(ThyBlackMan.com) Panic was about to set in as I surveyed the soul food restaurant in search of my friend and mentor, the one man who could make sense when there was none, my rock, that greatest of ghetto philosophers, Cleophus Leroy Jones. He wasn’t at his corner booth where he could always be found holding court. Just as my head was about to explode, I spotted a pair of shoes, jutting out from beneath the table. It was Cleo, slumped over. I rushed to see if he had had a heart attack. What I found was even more disturbing. The man who never drank anything stronger than coffee was laid out drunk. A few gallons of coffee later, he was finally able to speak.
“What happened?” I shrieked after my fallen hero had finally regained coherency.
“I just got overwhelmed,” he mumbled, frowning as he gulped the highly caffeinated beverage. “I can deal with 85 or even 90% chaos, 
but 100% is more than even I can deal with all the time.
“What are you talking about?” I shrieked again, still trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Cleo getting drunk was like Clarence Thomas leading a Black Lives Matter rally.
“This election, for one thing,” he answered. “Almost half this country is voting for a racist bigoted, misogynistic, homophobic, childish, petulant, simple minded, LYING, intellectually challenged, spoiled brat. This is a man who had everything he sold manufactured overseas and these knuckleheads think he’s going to bring them jobs. No plans, mind you, just going to create jobs because he said he would, even though almost every word out of his mouth is a lie. He’s vulgar. A vote for Trump is a vote for vulgarity and bad manners at the highest level. The next Republican candidate will probably be Andrew Dice Clay. With so many people backing him Trump, I’d say this country is getting what it deserves if I didn’t have to live here.”
“But if that many people believe in him don’t the sheer numbers make him respectable?” I felt stupid as soon as I asked the question.
“You got to remember that half this country fought a civil war to keep us in slavery. Numbers don’t make anything right. Trump has grown in popularity the same way Reagan did, back when Reagan was also considered a joke. Reagan kicked off his campaign with a speech on State’s Rights, in a town, Philadelphia Mississippi, famous only for killing Civil Rights workers. Reagan was endorsed by the KKK. But everything on the internet is about how he was some kind of saint because he rejected that endorsement instead how he EARNED it in the first place! Reagan was a union buster, and out of work union members praise his name. College grads who can’t pay back their loans because of what he did to the student loan program love his dirty drawers. These people praise the people who revile them and revile the people who try to help them. Do you know that almost one third of Louisiana Republicans blame the sorry government response to hurricane Katrina on Obama?
I knew this was going to be good, so I kept my peace.
“I am so sick and tired of hearing about angry white folks that I honestly do not know what to do. These people vote against every single candidate who offers any kind of safety net, because they are so scared that some black folks might get something they think we don’t deserve, then they get angry “cause they don’t have a safety net! They don’t let facts get in the way. Donald Trump rode to political prominence on the back of the Birther movement. They are just like the British folks who voted for Brexit one day, and then looked it up the next day!”
“We got some truly dumb white folks,” I chimed in, thinking my comment would be safe.
“They aint got no monopoly on dumb.” We just bought a 27 million dollar plane for that pimp, Creflo Dollar. You know how many community centers that money could have built? Places where our kids could go for tutoring, art and music classes, chess tournaments. We could have bought farms, hired folks to work on them, trucks to transport our produce and small stores to sell it. ‘Where there is no vision the people perish.’
And my last gripe for the day is about all the people who come in here now, wantin’ to challenge me on something. They ain’t read a newspaper or a magazine or watched any serious news programs and they have no idea what public radio is, but they think they know more than me. I’m just sick and tired of stupid.”
“So what are you going to do now?” I wondered.
“I’m gone go home, get some rest and come out fighting for our people tomorrow like I do every day.”
“But you made everything sound so hopeless five seconds ago.”
“I may not win the war, or even the battle. But sometimes a man must fight, just to keep defining himself as a man.”
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Anyone interested in a truly inspirational film about black love and respect as well as making it in corporate America while keeping it real should check out “Strictly Business,” a 1991 film starring Tommy Davidson, Halle Berry, Samuel Jackson and Joseph C Phillips, directed by Kevin Hooks.
