Rebel Without a Pause

 

Just came home from the "Good Trouble" in memory of John Lewis at City Hall.

It looked like they sent in a couple of busses from old folks homes to fill the place up and then some others stopped to look. White people with white hair mostly. About two to three hundred with the usual No Fascism signs. It was pathetic.

 

If the anti-Trump networks can't get anyone but old white people we might as well all go home and watch Netflix (which is probably what I'll do after writing this.)

 

There was NO trouble afoot. None nothing. The chief speaker seemed to be Philly's Commissioner of Voting. "Vote," he told everyone. Get out there. Get other people to vote.

 

Of course he was talking to people who had voted all their lives and were there because they know something's wrong. They didn't vote so things could turn out this way with THAT guy in charge. Bad news.

 

But the really bad news it that there was nobody talking about the elephant in the room. Which is to say who the hell will you vote FOR?

 

There's no vision. Full stop.

 

 Sadly in our country you can't vote against someone, at least not literally. You have to vote FOR someone. And who?

 

In the last election the Democrats made it painfully clear they had no capacity whosoever to even pretend to have vision. I can't get the painful image out of my head of a election leftover billboard for Kamala shouting "Your Vote Your Future!" What? What even is that? It literally says nothing. It's like saying "You're on your own, folks. Good luck!" Which is to say the folks who have power are gonna keep it and ain't nothing you can do about it.

 

Oh really? And I'm supposed to vote FOR that? And get others to join me?

 

Honestly, I was fool enough to do that and I only now see what an idiotic move it was.

 

Trump leftover signs? "Vote Trump for Lower Taxes." "Vote Trump for More Jobs." All lies, but at least they said something. And there was a vision: Let's all hate imagrants, kick them out, and steal their stuff." Not pretty but at least it IS something.

 

So there we were hailing the Voting Commissioner (who may the world's greatest guy) but no one was saying what we could vote FOR. Like vote for a Democratic party that has rubber stamped the wholesale murder of Palestinians, acts that event the New York Times is printing as genocide according to people like a Brown University Holocaust scholar this week. The real news wasn't his story, it was that the New York Times printed it.

 

This is what we vote FOR when we vote for Democrats. So what really is the point?

 

That's why there were just the old white people. They're the people the system has supported for so long. They know it's wrong, but what the hell, it works for them. I don't mean to say that's true in the intention of any single person there, but it is, overall, true.

 

And the rest of us? Or the weird white people with white hair like me? We're not coming out (or not staying long) because there has to be song we can take home and actually sing. Something that makes sense and touches our hearts.

 

John Lewis got in trouble because he could sing a song he believed and it came from a vision deep within.

 

And we just don't have that yet.