Americans forget.

This is a rant. One I shared with a colleague by text over the weekend. We mutually agreed it is worth sharing. It is angry and raw… unedited and uncensored. It is how I feel: desperate and unapologetic.

All this talk about change. Right now, woke America has a dilemma on how to address racism while the right downright denies that racism is even an issue. And then there is opinion after opinion about how Covid-19 will change America and its workforce, whether long-term or forever. Nope. America won’t change that easily because America forgets too easily. We forgot slavery. We forgot that seven southern slave-holding states under the Confederate Army fought the US Constitutional Government because they refused to give up slavery and they lost. We forgot about slavery because Jim Crow Laws, in full effect in early 1900s, brought back ideals of confederacy when very few survivors with the memories of the war were still alive. We put up statues of Robert E Lee and other confederate jerks all over the country, including the halls of Congress. We waived the Confederate flag at NASCAR till last week and some still waive it proudly at any given day in any corner of the nation. We get married in plantation homes, awed by their beauty with our misconstrued notion of their romantic past not knowing or thinking that’s where slaves worked against their will in brutal captivity, abused, beaten, raped and often killed. Imagine Germans throwing parties and events at concentration camps. We forgot Japanese Internment Camps. We forgot Bush Sr., and Clinton’s tough stance on crime. We forgot that what that really meant was black crime. We forgot Vietnam and invaded Iraq. We forgot George W. Bush. And boy did we forget Cheney, Rove, and Atwater their predecessor. We forgot, or didn’t even know, Zuckerberg just fired the employee who spoke against Facebook’s ethics (or lack of) in a Black Lives Matter dispute just a couple of days ago. We forgot Obama never closed Guantanamo. We forgot our government is capable of major substantial feats for humanity and progress like the New Deal, sending humans to space and later to the moon, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, and in recent memory the Affordable Care Act. We forgot we almost risked a nuclear war with the Soviet Union at the Bay of Pigs (sorry JFK.) We forgot we were at the mercy of the Soviet submarine commander who made the decision not to pull the trigger and saved thousands if not millions of lives because of it. We forgot how meddling in politics in other countries in an effort to advance our interests, and by ours I mean our government’s, gets us in trouble over and over and over again. We forgot that we suck at nation-building. We forgot our disgust with those fugly Hummers because I just saw one for sale and it was parked in a prime spot at a local BMW dealership of all dealerships. We forgot Michelle Obama’s garden and what it meant to educate children on eating. We forget 1 in 3 Americans are obese. We forgot Trump served the winning college team Clemson Tigers bad fast food at the White House. We forget that 1 in 5 children go hungry at some point during the year. We forgot Flint, Michigan. We forgot Mark Twain, Gershwin, Rauschenberg, Robert F Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Muhammed Ali. We forgot how Ali was stripped of his boxing titles and banned from boxing for nearly 4 years because he opposed the war in Vietnam. We forgot the GOAT sacrificed his career and life for speaking the truth decades before Kapernick. We forgot Jessie Owens. We forgot Willy T. Ribbs who against all odds qualified for Indie500. We forgot that if it wasn’t for blatant racism, he would have become one of car racing’s best. We forgot the lyrics of Sam Cook and Marvin Gaye. We forgot the lyrics of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and John Lennon. We forgot that Springsteen wrote and recorded the album “Born in the USA” in light of the anger and bitterness seething beneath the surface of Reagan-era America — you’d know if you could hum more that just the four words in the title. We forgot David Bowie advocating for black musicians to have more airtime on MTV. We forgot Harvey Milk. We forgot Occupy Wall Street. We forgot we almost elected our first female president. We forgot women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920. We forgot Jane Goodall. We forgot Sylvia Earle. Who you say? Yeah exactly look her up. We forgot the US women’s soccer team. We forgot they won the World Cup three times. We forgot Billie Holliday. We forgot the CEO of Gravity Payments in Seattle who pays his employees a minimum salary of $70K /year, and in return reduced his own salary because he realized he was making more than enough (your move Besos.) We forgot Bernie Madoff. We forgot Trump was fucking a porn star while his third wife was pregnant with his fifth child, judging by the solid support he still has by most if not all who vote republican. We forgot that the Republican party was the party of family values. Does that mean they forgot the importance of family values or are just willing to overlook them? We forgot GM made one of the best electric cars in the market, the Volt, until it was scrapped and its manufacturing plant was shut down with thousands laid off because as their execs put it; there was a lack of consumer demand and more interest in cross-overs, trucks and SUVs. We forgot the Obama administration bailed the Big Three in Detroit from going bankrupt. When asked why should the government help companies that made shitty products and poor business decisions, they said they’ll change. The Big Three conveniently forgot. We forgot GM and Ford stopped producing Silverados and F150s when gas prices soared during the recession as the two contemplated an entirely new way of approaching transportation; for start designing cars that run on cleaner form of energy other than burnt dinosaur fossil. We forgot gas was over $5/gallon in some places in CA just back in 2008–9 at the height of the recession. We forgot that because dealerships are overflowing with massive trucks and mid-size to large SUVs again. Who doesn’t NEED a Raptor to cruise around town. We forgot how major car manufacturers made a pact to reduce carbon emissions in CA. We also forgot that pact was broken when GM, Toyota (the maker of fucking Prius which happens to be one of their best sellers), and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles left in fear of retaliation from the Trump administration. We forget that corporations with the power to make a difference lie to us about how they care about Climate Change. We forgot smoking was bad because apparently it’s on the rise again among teenagers and 20 some year olds who are too young to remember the anti-smoking campaigns and legal hell unleashed on big tobacco for willingly and knowingly disregarding the utter harmful effects of nicotine and nicotine addiction. We forgot Sarah Palin (but that could be a good thing.) We forgot Joe the Plumber. We forgot all US-based airlines used to check our luggage and serve us meals for free — in coach. We forgot eating meat is one of the worst things we can do to our environment needless to mention the animal suffering and abuse. We forgot that most of us have watched at least one documentary on that subject. We forgot about Orca’s in captivity. We forgot Columbine. We forgot Sandy Hook. We forgot every single murder of black men and women by our own cops. Just two weeks after Floyd’s death, there was another murder by a cop in Atlanta. We forgot what it was like to go to college practically for free. Can we please forget Kid Rock and Ted Nugent? We forgot how we screwed over the natives of this country and almost drove them to extinction. We forgot we put them on reservations. And then forget them altogether. We forgot that our Government still owes them an official apology. We forgot our ailing first responders and firefighters who ran into the burning buildings at the World Trade Center on 9/11. We forgot them because they haven been in dire need of medical care and financial aid due to life threatening illnesses from the amount of inhaled toxic dust, smoke and fumes at the site of the attack. We forgot them because they have had to publicly fight Congress for money for the Victims Compensation Fund. We also forget our war veterans who need support after they come home. We forgot the rights of LGBTQ community who are and want to serve in our military (wait, SCOTUS Neil Gorsuch may have just helped changed that yesterday and I’m happily speechless.) We forgot the asylum seekers who are running for their lives. We forgot the kids in cages. We forgot Valeria and Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. We forgot we are The Land of Opportunity. We forgot the renewed corporate interest in the lands that were forever meant to be part of our national parks. We forget that our national parks are America’s best idea (thank you Ken Burns). We forgot about the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, and we will forget what blue oceans look like after we destroy everything in our path. And we have just about forgotten Covid-19 judging by the packed crowds on the beaches, and even some bars in SoCal this last weekend. The Americans I know forget very easily. Some other cultures don’t forget that easily. My culture, the Persian people, still hold grudges over the Greeks and Alexander the Great for fuck’s sake. That shit is over 2,000 years old. The only way forward is through a revolution — by the people, for the people. A fundamental change and shift in behavior. This one will be the real American revolution by those other than just a bunch of white men throwing tea off British boats in Boston dressed up as native Americans, too afraid to be detected in regular clothes that they had to disguise themselves. Native American clothing made the most sense? Why not just blend in with British naval uniforms? Did they discuss other alternatives like; we should be Amish, or cross-dress as women, or what if we just wear all black like ninjas? No one’s laughing. We need more than talk. We need a revolt and this time we’ll be inclusive of those who have been unheard, if we want true change. (Isn’t that what the original Revolution was supposed to be?) Covid-19 won’t do shit other than kill us and create more divide in an already divided nation. Maybe Covid is just the enzyme we needed.

I had to get this off my chest. America, I want to love you. I really do. But you’re making it hard. If something I said upsets you, too bad. Ammendment one. Write your own post.