This is Not a Drill!
YOU ARE HERE, NOW!
(I’m writing this to keep myself sane and to be in touch with like-minded souls)
We exist in a place and time in which sheer ABSURDITY has rendered almost powerless all of our five senses--as if the country's collective brain had been given a free, one-way ticket to Disney World; where Scrooge Mcduck, Goofy, Donald, Mickey and Minnie are in charge of the entire machinery of government.
This isn't the United States of America anymore, a country for which a prolonged bloody revolution was fought—for which we fought a world war. It has, instead, become an alternate, cartoon universe in which more than half its voters went to the polls and cast their ballots (in between bacon-cheese-burgers, cage-wrestling matches, 24-hour-a-day “news,” and charge-card porn)—cast their precious vote for a lying, corrupt, child-molesting, thief.
We might be the first political entity in history (besides, possibly, imperial Rome) that committed Suicide by Entertainment. So I think it’s necessary to help make this clear for those of us who still feel confused about the nature of our current reality; the armed, federal troops invading our cities, the suspension of all our laws by order of a greedy, disturbed old man, and the country-wide construction of concentration camps, is not a video-game, not a CNN news special, not a feverish conspiracy fantasy--not even bad dream...
IT'S REALLY HAPPENING!
It’s happening because one deranged old man—the current President—is desperate to prevent hundreds of millions of people from learning the truth about his serial pedophilia. So, he’s breaking all our laws and committing every outrage he can imagine (and which the other branches of government will let him get away with).
He is, finally, in the process of unleashing the full armed power of the
United States INWARD on our major cities; arresting and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people (almost all of them guilty of nothing). Right now he’s locking up anyone he and his brown-shirts decide is an illegal alien—soon it will be all of us.
I’m talking about this now with a sharper urgency than I have ever felt—because I live, and have spent my whole life in, New York City.
I’ve been around a long time—many, many decades; I’ve seen this city when whole sections of it were a poverty-stricken disaster-area; where trains and buses and whole neighborhoods were virtually lawless deserts, looking more like scene from a Mad Max movie than a recognizable city neighborhood.
It seems just a matter of time before this “President”, this black-hole of a human-being, finds some flimsy excuse to put Tanks, Armored cars and Armed Soldiers on the streets of my city. Almost inevitably, with such a massive provocation, there will be a violent reaction... Then he’ll declare (with the Supreme Court and Congress hiding under the bed) that the invasion and occupation must become permanent.
One day I will walk out of my building and discover that I have traveled back in time to 1936 Berlin, so I say this with a feeling somewhere between a hope and a wish:
Is there anyway to prevent Donald Trump and his gang from turning this country into a total dictatorship? Are we so easily going to hand our hard-earned existences over to creature like Donald Trump? When will this country awake from it’s enchantment and discover that, between scrolling through recipes, gulping down relentless “news” bytes, buying a ceaseless parade of shit we don’t need, and, finally, handing our entire reality over to AI—when will discover that we are trading our hearts and souls for a universe of star-spangled emptiness.
It can’t happen here ©Joel Baumwoll
America America God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
These words, a hymn, sung from the heart
Ingrained a faith in me from the start.
Until I learned how fragile were the
The bonds of humanity that held together
My country ‘tis of thee.
One sees such evil in the world
And question what we hold so dear
with the meme oft repeated in my little ear,
“It can’t happen here.”
The truths of Vietnam, Youtubed for all to see,
Put the lie to such grand proclaims,
As we burnt and killed on orders
People with naught to blame.
But still we said with strong belief
It can’t happen here, to our relief.
When Bull Connor’s dogs
ripped the flesh of our people
And guns killed the seekers of equality,
We finally asked “what is happening here”
But then a law was passed for all the people
That made good at least the minimum promise
So we reassured ourselves and repeated
It can’t happen here.
Then live before our eyes
We saw 8 minutes and 46 seconds
Take the life of one of us.
Something’s happening here.
For how many years
can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
and how many people view death on TV
And pretend that they just don't see?
And now we know, the answer my friend
Is blowing in the wind we fear
Yes my friends, It is happening here.
What was it like? ©Joel Baumwoll
In the waning days of the Second World War,
My child’s imagination created the battles
between America and its enemies, to settle the score.
Images from cartoons, comics, and photos, of real scenes in large photo magazines.
My toys were lead soldiers, planes and tanks. With canons, machine guns and weapons galore dressed as Nazis, Italians, “Japs” and Yanks Fighting bloodless battles with no sight of gore.
Some years after June 6 ‘44 won the day And victory parades had faded away, The damaged came home to places they found hard to stay and live with experiences of which none would say.
Slowly the bloody tide came in, bringing
The reality of a people who created a nation Capable of things that beggared the imagination.
And my teenage thoughts strained to understand How this could happen in such a land that
Gave us Beethoven and Bach.
What was it like as the Nazi passion captured the hearts
and beliefs of the nation to surrender their freedom to a cause They adored and committed themselves
to what we’d think they’d abhorred.
What was it like to live in such a place?
To cheer the unthinkable and destroy a race? I read many books that told of the way
The Nazi poison took hold to stay.
Yet none could let me really understand How a nation would welcome such a cancer.
Until today, I am so sad to say,
Here in America, I now know the answer. ###