One nation, mocking God, divisible, with liberty and justice for some...

Get the Point!

Today, millions of Americans will celebrate that moment in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson, writing on behalf of his fellow British colonists, executed the "Declaration of Independence" from Great Britain.

As a descendant of the enslaved, I've always understood what abolitionist Frederick Douglass famously asked, "What is the 4th of July to the Slave?" Hobbservation: Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

And since my ancestors weren't free from 1776 until 1865, such gives me the moral license to echo Douglass's sentiments that the United States has always been an exercise in hypocrisy, a nation that talks liberty while denying it to many—a nation that talks about Jesus Christ, but is ruled by oligarchs who are nothing more than modern day Pharisees, men and women whose true god is money—and true ministry is the maintenance of power concentrated within the hands of the privileged few.

Just this week, the same MAGA Republicans who outwardly seek to eliminate the separation between church and state, did the very non-Christ-like act of passing legislation that will close hospitals, kick millions of poor people off of the Medicaid rolls, increase funding for police forces to round up immigrants and most crucially, place more money into the pockets of the wealthiest one percent of Americans! Curiously, Jesus spoke about it being more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person getting into heaven, but modern MAGA Republicans consciously choose to ignore that scripture as well as any of Christ's teaching about compassion towards the poor and strangers (immigrants).

Equally deplorable was the photo op (below) from South Florida this week at a migrant detention camp that Florida Gov. Ron Desantis has dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," a remote airfield down in the hot, humid, alligator, snake, and mosquito infested Big Cypress Swamp! If you don't find President Donald Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Desantis laughing it up for the cameras at this camp sickening, then you need to check your own morality and religious beliefs because they are sorely lacking!

Trump and Desantis joking around at the new Alligator Alcatraz

Sadly, the historian in me knows that certain people in the U.S. have ALWAYS had a sick fetish involving Black bodies being "gator bait" in Southern swamps; Black, from back then, is simply replaced with Brown, for now at least, as these detention facilities are eerily reminiscent of the concentration camps set up by Nazis early in Adolf Hitler's term as German chancellor in the 1930's—and the Japanese Interment Camps that were set up to house U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. For my readers who shrug and say “well, that has nothing to do with me,” I simply ask how long will it be before this lawless and ruthless administration comes to detain you or your family for whatever trumped up reasons they design?

Florida postcards shops in the 20th Century were filled with depictions of alligators hunting little Black children

I take my responsibility seriously to point out how the past truly is prologue, and what once was (systemic white supremacy and class based oppression) still remain cancers in many ways in the U.S.!

As such, I will use my time off today to reflect on the putrid mindset that has allowed so many people in this country to yield common sense and common decency to genuflect at the altar of oligarchs who are padding their own pockets at the expense of the 98 percent of us who are facing an even more uncertain future due to this week's legislation. Indeed, as I occasionally remind, if the masses can ever wake up and rid themselves of this sick fealty to the rich and famous, the celebrated American Revolution of 1776 will have to give way to a 21st Century revolution marked by a radical redistribution of wealth, liberty, and "justice for all!"