callous behavior, but in retrospect I am coming to realize it was not all my fault.  I took full responsibility, but the reality was I took a full frontal hit from the outside.    Easily it can be summed up with the song title, "My Old Lady Married a Clam Chop."  I have no animosity over the past, but I have pain.  I carried a large wound for a long time, until I figured out how to heal it.  Like those of us who have suffered, we know how to heal the wound.  We change ourselves into someone new, someone better and leave the past behind.  That is not to say that this past will not try to revisit us time and time again.  In my situation of losing a job and a relationship near the same time, I was not all to blame.  One little incident I took responsibility for was that at my Halloween bash in Columbia, Donna Crump seduced me.  Yes, Scott, your wife Donna came to this party with a sassy mouth, a bottle of bourbon (or perhaps it was mine, but she was happy to drink it) and the idea that my relationship with Lee McBride was flawed.  I don't know what was in her mind, but on that particular night celebrating Halloween in Columbia, SC it was not Scott.  Was I too blame that it had been a long summer, and Lee was in Charleston for all of it.  We didn't communicate much at all.  I didn't know she was finding another route for her life managing downtown dance clubs.  She was faithful to me for a while, because I went down to visit her and she was proud to show me off to her local customers.  Then she was proud of me, because I was a successful academic.  After finishing the masters degree, I had been offered a Guest Lectureship in jazz studies at USC.  All ready I had moved back to Fayettenam, but two weeks before the fall semester Dick Goodwin called me on the phone and offered me this meager position.  It didn't pay much, and there were no benefits at all.  He said they would try their best to get me private students and gigs.  Who would turn down a college level teaching position at my age?  It was fruitful that I took it, and it was a good year.  Lee lived with me most of that year.  It was not until the full-time tenured position replacing John Emche was given to Jon Serry that things went awry for me.  There was another summer in Charleston in for Lee, but this time I had no teaching money on which to live.  I began to struggle financially.  I found I could get by as a single person, but I no longer could support the lifestyle we had become accustomed to.  I asked her to help, and she could not.  Instead she was insulted and disappointed that we no longer had the same clout in the musical community.  I felt her become a burden rather than an asset to my life, because she stopped going to her classes at USC.  She slept on my couch most of the day.  The romance quickly disappeared, and without my knowledge another option entered the picture for her.  I did not know this was  happening, but I did know she was not really interested in me anymore.  I was not the same respected college-affiliated teaching musician.  Covertly without my knowledge she was moving in a different direction.  This would be the second time a partner of mine would not be strong enough to cut the tie.  For whatever reason you move in different directions, but honestly and respect are all that are needed to move on peacefully and without the tragedy.  Like my first true love, she could not come to break up with me.  I was lead on and ultimately painfully abused in retribution for her anger at losing the relationship.  She admitted she made it a priority to bring me down, and she did.  It was not all my fault.  Donna Crump poised herself at that juncture and proceeded to drop poison in an all ready infected wound.  Lee was at the party as was Scott, her husband, but they were elsewhere.  Donna clung to me in the kitchen, and we drank bourbon together.  I did not realize what was happening.  She and Scott were friends of mind, so I had no worries about infidelity.  I was not attracted to her or interested, because she was married.  Because Lee had begun to stray we ended up drunk together in the kitchen.  We were so toasted that we were leaning on each other and laughing.  When Lee came into the kitchen, needless to say all hell broke loose.  The perfect reason for anarchy.  I had no such idea, and in fact was struggling with the sentiment that Lee all ready had strayed.  She was not interested in me anymore, and she was making it clear.  More importantly she wanted to punish me for whatever.  This as I just wrote was the second time that has happened to me.  You spend time apart, and suddenly your privileges are no longer.  The long arm extends itself, and you become a puppy on a leash to be abused, not loved.  It becomes your duty to realize their problem and break up with them.  Not the other way around.  They are not strong enough to cut you loose, so you get strung along and abused.  Lee was good at this, and the scar it created was massive.  In a very short period of time she dropped out of USC and married a drummer from Charleston.  Just like that her college days were over, and a hipster, Cajun-seeming, Motown singing dude became her husband.  I was out of the picture.  The pain for me was not so much losing her, but watching her drop out of college and settle for this lifestyle.  She told me that during the gigs, they would cook red beans and rice on the dance floor.  This was appealing to her.  Unbeknownst to me, but what became very present was I was supposed to compete with this to keep her.  She wanted to be a groupie, and it didn't help that my band Quintessence had won the Hennessy Cognac jazz search.  She and John Glancy's girlfriend, "Juicy Lucy" as I called her accompanied us to New Orleans to play at the Storyville Jazz Club.  Largely the two of them were responsible for our win, two crazy blonds were showed their asses on a massive scale during our meager performance.  Needless to say Doc Severinsen was impressed by their performance, and we were declared the winners.  I was and am still appreciative of their efforts, but I had made no decision to become a jazz star.  I was a college teacher, and this was my interest.  Now I had to become a music star to keep her interest, and it was a drag.  I was pretty jilted, because the life we had lived for three years was created and perpetuated by me.  It was my study, work, and music performance which created our lifestyle, and she was livid to lose it.  It became my fault her fall from grace.  During that summer when I am sure she was involved with Clamchop, a young girl took a fancy to me at a Jackie Muckenfuss gig in Columbia.  I figured what the hell, so I took her out one time.  I don't know what her motives were, but when I took her for a motorcycle ride her hands were all over me.  Perhaps she could not control herself, but she made it clear that anything instigated by me was not appropriate.  Two seeming manipulative women at the same time.  This was a time in my life I was a devout Episcopalian.  I didn't have the tools to be a bad boy rock star.  Also I didn't have the self esteem having just been refused the job I came to covet as life itself.  I had been ousted from academia for a piano-playing percussionist with a few Hollywood composing connections.  Perhaps it was a political mistake that I made my opinion known about the mistake in hiring Jon Serry to replace John Emche.  I had been there for three years nurturing this position and knew what is was about.  It was clear to me that while Mr. Serry had serious music credentials in composition and jazz fusion, this skill set was not that appropriate to recruit and teach jazz to South Carolina natives.  I wrote a letter to William Moody and expressed my concerns.  Needless to say I probably would have refrained from this had I known what I know now.  Now I became the enemy not only of the McBride family but of the USC School of Music.  I was kicked out of the local nest in a big way, and I found my way to Columbus, Ohio were Dr. Emche had complete his D.M.A.  It became the beginning of a better chapter in my musical life, although it took me four years to pull out of the severe depression that ensued.  I never really thought about Donna Crump, and how I didn't instigate that scenario in the kitchen.  It bestowed itself upon me, and for what it is worth I enjoyed the companionship.  I had to plans to follow up and apologized to Scott if we had done anything inappropriate.  Lee exaggerated it into a tragic plot, and perhaps for her it was.  Rest assured Clamchop all ready was in the picture.  They remained married for four years, and after four years I again was blamed for its demise.  I had decided to move on, and the few trinkets I had kept from our relationship I sent to her in case she wanted to keep them.  A day later I received a phone call from Mr. Clamchop asking me my intentions.  I said I had none, apologized to him for the inconvenience, and moved on.  Years later Lee told me this caused the break up in her marriage, my sending her some cards and jewelry.  Vindication is a bitch. 

Non Believers

My mind is unfocused at the moment wallowing in the refuse of my mother's recent annual physical.  She is healthy, but the psychological ramifications of such events are severe.  Health care in Cumberland County is marginal.  If you really want to live, then you can.  Otherwise the Trumptistas want you gone to free up that entitlement money for themselves.  Prisoners, geriatrics, and immigrants are an unnecessary burden on the system.  Best to get rid of them in one fell swoop with something like an invisible pathogen that attack preexisting conditions.  Who will know?   She is not over it, but we both will get tired of the wallowing in potential demise.  The reason for this blog entry?  I forget.  Things to do...  Recently I made a turmeric tincture from 150 proof Everclear liquor and curcumin extracted from the ground root of the turmeric plant.  It is more effective killing fungus than fluconazole, but it takes about two months to brew this helpful herbal supplement.  I need to begin a new batch immediately.  We probably could brew a cure to Covid if we tried.  I agree with Bill Maher we are stuck in a "woke" competition to see who can trash history the best.  When this happens, we can do nothing more that blame the past for our own problems, we have hit the bottom.  America has hit the bottom.  The Trumptistas have spread doubt and insignificance on everything once America considered meaningful.  The historical, cultural, and human values of Americans have been obliterated for big money.  The little things that make life worth living, music, theater, dance, TV, and film (although they are not little) no longer stand the test of time.  They have failed in significance, because no longer are they heralded as the core humanities once they were.  Humanities, by the way for those who are ignorant, are the things ancient Greek society deemed crucial to human existence.  Or you could just worship graven images, eat cake, and fuck each other.  We have reached that point where nothing matters.  Nothing seems relevant or important, because we have been so busy trying to make it unimportant and thus not valuable.  Take music for instance.  Once music was a cornerstone of American society.  It was a huge business, the music industry, and with that power came the ability to influence American culture and life.  Big Brother has succeeded in castrating most art, so not only is it tepid, self-serving, and weak, it has no real monetary value.  If and when American society chose to give music value again, it could.  The digital music distributors would not be happy, but this is the reason why big tech should and will be broken up.  The corporate monopoly in America has had a rebirth, and it was the Bush regime that let it begin.  Trump ruined most everything American in America.  Nothing has any value anymore, so it makes one wonder what is on all of those freight trains flying down the rails.  I realize the U.S. mail is on some of them as are UPS and FedEx parcels.  The rest?  Chemicals to make Teflon?  Fertilizer?  Munitions?  America never has been more fucked up, and it would seem a coup or rebellion is in order.  The first attempt failed, because it was implemented by a vagabond tribe of cultists with nothing to lose.  A full fledged rebellion is in the muscles.  It is not the police who are the problem.  It is that the system has failed, and the system has failed, because we have been living a masquerade for four years.  Reality has returned, and certainly although unwanted the Coronavirus was necessary as a reality check.  Food born illness?  Disease.  Climate Change.  If we chose to scrutinize history instead of cast doubt on it, we would see the future.  Check and balances have been put into place for reasons.  The agencies, processes, and systems we have devised are there to protect human life.  I guess it was time for us to swallow God's pill.  We are not alone.  We cannot exist alone.  The planet is not ours.  We must acknowledge Him or become extinct from our own ignorance.  It is the human machine, the mechanism of the human organism that can and will save us.  It is the only thing that unequivocally beats human evil.  When the evil all around us seems insurmountable, go into the bedroom and make love with your partner.  Not an acquaintance.  Not a pick up.  Make love to someone you love.  Use your God-given human mechanism to prove His existence.  No one else could or would provide such an invaluable process as sex who didn't love us.  Isn't this enough to prove Who is King?  Bliss.  Ecstasy.  What have we done?  Muck it up.  The one most important human quality of physical love abused, exploited, and maimed.  If it is not there for you, then you are a none believer.  

American Mass Genocide

 A few things have been on my mind.  One is the progress or lack thereof of the city of Fayetteville, NC.  Letters are mounting condemning the lack of leadership in Fayetteville.  The common culprits are the Mayor, City Council, and police force, at least in the eyes of those who chose to opine in print.  When I reflect about "DaVille" I recognize the completion of a long awaited public skatepark, the rebuilding of one of the oldest bridges in the state, and a new inner loop highway.  In addition to these three accomplishments, there sits a downtown baseball stadium currently not in use.  Personally I do not believe a ballpark in downtown Fayetteville will make much difference to city development.  They have been revitalizing downtown since I was in high school.  First there were pots, lamp posts, and cobblestones.  They closed it to thru traffic.  When that didn't work, they added parking meters, removed them, and began to offer financial incentives for businesses who moved there.  I believe about what they are talking is the phenomenon of "Black Lives Matter."  There was a protest in downtown Fayetteville, and the Market House was ignited.  The fool who tried to burn it set himself on fire.  Downtown businesses were attacked, and the Fayetteville Police Department failed to defend them.  The Mayor declined to send the police to defend these downtown businesses.  They were of course free to arm themselves, take a post, and defend their personal property.  I feel it was a prudent choice not to shed blood, and that is what this decision achieved.  The police were being protested, so it did not make sense to send them there to incite impending violence.  No lives were lost, and this was a small success.  On the other hand the confidence of downtown businesses has been breached.  The ballpark has proven to be mediocre at revitalizing downtown business.  In reality it has harmed local merchants diverting business to another activity.  Downtown has not prospered from the newly built baseball stadium.  Only has it provided a nice view for tenants of housing on the old Sheraton lot.  This is not enough.  Fayetteville indeed at the moment is a free agent with no concrete contract for economic vitality.  No place in America or the world is.  Covid 19 has seen to that.  The lack of leadership about which has been written mostly is personified by painting on the street around the Market House.  The Mayor chose to remove these painted words and quickly recanted.  In a few short days these painted worlds reappeared on the street.  The ramifications of such an action are great, and they have been turned into a metaphor for "lack of leadership" in Fayetteville.  For most people who have lived in Fayetteville all of their lives, the Market House is not a remembrance of slavery.  It conclusively has not been proven that slaves actually were sold here.  The idea of the Market House is a convenient target for Cancel Culture, a short-sighted, racist, malicious, and dividing political instrument to incite civil war.  We as a people must get past it.  The Market House in downtown Fayetteville is a landmark historical focal point.  The idea that a skewed, erroneous, and separatist definition can be ascribed to it is the personification of America in 2020.  It merely is a product of the Trumptista Regime which has ruled for the last four years.  Never before was it an issue.  If we as a people must become incited for a reason, it should be because of mass genocide through domestic terrorism.  Mentally ill Americans have begun killing us helter skelter, and it is the more serious threat to American freedom.  Trumptistas would rather us believe otherwise.  Would you choose to attend a Jason Aldeen concert outside in Las Vegas, if the end result was genocide? 

The "C" Virus

 The news has been divergent, convoluted, and negative as of late.  It doesn't refer to anything useful for American life.  In a long list of male sexual abusers, Governor Cuomo is lonely and randy.  So what?  The millennial generation is so naive, brain washed, and self-centered what else can they do except complain?  Perhaps the idea of thwarting an indecent proposal does not come to mind.  If the idea of a governor and their accompanying power and influence is so great that one's speech is stymied, what else can one do but complain?  In previous decades a young working professional might be able to muster the verbal skills to parry such an attack.  What was the clip I saw of Ashley Judd putting Harvey Weinstein at bay?  It took a seasoned experienced actress to be able to use her words and demeanor to quell a sexual predator.  We are living in a vacuous time with a millennial generation so spoiled there is no way they could fend for themselves.  Words are a powerful tool, and America as a nation no longer is teaching this.  We are not teaching anything useful.  I am a certified teacher K-12.  Still I have a teaching certificate from the late 1980's, and still have I yet to use it formally.  Who would want to teach anymore when bigoted, affluent, self serving parents want to control everything?  I interviewed for a band directing job in Columbus, Ohio years ago, and most of it was administered by the faculty advisor of the flag girls.  She explicitly explained that they got to choose the music.  The flag girls and their parents would choose the music for the band to use.  Needless to say I did not appear favorable to such a regime.  I was taught to think, to question established norms, and to fend for myself.  In retrospect it has proven to be financially unrewarding.  There was no Kiss Ass 101 at UNC-Chapel Hill.  What I learned was to be the best musician I could.  Why take the time to accommodate inhibitors?  You just barrel through making enemies, and I made a lot.  None were of real consequence except Kim Duker, who took issue with my lack of knowledge of the artist Robert Mapplethorp.  I didn't see how photographs of large African-American penises, bullwhips inserted in anuses, and the rest of his work was artistic.  My sentiment readily was apparent in my teaching, and I was guilty of writing "leading questions," questions which were meant to evoke a negative opinion.  These questions were so poorly received and Mr. Mapplethorp's work so revered I lost my graduate teaching position because of it.  Twenty-five years later Mapplethorp is long dead, his memory a faint whisper of exploitative homosexuality, and me stuck with his scar on my teaching career.  Robert Mapplethorp, whose work I was supposed to present as artistic, won.  A bullship handle in a man's anus, and this was beneficial to someone in college?  I reckon it was the sheer controversy that was important.  I was a music student in the DMA program in composition, but the faculty felt I was too dynamic for a music theory TA grading papers.  They sent me to Arts  College 160 two weeks before the quarter began with absolutely no preparation.  I knew none of the course material and didn't have time to learn it before I was required to teach four recitations each week.  I improvised, and the kids were not appreciative.  Later I learned my job was just to give them handouts when they lost them, remind them of quizzes, and show them affection.  That was it.  Somehow I thought they should learn something about music.  Now as I lay here with symptoms of Covid for the umpteenth time and no vaccine in the near future, I am unhappy.  I am sick again.  Covid is in the food chain.  It is being dropped on us from the air as an aerosol, and we do not know yet who the enemy is.  Maybe it is my imagination, but as I am driving my vehicle down Bragg Blvd. during the middle of the day, I look over my shoulder and there is a full sized commercial jet directly behind me above the tree line.  Not a Cessna.  Not a Kingair 350.  Not an Apache helicopter.  A jet, most likely a sixty million dollar Gulfstream.  What is it doing?  Why do we have a Covid pandemic in America? 

When Will They Strike?

 Let's begin with the Coronovirus experience.  Any thinking adult could understand it is unlikely a pandemic would manifest itself in the world's most powerful nation.  Traditionally that is how America likes to view herself.  I'm not sure if that still is true.  It is a slogan, "The world's most powerful nation."  America branded herself the most powerful nation in the world, but our nickname should have been and continues to be a place of freedom.  Sanctuary.  Reviewing the literature or rather the propaganda of America, "Give me your tired, your poor...." we have been led to believe America is a place of sanctuary.  Puritans immigrated to America to escape religious persecution.  They were Christians.  God worshiping Christians sought refuge in America, so they freely could express their love of God.  Unbeknownst to most of us, Christianity is not the religious majority.  In the last few decades Christianity has been assaulted not unlike the rest of us.  Blacks, Latinos, and gays all have incurred the wrath of White America.  We didn't know it was White America until Donald Trump became president.  Things have changed with Donald Trump.  No longer is America the world's most powerful nation.  It is easy to assess, our lack of power.  While America's oligarchy may be influential, a nation under them, one which has failed to provide them the sustenance they need to remain powerful, bears no resemblance to a nation of power and influence.  What things define such a description other than an accumulation of money?  Money will not buy survival on a planet which is cracking at the seams.  Disease.  Pestilence.  Floods.  Fires.  It seems to be coming to fruition the predictions in the Bible's book of Revelations.  Fire will rain down from the skies and comes up from the seas.  That is what is predicted, and 2020 points in that direction.  What things represent a powerful nation?  They are the same as they always have been, but the playing field has been changed by what now has become the Republican party.  Some residual Republicans are beginning to realize the extreme to which Donald Trump has lead this once conservative, sane, prudent political party.  Whether they will separate themselves from the cult and revive the traditional values of their party remains to be seen.  Meanwhile, in the words of Stephen Colbert, we should begin calling the Republican party the Trumptistas.  It is an accurate description.  The only thing missing is the compliance of the United States military.  The attempted coup, and it should be labeled that because it was lead by a sitting United States President, has been in play for a long time.  Whether W. knew it or not, his presidency was the beginning.  If you rescind corporate regulatory oversight and allow the oligarchy free reign to do as they please, it is not surprising America is under assault.  These people do not care about average Americans, and the definition of average American has changed.  Who is to know who makes up America?  We have had no "Main Street" for a long time.  America stopped functioning as a capitalist nation decades ago.  We have been Socialist for a long time.  Whether Biden or Trump is  president doesn't really matter, because the private sector of America employing her "mainstream" or "Main Street" no longer is the gravy for the newly emerging oligarchy.  When legislation was passed to support Globalism, the average people in America were sold out.  Our jobs went overseas to India and China where they pay a minute fraction of what Americans need to live.  Even our minimum wage is incapable of providing a living for most people.  Those who toil long hours at Walmart, America's watershed retailer, must rely on government assistance to live.  Therefore like most people rich and poor, the American people rely on the government for their living.  Whether it is health care benefits, a retirement, or flood insurance, we all rely on Washington to survive.  It always has been this way, and yet Trumptistas refuse to acknowledge it.  They shout "Socialism!" when what they perceive as their entitled livelihood is threatened by impoverished immigrants.  Are these immigrants any different than those who crossed the Atlantic penniless to forge a better life in the new land?  Most have proven to be thankful for the opportunity America has provided, and yet it is this opportunity that has vanished.  Social mobility in America no longer is possible because the means with which to achieve it no longer exists.  Our jobs, jobs created by factories and small businesses have been "outsourced" to other nations, because their labor force costs a fraction of American workers must be paid simply to survive.  How is anyone in America not going broke?  Why has crime escalated in America?  I remember acutely the day Donald Trump became president.  During the Obama administration the local evening news was banal, and it seemed normal.  It was not laced with violence inducing rhetoric or divisive hearsay.  Overnight the local evening news became a public proclamation of the weeks murders.  Sharon Tazewell apparently tired of the grind and stepped down as anchor for WNCN.  The news is and has been a mockery of what traditionally has been the most powerful nation in the world.  We tune in and see who has killed whom.  It is a disturbing, disheartening, litmus test of what has become our America, but it is no surprise.  What things comprise the world's most influential, progressive, and thus powerful nation?  Certainly it is not one who is not able to save half a million citizens, where there is no tangible war.  Instead it suggests this assault has been premeditated and unleashed on humanity.  It has been one year since the Coronavirus outbreak, and America has been unable to quell its effects.  Instead it gave birth to an ignorant, insidious, covert assault on America herself.  This assault is Biblical in nature, and its players merely are pawns of Satan.  America, in her newly bred ignorance, is not able to discern or accept the reality that America is the modern Sodom and Gomorrah.  We are nothing more than deceiving televangelists preaching a shallow lie and collecting alms from the poor.  The Trump Clan is nothing more than a traveling tent show of fake religious prophecy.  If there is any good left in America, people with a moral conscience who believe in something other than their own success, and those who receive joy and fulfillment from helping others, is yet to be seen.