“It’s My Face Man!….I Didn’t Do Nothing Serious Man!….Please!…Please!…Please!…I Can’t Breathe!….Please!…Man!…Please!….Somebody!….Please!…Man!….I Can’t Breathe!….I Can’t Breathe!….Please!….(inaudible),,,,Man!…Can’t Breathe!….My Face!….Just Get Up!….I Can’t Breathe!…Please!….(inaudible)….I Can’t Breathe!…Shit!….I Can’t Move!….Mama!…Mama!…My Knee!….My Nuts!….I’m Through!….I’m Through!….I’m Claustrophobic!….My Stomach Hurts!…My Neck Hurts!….Everythin’ Hurts!…Some Water!…Somethin!….Please!….Please!….Can’t breathe!….Officer!….Don’t Kill Me!….They Gonna’ Kill Me Man!….Come on Man!….I Can’t Breathe!….I Can’t Breathe!…..They Gonna Kill Me!….They Gonna Kill Me!…I Can’t Breathe!…I Can’t Breathe!….Please, Sir!….Please!…Please!…Please!…I Can’t Breathe!”
His eyes finally shut and there is only silence.
George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man held down by the hand and knee of a Minneapolis police man – handcuffed and pinned down by three other policemen while the knee of the fourth kneels hard upon Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, the policeman’s fist pressing down on his thigh to give extra downward thrust for more effect. A distraught George Floyd, all the while, pleads for his life to no avail while the whole world watches, helplessly, as he slowly dies from asphyxiation.
Something is Deeply Wrong in the American Psyche. The Whole Thing about America is Wrong! A Sitting Authoritarian, fascistic, ‘Law & Order’ President, tone deaf to the needs of the citizenry and the Nation, Who Can Only Declare, “If You Loot, We Shoot!:” While a Presumptive Neo-Liberal Candidate, Intent Upon Taking His Seat Away From Him, Rather Than Abashedly Shedding some Honest Tears of Sorrow & Outrage for Yet Another Innocent Black Man Needlessly Murdered, Can Only Smile like a Cheshire Cat With a Political Agenda in Mind, Vaguely Mouthing the Need for Change Rather Than angrily call for Radical, Sweeping Reform and a Complete Overhaul of the American Way of Life. The Reality of it all is Too Heart-Wrenching & Sickening! Too Painful!
This writer is an 80 year-old ex-pat, fiercely proud of his Irish-American defiant Wild Geese heritage that, for centuries, defied the White, privileged British classes repressive brutality against his native peoples, but who chose to live afar nearly fifty years ago, in self-exile, in disgust, in search of something better which eventually would be found in Canada’s way of life, best summed up by its 2020 COVID pandemic expression, “Try To Be Kind To One Another Because We’re All In This Together”. After that he no longer could live in good conscience within the American political and cultural systems of the land of his birth where this same societal kindness wasn’t quite the same case, and its historically harsh militaristic and law enforcement systems, still perpetrates too much brutality against its citizenry in general and women and people of colour in particular.
Yet his heart, despite his body being removed from the turmoil of America’s terrible unrelenting scene, forever lives through the angst of America’s unending trials and tribulations as if he was a native born and bred still living in the heart of Main Street USA.
But many perplexing, unanswered questions have never left his thoughts and beg to know: “Where and How in America did all the racial and sexual violence, hatred, prejudice, anger, rage and vicious indifference to life itself first begin? Is the on-going devolution of American culture and society, that now seems to be approaching a particularly critical meltdown stage, is simply the natural progression of a two thousand year-old racist, privileged Western Civilization that began to horribly metastasize with the Rich White Man’s discovery of the New World and a pathetic repeat of his previous two thousand plus years of indifference to the slavery and persecution brutally waged against all forms of indigenous and non-indigenous human beings, the natural world and its ancient feminine qualities; fueled by homo sapiens endemic greed that, in point of truth, has long since hopelessly become a pandemic among its species?
In protest to George Floyd’s death at the hands and knees of four burly Minneapolis Policemen, Basketball’s Great Lebron ‘The King’ James succinctly put to us all the answer to this vexing question in a political meme with a photo on Instagram that declared, ‘Do You Understand Now? Or is it Still Blurred to You?’ (https://www.dailydot.com/irl/lebron-james-colin-kaepernick-george-floyd-death)
It Wasn’t Blurred to this writer in 2017 either when he wrote about:
Kaepernick, NFL, America & U.S. Constitution Lock Horns In The Coliseum | Countercurrents
Instead, it once again, serves as a reminder, like so many countless times before by so many others about the collective plight of Black Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans and White Americans alike. Floyd’s murder and Lebron’s message is yet another deeply heart-wrenching, sickening and painful reminder that we live in a time when the United States has seemingly made so little progress in eradicating racial violence, racism, or political corruption, any more than it has reduced human greed.
The double travesty of the inhumanity that underlies the COVID Mayhem, especially for people of colour, is that all this continues to evolve throughout the America’s and indeed the world, under the ruthless, fascistic rule of those Tone Deaf ones, like President Trump, Jair Bolsanaro and other heartless, brain-dead dictators who slavishly follow their lead.
Many wise and erudite ones already have written reams about all the why’s and wherefores of how this dismal reality has come to pass, or what the outcome ultimately will be, but suffice it to allow Lebron James Instagram question to all thinking, feeling human beings, to continue to ring in the ears of all who would listen, “Do You Understand Now? Or is it Still Blurred to You?”
So Here We All Are, Caught Together in the Great Spider’s Web of the Universe, Creating Mass Racial Protests in the Streets, Demanding Truth and Justice in the Middle of an Emotionally-Distraught Economic and Political Distressed World, Rife-Ridden with Coronavirus. When We All Should be Practicing Social Distancing for our very Survival, the World’s Humanity is Instead Compelled to Protest with Their Bodies and Very Lives against the Inhumanity that the dictatorship of a Trump has created in a once Proud and Hopeful America. What the Evil Effects Will Be For All Those Who Have Thrown Social Distancing Out the Window Remains a Monstrously-Alarming Unknown For Themselves and all Those They Come in Contact With! No Human or Non-Human Being on Planet Earth Can Survive and Thrive For Very Long Without a Healthy Eco-System Surrounding Them. What Next Must Be Done About it All in 2020 and Beyond, As We Continue To Hurtle Together Through Endless Cosmic Space, is Yet An Imponderable. The Madness of it All Too Mind-Boggling To Ponder!
Jerome Irwin is a freelance writer and author of “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a three volume account of his travels as a spiritual sojourner, during the 1960’s, 70’s & 80’s, among Native American & First Nation peoples in North America. It encompasses the Indigenous Spiritual Renaissance & Liberation Movements that emerged throughout North America during the civil rights era. In addition to being a long-time political activist and organizer, Irwin has authored over the years a number of environmental, political, cultural, spiritual articles with special emphasis on Native Words Americans, First Nations, Australian aboriginals, and native peoples of Israel, Gaza, Palestine and Syria and racism against Black Americans (See article, “Kaepernick, NFL, America & U.S. Constitution Lock Horns in the Coliseum (Oct, 2017) . Irwin also is the publisher of The Wild Gentle Press.
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