As Old As America — Poetry

“The greater the social antagonisms, the less the elites have to fear.” Chris Hedges

I remember when our enemies lay beyond our borders — the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Chairman Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro.

What I remember most is that when the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed there was no peace dividend. We found a new enemy — Islam.

Every empire needs an enemy, a bogeyman.

Radical, fundamentalist, murderous. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS. Mortal threat to the peace and stability of the civilized West.

After 9/11 we waged a global war on a tactic, fought by drone, by car bomb, by improvised explosive device; it went on and on and on, amorphous and endless, from Kabul to Baghdad to Aleppo.

Except for non-stop praise for our brave men and women in uniform, this was an out of sight and mind war.

Now the enemy is our own history, the dark, foundational history of racism. Some want to downplay it, distort it, or erase it; especially if the history makes white people uncomfortable, makes them interrogate their minds and hearts, see the other side of the story.

We cannot have that. In the service of power we must celebrate ignorance, celebrate forgetting, celebrate the Lost Cause. Innocent and precious white children must be shielded, protected, like the pure, chaste, Christian maidens on Georgia’s plantations.

The fear of black people is as old as America, lodged in our DNA. Who knew when or where the next slave revolt would erupt, the chattel rising in the dark of night bent on murdering the white master and his family, women and children, babies.

Nothing struck fear in the minds of whites like the idea of a slave with a weapon, any kind of weapon. Knife, pistol, pitchfork, tree branch, two by four, even a book. Knowledge could be dangerous, too.

Knowledge can change a mind, or a heart, turn it from the shadows to the light. Lack of knowledge distorts the mind, hardens the heart, and extinguishes the light.