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Trump’s Hands Still Faster Than Our Eyes
omeone asked me the
other day if I felt differ- ently about Donald Trump after he granted clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old Black female who was sentenced to life in 1996 on drug trafficking and money laundering charges as a first-time offender. I told him that, with all of the neg- ative energy Trump has placed into the universe, it’s going to take a lot more than a single act of mercy to get him off my biggest creeps of all-time list.
Even though, I admit, what he did for Ms. John- son was highly commend- able, it doesn’t erase the 70+ years he’s spent on Earth dis- paraging and discriminating against people of color. I mean, at least to me, it just doesn’t balance out.
While I’m sure the John- son family is ready to place Trump’s portrait on their living room wall, right next to Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Jesus, I’m not prepared to anoint him the next great white savior. And that’s mainly due to the fact that he’s proven over the years that he’s an individual who can’t be trusted.
The fact of the matter is
that Trump is a con man in every sense of the word. But he’s not the kind who’ll try to beat you for a few pennies by selling you fake jewelry in a mall parking lot. No, he’s more in league with the type who’ll take you slow in an ef- fort to get you for everything you have.
Let us not forget that Trump has made a career out of swindling people for his benefit. From the con- tractors who worked on his hotels, who he didn’t pay, to the millions of lower-middle- class Republican voters who he tricked into electing him president, based on the empty promises he didn’t keep, Trump has a long his- tory of manipulating people and situations for the sole purpose of coming out on top.
Do not think for a minute that Trump gave Johnson clemency because he sud- denly felt sorry for people locked up on drug charges. I mean this is the same man who, just two months ago, suggested giving drug deal- ers the death penalty.
Now he wants to give them a new lease on life? It simply doesn’t add up.
It is more likely that Trump freed Johnson be-
cause it allowed him to ac- complish two goals simulta- neously. He was able to solidify his relationship with his most high profile vocal supporter, Kanye West, by doing West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, a favor. At the same time, Johnson’s re- lease gave those in the Black community hope that he may do something for their incar- cerated loved ones as well (That is, if they happen to know a current NFL player who can speak on their be- half).
Each outcome, of course, has the potential to be ex- tremely helpful to Trump in the 2020 election. Along with pardoning radical right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza, the man who once said “slaves were treated like property, which means they were treated very well” and who was also infamously quoted as saying, “Black peo- ple owe white people repara- tions for abolishing slavery,” Trump’s recent actions have effectively strengthened his popularity within his base and softened the hearts of his enemies. It was a chess strategy, brilliant in its exe- cution.
It never ceases to amaze me how well a wolf like Trump continues to fool people while wearing his ill- fitting sheep’s clothing. But I guess, after being in the dis- guise for so long, everyone tends to forget that it’s actu- ally his second skin.
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‘Life Is Fine ...’
went down to the river . . . I stood up on the bank. I thought about my lover. So, I jumped in and sank “. . . But it was cold in that water; it was cold” is the be- ginning of one of Black poet Langston Hughes’ most compelling works. Titled “Life Is Fine,” it’s a poem
about suicide.
Traditionally, suicide has been a seldom discussed
subject in the Black community. Often, the brunt of pri- vate jokes when Black folks talk about it. Comedian Moms Mabley referred to it as “committing sideways” – suicide was once rumored to be a “white person’s” disease.
But for many Black Americans who either had peo- ple in their families who died by their own hands or who narrowly escaped suicide themselves, the specter of self-murder is no joke.
Here recently, the suicide rate among Americans has risen to epidemic proportions, and along with that skyrocketing rate has come the rise of Black suicides.
Continues Hughes, “So, I took an elevator . . . four- teen floors about the ground. I thought about my lover, and guess I should jump down. But it was high up there; it was high!”
It’s almost as if killing oneself has become a stylish shortcut to problem solving. Wrong!
With the recent suicides by celebrities, ours is not to judge their reasons, but only to say the most horrific aspects of suicide must occur during the change of mind that happens just before the split-second of no- return.
Stephen Vincent Benet writes about it when he shares the story of a man who kills himself only to re- alize the reason he took his life now haunts him after death and will do so, throughout eternity.
But Hughes concludes:
“So, since I’m still here living, I guess I will live on. I could have died for love, but for living I was born. So, you might see me holler and you may see me cry. But I’ll be doggone, people, if you’re gonna see me die. . . . Because life is fine . . . fine as wine. Life is fine!”
We agree with Brother Langston. And we think you should encourage others to agree with him, too.
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