(ThyBlackMan.com) The United States of America is currently being led by an oligarch and would-be dictator. It is being led by the son of a German Ku Klux Klansman who’s family descends from the Prussian Empire. The President is a tax-cheat, a habitual liar, an infidel of a husband, a whore-mongerer, a racist, and an amoral thief. He has committed textbook Obstruction of Justice in public. He has conspired both privately and publicly with an adversary and has compromised our entire system of government to the point of near collapse.
The President has so strongly divided the nation that talk of a Civil War brews for the first time in 150 years. The President is surrounded by white supremacists and neo-Nazi associates. His original policy master proclaimed his desire for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing” in America. He has enacted policy at America’s southern border and within its interior which would indicate that that ethnic cleansing has begun. He has turned ICE into a terrorist agency for undocumented residents and threatens to eventually turn that agency and others against his political opponents and common American citizens. In short, he is the nightmare that white privilege was bound to reproduce. The President is the purest form of European fascist that the planet has seen since Adolph Hitler.
Donald Trump once proclaimed that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York City and that his supporters would not leave his side as a result. He has proven to be nearly teflon coated as charges and scandals that would sink any previous Presidency have not as-of yet sunk his. As an observer of American politics from the age of seven or eight until some 40 years later, I have witnessed multiple elections and administrations come and go. I never imagined that the President might not willingly leave the Oval if he lost. I never once imagined that the President would challenge the results of an election. I never once imagined that the President would begin killing his opponents and dissidents; but all of that now seems possible with Donald John Trump sitting in the world’s most powerful seat.
Donald Trump using his office to promote opposite research against his political rival is not only criminal and indicative of high treason, but it is horribly untimely in the context of Biden organically losing support among the Democratic base after his racist reparations response. The President is apparently going to be impeached for shooting at the wrong target. That’s how dumb Donald Trump is.
Finding ourselves at this crossroad where Donald Trump has committed the political equivalent of shooting someone on 5th Avenue is the truest indicator of where American life has been since Barack Obama left the Oval Office. We’ve been in this position from Day One, but we seem to have come to a crescendo. We’ve been living in this paradox for nearly four years and it has consistently proposed the same question. He shot someone on 5th Avenue when he told Lester Holt that he fired Comey over the “Russia thing”. He shot someone on 5th Avenue when his NSA Director was arrested and charged for his dirty campaign dealings. He shot someone on 5th Avenue when he took Vladmir Putin’s side against our own intelligence agencies in Helsinki. He shot someone on 5th Avenue when his Son-in-law made arrangements for Jamal Kashoggi’s slaughter. He has already shot many people on 5th Avenue and Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats have stood in a pool of blood and in a state of incalcitrant shock. Petrified, like a shaky old lady.
It seems that even the weaklings in Democratic Party leadership have their breaking point. It seems that some Republicans may still have vertebrae left in their bodies. It seems that the press has been the most reliable of our four public estates and has relentlessly provided us with the truth. It seems that Donald Trump is cornered and can’t run to his Father or Valdmir Putin for help any longer. He seems to be out of all options but absolute obstruction. It seems that we are about to find out if a white man born of privilege who achieved the highest office in the land can be held accountable.
As an African-American man, I have witnessed white men get away with things at work and in general society that I could never dream of. I have witnessed how they are able to power their way through people at work with little resistance while others are forced into subservience. Everyone at work knows that when the 6’2” white guy shows up wearing slacks and a button down that he’s not going to be working with you for very long. He’s there to get a feel for the operation and then on to his pre-designated post. We all know how this goes. If he’s at all clean-cut, he’s headed to the C-suite. That is who Donald Trump is. He is literally a 6’2” white man who wears a suit everyday, but whom has very little intrinsic value as a person or as a leader. He’s the epitome of an empty suit and people in this country actually look up to that. They love the fact that he’s an ignorant white man who surfed the wave of privilege that has yet to end from 1619. He is symbolic of monarchy. Americans, but especially white Americans maintain an envy of British royalty that I’ve long suspected would creep into our body politic and it has.
So we have a would-be King who has several bodies laid out on 5th Avenue for all to see and we have to decide if this is our future. Are we the nation who allows white men to slaughter at will in our names for their own fortunes while we then live off of their crumbs? Or, are we a nation who believes in equal opportunity, but not equal outcomes? Are we a nation that believes that we are all worthy and all human or do we believe that there’s some form of innate racial hierarchy? This is what is at stake and an election won’t answer this question. White supremacy is baked into the election process and ultimately benefits Donald Trump as evidenced by the 2016 election. Impeachment is the only answer to the question. Can Donald Trump shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it or will we live the rest of our lives in the 5th Avenue Paradox?
Staff Writer; Darrick Herndon