I am perennially aware of an irritating circumstance, namely, that I was not my parents’ only child. A conviction that my siblings were superfluous, was repeatedly demonstrated. Mom, Dad and I would have been fine as a triumvirate.
As a middle child, I had to perfect strategies for attention-getting. It is my patriotic duty to make President Obama aware of my expert skill set, so that he can better run the country. As pertains to tantrum throwers with violent propensities, I have a number of strategies he might wish to enact.
As a diehard Black Nationalist, I insist on my own country. At the very least, I want my reparations – every blessed dime that would have been paid to every last forced laborer in my gene pool, had they not been subjected to sociopaths with torture instruments and the backing of state power. Some of my ancestors were slaves in Mississippi in an area with wonderful beaches – you get my drift? Forget sitting at the front of the bus; I want to own the bus company.
Sticky problems of murder, genocide, dismemberment, separation of families and so forth, I can live with. I’ve even ordered a map of sites in the Deep South where people owe me big-time.
Why negotiate when you can draw blood, crush skulls, spit in the face of elected officials, call national heroes out of their names and still climb aboard a helicopter to shoot a moose in time for dinner? Multi-tasking seems operationally sound, even when a bit Hitlerian. I don’t know if I’ll get invited to the West Wing for consultation, but I think I have a better chance than the rat pack running around cable television.
My delusions are my own. However, I was brought up to believe everything I did was not cute, and that we can quickly become what we despise. Tantrum throwing says to the world: It’s all about me.
The violence against Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 17 others in Arizona suggests the rhetoric spouted by Beck, Limbaugh, Palin and the offhand disavowal of what this portended by Republican officials, including Boehner, have fired an ugly cauldron. Long before the tragedy, Democrats supporting healthcare had homes and offices vandalized and received multiple death threats.
President Obama met last spring with world leaders to increase global security by making certain nuclear materials are inaccessible to global terrorists. The New Start Treaty with Russia, finally ratified by the Senate December 22, was, for weeks a harrowing political football for Congressional Republicans. There is a pattern here: recklessness and an alarming devaluation of life.
I have no doubt Obama will continue referencing his solid intellect and ethical core despite distractions. God bless him.
Ruth-Miriam Garnett is a poet, novelist and essayist. Her latest book, Concerning Violence, New & Selected Poems, was recently published. Ruth can be reached directly at ruthm12@aol.com.
