America The Black Is Beautiful

Some, I Assume, Are Very Good People

September 2, 2021

As the Jan 6 Commission plows ahead with its investigation into the terrorist attack on the Capitol, which as much as anything exemplified the last throes of white supremacy’s desperate struggle for survival, I am reminded that descendants of slaves have been instrumental in pushing this nation toward becoming a "more perfect union" and pulling America's ass out of various fires forever. Some people never learn.

One of those descendants, Ben Carson, renowned neurosurgeon, second-most-absurd 2016 presidential candidate (the most absurd, of course went on to win) and all-around numb-nuts, said this about his ancestors, “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.” Ouch. I imagine that the only dream those in the bottom of slave ships dreamt about was waking up from they surely hoped was either nightmare or dreadful hallucination.

Sure, there have been quite a few white folks who were game-changers in their day, but it is much easier for someone who is not either personally or generationally beaten down to stand up for what is right, and naturally, white folks have always had a different stake in protecting this nation, since they have always (at the very least acted like they) owned the place, often protecting the nation from threats they either imagined or created. And repeatedly, Black Americans have had to save America from itself.

From Crispus Attucks, the son of a slave father and a Native American mother, who had escaped slavery – the first to be killed by British soldiers on March 5, 1770 during the Boston Massacre, which paved the way for the American Revolution. It is very possible that Attucks was minding his own business and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, possibly the first innocent black man in America gunned down by law enforcement.

To Rosa Parks, iconic figure in the Civil Rights Movement who got arrested for refusing to demean herself, preferring to sit where she chose on a bus. Many Black Lives have been ended by law enforcement for much less in more recent times.

Rosa Parks and some other black guy
who tried to save America from itself

To Frank Wills – the Watergate security guard who helped put an end to the dishonest, war-crime addled, paranoid administration of Richard Nixon. Wills foiled the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee inside the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. by calling the police after discovering that locks at the complex had been tampered with. Wills’ life was fairly well ruined for his trouble.

Watergate security guard Frank Wills

To Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan, who in 1974, made an influential televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

Barbara Jordan - Excerpt 1974

To Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman who, during the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack, diverted the crazed rioters from the United States Senate chamber, almost certainly saving the lives of many legislators on whose heads Turmp’s mob had placed bounties.

Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman

To Capitol Officer Harold Dunn who was repeatedly called the n-word by Turmp’s Treasonous Tourists. Dunn continued to do his job and eventually testified before the Jan 6 Commission, “Telling the truth shouldn’t be hard. Fighting on January 6^th, that was hard. Showing up on January 7^th, that was hard… Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger are being lauded as courageous heroes. And while I agree with that notion, why? Because they told the truth? Why is telling the truth hard? I guess in this America it is.”

Capitol Police Officer Harold Dunn

And if not for Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, who shot the unfortunate idiot tourorist Ashli Babbit, there is a good chance Turmp’s minions would have executed some number of legislators. In return, Byrd whose not-white hand can be seen in the Jan 6 video, poised to protect Congress, yet hoping his orders to stand down would be obeyed so no shot need be fired, has been relentlessly attacked by white wing media (often referred to as “right wing media”) as a murderer of a martyr. Byrd again risked life and limb by doing a nationally televised interview with Lester Holt, despite repeated death threats and other assorted slurs of a nature one could guess with little effort.

And lastly, for the time being, Rep. Bennie Thompson, 14-term Congressman from Mississippi and the lone Democrat in the Mississippi Congressional Delegation and current Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, steps into the breach. Thompson now chairs the House of Representatives’ select committee on the January 6^th insurrection. Thompson is intent on following every lead, turning over every stone in order to learn the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Jan 6 and all pertinent events leading up to it. Many white people will not look fondly upon Mr. Thompson – especially those people (all of whom will not coincidentally be white) on the wrong end of his subpoenas and those (other white people) who blindly follow them.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson

Meanwhile, all the white Ratpublicans who are supporting the insurrection, and attempting to hold up the terrorists who invaded the Capitol to stop the certification of the free and fair election of Joe Biden as patriotic heroes, refuse to have anything to do with the search for the non-alternative facts.

Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon

I. Mangrey for a change.