Janury 20, 2017

January 20, 2017: Surreal Meditation

January 20, 2017 will be (____________________).  Complete the sentence.  Let the assertion be an example of sound signifying (just)(ice).

Reporters and journalists are working overtime, seeking non-objective words to characterize a maculate birth.  They lack the grace and moral certitude Frederick Douglass had in 1852 when he unpacked the Fourth of July.  Deconstructing the Twentieth of January is a more intense and frantic obligation.  In 1852, the technologies of radio,  television, videotapes, smart phones and Internet-streaming did not exist to distort and broadcast Douglass' oration.  In those days, print was the only means of widely circulating messages of hope or despair, of making ethical documentation from unreliable myth.  We are blessed with progress and other fruits of advanced civilization. And those of us who elect to disregard right-wing civility have multiple options for cussing and cursing.

It is likely that January 20, 2017, following in the wake of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, will be a day of profound reckoning.  The day will forecast the terrorism at the gate.  Some American citizens will  emote, applaud,  and shout jubilees .  Others will howl execrations. Still others will exercise their right to remain silent.  However Americans choose to express themselves, they will inadvertently participate in neo-fascist rituals that are legitimate in a neo-fascist democracy. Noisy or silent, they shall honor the logic of the existential.  A handful of culturally literate journalists and reporters may remind all the signifying monkeys that Douglass' classical oration can be supplemented by the uncanny Britexit  relevance of  Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach."  More than a random, sordid tweet will inscribe January 20, 2017 in the discourses of history.

On this special day of reckoning, we shall witness what issues forth when Fate and Destiny fornicate. The finest witnessing shall take the form of objective analysis of the vexed histories in the Americas since the fifthteenth century B.C.  We ought not depend on mass media to do for us  what we must do for ourselves  in locating and naming the roots and branches of neo-fascist democracy.  It will suffice that we look into our mirrors as soon as we awaken on January 20, 2017 and assess the evidence of our faces.  We are blessed to have faces that symbolize blame with extreme accuracy.  The secular reflection will confirm that we have indeed been "true to our native land."

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            January 10, 2017