By Mike McQuillan
An angel’s soft but nimble wing across my bony shoulder in this morning’s predawn darkness offers grace but fails at easing fear.
Chill crescent moon cries for my commitment with the nation’s vote begun.
Carolina key state calls continue, hours long. In clear though plaintive voice I leave when and where to vote as the objective script provides. Demography augurs well for the side that I espouse, yet against the greed of rigid cynics my steadfast efforts and ideals seem bucket drops.
Self-consoling, I conclude that the voicemail message has its impact. The stated text lists housing, education and reproductive freedom as issues though an emergency obtains. I seed urgent phrases into pitches with a looming deadline day.
The false equivalence of coverage on TV and in the press equates a convicted felon, sexual predator, pathological liar and coup fomenter with a public servant somehow tarred as vague in Q & A.
Incessant polls portray people’s self-induced amnesia as to the former president’s past term. The fascist march at Charlottesville with lethal car that drove through crowds to kill the compassionate activist Heather Heyer, shed a tear but say her name!
Insurrection logically ensued from premeditated lies once Trump’s defeat ensued. But so many folks proclaim that he who stiffs his workers and whose college was a fraud will fix an economy whose deficit he pledged he’d fix but his massive tax cut while in office for the rich ballooned.
The one he now proclaims would add eight billion more, the Wall Street Journal says.
The Hitler acolyte enabled by his right-wing donors and their think tanks mimics Mein Kampf lines that would “preserve the purity of blood.” Hitler’s scapegoat target Jew for Trump becomes the Haitian, Muslim or Latino plus the migrant refugee. Trump decries the porous border crisis but subverted the bipartisan Congress bill that Biden would have signed.
Yet election stands at even-Steven, so we’re told.
The celestial spirit that fashioned all that’s beautiful and good seems mute as I appeal. Whither us amidst extremes of climate change and war?
Can the concept of a common good transcend the “build your brand” compulsion?
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Was Lincoln’s selfless legacy for naught?
“The people once informed will always side with what is right,” my father taught my childhood self. But bearing witness now unsettles as I ponder this dilemma:
Will heart and conscience guide us as we cast the stone into the sea? Might we trust inherent promise in the ceiling-breaking Harris candidacy?
Or will falsely stoked alarm enflame the reflex that will “let it happen here”?
Michael McQuillan
Michael McQuillan, former U.S. Senate aide, Peace Corps volunteer and history teacher, chaired the N.Y.P.D. Training Advisory Council’s Race Subcommittee and writes for The Write Launch, History News Network, Harlem World Magazine and his blog (https://mcquillan-unity-forum.squarespace.com)
Editor’s Note: The content in the article may or may not reflect the views of Harlem World Magazine.
Photo credit: Harlem/Bronx, Wiki.
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