Monday, April 24, 2017

One Hundred Days


ONE HUNDRED DAYS



April 29, 2017 will be the 100th day of the Trump presidency, a sliver of American political history.  But history will make more of that day than it seems to be willing to make of the John F. Kennedy Centennial.  As far as I know, this centennial has neither been celebrated in our nation's few venerable newspapers nor subjected to reliable critique on television.  Please correct me if I'm ignorant something history is actually doing.  Might it be the case that the sellers of news fear the necessity of reminding us that Kennedy's mystery-wrapped  assassination was connected somehow with the U.S.S.R. (Russia)? Would fresh speculation about that mystery highlight too much the current mystery of President Trump's alleged love/hate relationship with Putin?  Would historical critique expose how history's fictions threaten our nation's security?



The answers we might desire are not forthcoming.  Instead, what is trending ---dangerously so ---is smirking and smiling among some of us who give more allegiance to Literature than to History.  We smile that Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece of magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), invites us to entitle  what has emerged since January 20, 2017 One Hundred Days of Executive Ordered Desperation. Our smirks and smiles are ephemeral.  A disappeared realism isn't a fit object for laughter.  Only the mentally challenged are entitled to joke and laugh as neo-fascism gains ground in the United States of America.  And that is a true post-truth fact that Trump's loyal minions dare not deny.



April 29, 2017 should be a day for comparing what Trump "promised" with alacrity during his campaign with what he "promised" with audacity in the smoke and mirrors of one hundred days: NOTHING.  His infamous tweets and dismissive quips ( signs of his ultimate disdain for American citizens who lack wealth and who do not aspire to join his class) confirm NOTHING, the very NOTHING that for Shakespeare was signified by sound and fury (see Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5).  Nada. Deep echoes from Ernest Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"  ----"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada…."  NOTHING.  The tale told by an idiot with benefit of blasphemy.



April 29, 2017 should be a day for accounting for progressive deconstructions, bold erasures of regulations and faith, exquisite nurturing of lies and counter-lies ---all the ideologies and actions that can ensure that America might cultivate the desire to abandon democracy as a viable option and become, under President Trump's exceptional leadership, the greatest autocracy recorded in human histories.  Like the militant radicals who blamed President Obama for EVERYTHING, we just might be destined to become extremely  militant conservatives who blame President Trump for NOTHING.



THINK. THINK. YOU GOTTA THINK WHAT YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS ARE TRYING TO DO TO YOU.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                                            April 24, 2017








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