THE 4TH OF JULY
2020 Edition
It is the fourth and it is after dark, after nine P.M. I sit and listen to explosions from the Harbor and the noise reverberates around the hills and up the rivers and off the islands and boats filled with glassy-eyed people taking it all in. What is the meaning of it? At one time I would sit and watch the fireworks exploding above my head along with hundreds of other patriots. None of us realized the exhibition was designed to keep us entertained as the bosses made money from our labors and filled us with hollow pride. The foolish empty pride that, like puffed rice, did not fill us up. Empty and shallow and utterly bursting with lies and empty promises like the uncle pulling quarters from behind your ear or three card monte or like throwing a stick for a dog and how funny the dog looked when you kept it in your hand instead of letting it fly. So, in order to distract us, the 4th happened frequently enough. Otherwise we would catch on, figure things out, and become unmanageable. People do that you know. Not often enough but it does happen just the same.
I watched a documentary about Nina Simone this afternoon. She figured it out a long time ago. I think I know why she did. She is twice oppressed. She is a woman and she is black. I fell in love with Nina Simone during the documentary. She showed me my insides because she wore them on the outside. I fell in love with the anger and hate that rose up in her that spilled out and flooded the stage where she performed and filled her life with poison and bile and distrust and resentment toward those who saw her skin color and her assigned gender and scoffed and told her she was out of her league. She figured it out right away and then spent her life telling everyone that there is no Statue of Liberty, there is no Star Spangled Banner, there is no Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. She told us that there is a small cadre of old white men calling the shots and all we are allowed to see and feel are songs written to pacify us and to fill our bosoms with pride in what we are not allowed to see or allowed to hold in our own hands. There are lots of things we are not allowed to really have but we are allowed to admire and desire and to fight over in the work place. The competition to barely smell that obscure object of desire keeps us focused and a bit hypnotized and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Add to that ethnicity, race, class and education and see what confusion that will lend to nearly point three five billion souls wrestling in the streets for a bit of comfort.
Predictably, when Nina Simone allowed her anger to escalate after the deaths of the little girls in the church in Birmingham and she became more radicalized and her intensity grew and her friends couldn’t keep up with her and she grew frustrated with the perceived lack of action and problem solving that this country ought to be capable of she became alienated. Her friends contributed to her alienation by wondering and accusing her of being crazy. They had doctors come to examine her. Can you just feel the level of insult that is indicated by their actions in response to her genius? She could not make them see the depth of their misery and their oppression. She became militant for good reason. She loved Dr. King but she told him she would not be turning the other cheek. She would rather gun down the oppressor and die in the effort than to continue living as she had. I don’t blame her.
So, she came under control through medication and she certainly knew she had capitulated and that further tightened the spiral of her failing career and her sanity. She escaped and disappeared and behaved badly for a long period of time. This is the story I think of when I hear the explosions outside and I imagine the people who are sitting with faces turned skyward admiring the red and white and blue of the occasion. I think how they are paid just enough money for their labors to be comfortable but not moneyed enough to share some of it with those they have crowded out of a job and who are suffering in bread lines, soup kitchens, food banks and in lines that humiliate and lines that exhaust and anger and frustrate them. These are the necessary masses that support a rotting capitalist system with their temp jobs, meager wages, and frequent lay-offs. The racism supporting system that incarcerates at unequal rates in order to separate and keep sub-groups leery of each other. Sowing mistrust between neighbors in order to keep that aforementioned distraction alive and working for the bosses who put on grand shows of patriotism annually. Ooh! Aah!
The lucky ones, and they are truly lucky and not more capable than those who are unemployed, the lucky ones conveniently blind themselves to the plight and the vagaries of demographics in reference to income, race, ethnicity, and pure fucking luck. They become the first line enemies of the unfortunate. It is a cruel system.
I have lived a charmed life and I know it. My gender and skin color have had a lot to do with it. I chalk it up to pure fucking luck.
Peace,
G.M. Goodwin
2 July 2020
Playing Fair and Being Kind 