Karma
Karma
Maybe a nation built on White Supremacy and the genocide of its Indigenous populations while concurrently selling and trading Black bodies brought from the African continent, packed tightly as cargo in the holds of ships, deserves to die the slow and painful death that we are experiencing in this moment. This country was built on a lie. A lie that anyone could make it as long as they worked hard and played by the rules. A lie that sold a dream that all were created equal when we always knew that they weren’t. A lie that promised freedom, equality and prosperity for all. This is the land of myth. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a person who built an entire life on myth and lies became the political leader of a country built on the same.
The United States has a karmic toll that it must pay. Just as no one here gets out alive, no bad deed goes unpunished. This American moment is one of moral payment. There are people who optimistically encourage each other daily with words like: “This too shall pass” or “We’ve experienced bad moments before, this isn’t the worst”. But have we? It’s telling that we end up with an amoral misogynistic nihilistic anti-intellectual racist in the White House right after we experienced the leadership of a brilliant African American who married a woman descended from enslaved Africans. A First Family that at one point in our nation’s history were each considered to be 3/5 of a human being as written in the US Constitution. Ponder that for a moment. So one can only deduce that Trump’s presidency is a direct reaction and clapback to Obama’s tenure. Because to some that was the end of our socially-engineered White Nation. And to put it in perspective, the Trump presidency was only made possible by an Electoral College whose existence was a tool to enshrine White Supremacy in the South. A President sits in DC who was not elected by a majority off the people, but instead by an artificially engineered political system designed to consolidate White Power during the antebellum South. Did we not think that there would eventually be a moral price to pay for that type of blood-stained larceny? We are on trial.
And here we are. A nation built on absurd notions of race and sexist classist caste systems. An oligarchy where we have created a permanent upper class, a besieged middle class and an invisible lower tier of the underrepresented. Trump’s election and continued GOP support is an indictment of our system of government and the supposed values that we collectively hold. We have a President who is openly contemptuous of our nation of laws. There is a price to pay. The chickens have come home to roost. When other governments have toppled throughout history, only a few observers took notice. Most people usually think that everything will be fine in the end. So they just get up, go to work and make sure that the trains run on time. But who sounds the alarm when the train runs off the rails? Are we to keep following political leaders like lemmings over the edge of a cliff? Or do we turn around, face the mob and fight to the death for our values. Did we ever have values? Or did we lie to ourselves and our children while all the time showing them how to do the same?
It is time to start anew. I’m afraid that we don’t have the courage. And perhaps the karmic momentum of our past evils are too great to hold back the tide. As my grandmother used to say: “You’ve made your bed. Now lie in it.” Are we ok with that?