Tag: racism

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BILLIONAIRE BRAWL 2020

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: 19 August 2020.  Billy Lee informs us that tonight Kamala Harris gave best VP acceptance speech ever. He understands why Biden picked Harris for VP.

In spite of Billy Lee’s loss of skepticism, WE THE EDITORS insist his original essay stay in place to provide historical context for 2020 election. 

People who read my blog know that I consider Trump a lunatic who is looting our country on behalf of his family and billionaires everywhere.

The irony of course is that his opponent just picked a VP who is married to one of the world’s wealthiest men — an attorney who may have made hundreds-of-millions representing billionaires in court. Kamala Harris claims they are worth together a mere $5.8 million.

I remember reading reports about her husband’s wealth being much more, but it was years ago, maybe it was fake news or the money has been moved, I don’t know. Anyhow, I cannot prove it today — mainly because much seems to have been rewritten on the internet about Kamala to make her palatable to voters.

That’s what it looks like from where I sit. In a few years everyone will know the truth, right? The truth always comes out, does it not?

Douglas Emhoff apparently made his money and powerful friends by helping certain oligarchs secure almost perpetual rights over intellectual property that they neither created nor are entitled to own overly long under the law; it is a battle about money and power that few regular folks know anything about.

Copyrights and patents expire for a reason — to prevent oligarchs from securing monopoly powers over the technologies and art that improve the lives of ordinary people.

Patents and copyrights expire to prevent the wealthy from securing for their families an infinite future of privilege they haven’t earned; to stop billionaires from becoming feudal lords in a country that prides itself on individual liberty and the innovation that comes from setting liberty free.

Copyrights and patents that are passed down from generation to generation — or sold to corporations to be held nearly forever — are un-American. Defending the unfair extension of such ownership in court is not an honorable way to make a living, at least to my way of thinking.

Today, oligarchs — the rich and powerful — are tightening their grip on countries around the world. People do not need a degree in political science to know that a 77-year-old man might not survive to see 20 January 2021, which is inauguration day. Joe Biden’s first major personnel decision has made it more likely that Kamala Harris will be president sooner rather than later.

Does Kamala Harris have the wisdom, maturity, pedigree, and experience to be president?  These questions have to be asked, because it is possible Kamala Harris is going to be president soon.

By the time readers finish this post they will understand why I believe her ascent to power might not necessarily be too good for either the world or the United States. They will understand why I believe that Election 2020 is going to become a brawl between wealthy people who do not really care about us; the four candidates have almost nothing in common with ordinary people.  

Media commentators on both left and right are parroting the same talking points. A black woman is running for VP.  Isn’t that something?

The truth as I see it is far different. Kamala Harris is not a member of that group of suffering people in the United States whose great-grandparents were traumatized by slavery. She shares precious little experience with a people whose lives were torn apart by forced family separations, segregation, and Jim Crow.

Harriet Tubman. She knew all the players in the Underground Railroad. She was a spy for the Union during the Civil War. Bad things happened to her, but she never stopped fighting for what was right.

When Kamala claims she shared the black experience of racial discrimination because she took the bus to a school already integrated, she is misrepresenting her personal history by making it seem as though she suffered in some tragic way. Her story sounds phony. She comes across as inauthentic, at least to me. 

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a cancer researcher from India. Shyamala passed, sadly, in 2009 from the disease she spent her life trying to understand. Kamala’s dad, Donald Harris, is a retired Jamaican economist who emigrated to the USA and worked at Stanford University in California where he holds the title of Professor Emeritus. 

Kamala’s dad is the progeny of the prominent sugar baron and slave owner Hamilton Brown who was Irish. The heritage of Kamala’s dad is that of owner, not slave, plus he’s mostly white; indeed he’s Irish.

Kamala has many admirable qualities but a slave heritage is not one of them.

I think Biden might have picked Kamala because of their shared Irish ancestry. He says she and his son (who died) were close friends. 

Kamala does not have the blood of American slavery running through her veins.  Because of a sadistic repression, American slaves were unable to throw off their chains to free themselves like other slave populations in the Western Hemisphere. The cost was too high. The ancestors of some of my black friends had their bones broken, were castrated and boiled alive for trying.

Kamala does not share this history.  My friends can speak for themselves. They don’t need me to tell their history. It doesn’t mean that they don’t take Kamala’s side against Trump, who is an existential threat to minorities because he is an unrepentant racist.  

The feeling for me is that some will see little or no difference in the two tickets; the pundits will not be able to convince enough people to vote in 2020 to ensure that our current president relinquishes the power he seized against the popular will in the last election when minority voters, some of them, stood in line for six hours to cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton.

Trump lost the presidency by 11 million votes; 3 million of the margin went to Hillary Clinton; the rest to 3rd party candidates like Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, and others. 

Without a huge turnout of black voters, Joe Biden has no chance against Donald Trump. The president has already promised to challenge any election that doesn’t go his way. He has no plans to step down. 

Shyamala and Donald Harris divorced when Kamala was 7; by age 12 Kamala moved to Canada with her mother. Kamala has more in common with Canadians than black Americans.

If Biden believes that Black Lives Matter, why did he not select the most qualified and prepared person he could find?  Why not select Susan Rice whose dad Emmett J. Rice forged the original Tuskegee Airmen of World War Two?

Why did he not choose Val Demmings? — who Wikipedia says was ”one of seven children born to a poor family; her father worked as a janitor, while her mother was a maid.” 

Ms. Demmings rose to become a Chief of Police in Orlando, Florida, of all places. She organized the impeachment hearings against President Trump. Who better to galvanize Democrats for Biden in the great state of Florida? — a state he is now likely to lose. 

One thing that concerns me about Kamala Harris is the unfortunate circumstance of her not having birthed nor raised children of her own. Perhaps it wasn’t her choice. But it means that she lacks the wisdom common to women who birth and raise babies to adulthood. It gives them a dose of wisdom and experience that childless people including men don’t have. 

It’s not something that can be easily minimized no matter how much we want it to not matter.  I’m not trying to insult people who remain childless. But one reason to vote for a woman is to gather that wisdom common to mothers for the benefit of our country and its children.  Kamala Harris doesn’t have it. We’re missing an important piece of the jigsaw that makes women good choices for leadership. 

Another concern is the reports circulating on the internet that she is estranged from her father. I think it’s more likely that at age 82 he might not have his wits about him enough to manage a television interview. But he has criticized Kamala in the past for bragging about smoking high-quality Jamaican weed.

Professor Harris considered his daughter’s remark a self-aggrandizing slam against Jamaica’s reputation. She made it to garner support from pot-smokers, he said according to reports.

An inability to reconcile over disagreements about marijuana use seems far-fetched to me. I worry that hatred generated by some other issue might be at its root, and Americans should know what it is. It might be nothing at all. We need to know before we cast a  vote that if it carries will change all our lives.

The reason is because anyone who can’t reconcile with their own family is not someone who should hold in their hands the briefcase of nuclear codes. It doesn’t matter who they are or who their family is. They can be the best person in the world. But it’s better that they be well-adjusted with a head unclouded by any desires for revenge; without any imagined scores to settle. 

After all it’s the power of the United States that’s being entrusted. Every family has problems, but serious family problems are a red flag that voters are wise to consider. Voters have a duty to know as best they can the truth about a girl whose world was ripped apart by divorce at age 7 and again at age 12 when her mother moved her against her will to a cold, foreign land where she couldn’t speak the language (French). 

Her only marriage was celebrated inside a courtroom during August 2016 to Douglas Emhoff, a single parent with two teenagers. It was a marriage that helped her career in politics, because it gave her access to a reservoir of money and the powerful friends of her husband.

Douglas Emhoff’s ex-wife is Kerstin Emhoff, the Hollywood and British film producer and co-founder of PRETTYBIRD and Ventureland.  According to its website, ”PRETTYBIRD is one of the world’s most prestigious production companies in branded storytelling”. Apparently, Kerstin manages a stable of artists that number, I don’t know, in the hundreds, maybe?

Douglas, Kerstin, and Kamala behave like they are good friends both in public and on social media. 

Maybe the court-approved union between Kamala and Douglas helped them avoid the awkwardness of a marriage ceremony normally held in temple or church when Kamala had no plans to convert to her husband’s religion nor he to hers. Neither did she intend to take on the mantle of his name — something as American as apple pie. Perhaps Kamala Emhoff didn’t ring the right tone in the ears of someone who was  plotting strategies to grasp the golden ring of ultimate power. 

Who doesn’t agree that the words Kamala Harris-Emhoff have a pleasant resonance? It’s like the smell of incense. It is.  Who wouldn’t want the name if they had the opportunity to carry it?

Anyway, Kerstin Emhoff continues to carry her ex-husband’s name without any problems at all, apparently. Why do people make the decisions they do?

There is nothing wrong with a woman choosing to not carry her husband’s name. I personally wouldn’t marry a woman who made that choice, but it’s a personal decision that is none of my business unless it involves me personally. I don’t care one way or another when it comes to someone else’s marriage. What I’m worried about is that this “name thing” might be a way to camouflage a fortune in assets that Kamala doesn’t want the world to know about. 

Or maybe her husband doesn’t want Kamala to know about his true worth.  I wonder if the money is under the control of his ex-wife. Maybe there isn’t any money. 

Who knows?

Not me.

But this power-couple is running for what is going to turn out to be the presidency. People kill for that kind of power. So I raise questions because someone has to. Hopefully the answers are innocent and nothing untoward or unseemly is going on behind the curtains.  

If everything turns out to be on the up and up and folks are telling the truth, then we have nothing to worry about that can’t be fixed by experience and learning from one of the best — Joe Biden. 

I don’t know Kamala, so I can’t ask her. Maybe someone close will ask about the circumstances of her marriage and her name when the subject comes up. Kamala is a major public figure now. Americans have a right and duty to know everything about her. It’s the price of power in a United States where leaders are expected to sacrificially serve ordinary people — not just the wealthy and the powerful like Trump so often seems to do. 

Kamala doesn’t lay claim to a religion, but the Tamil region of India where her relatives live is primarily Hindu. Muslims, Christians, and Jains also live in the area.  Her sister, MSNBC commentator Maya Harris, says that she and Kamala were raised in the Baptist and Hindu traditions.

Kamala Harris wrote in her book The Truths We Hold that she attended 23rd Avenue Church of God (a black Christian church) before moving to Canada. No problems there. 

As for Trump, he also seems to have an unusual relationship with his spouse. It’s not because she was born two years after he graduated from college. No, it’s not that. 

Apparently, Melania doesn’t live in the White House. For some reason no one has the courage to ask why. It’s not clear that Trump lives in the White House, either. He has a hotel across the street. I heard he has an entire floor to himself. No one ever asks him. 

Maybe the same deference will be shown to the Harris-Emhoff family when Kamala becomes president in the next year or two. I don’t think it will, nor should it. 

Who knows?

Not me.

I’m asking questions, nothing more, because this team of Biden and Harris doesn’t feel right to me. Something doesn’t add-up. Something isn’t making sense.

We know that Israel plans to annex the West Bank at its earliest opportunity. It’s what Haaretz and the Israeli press write about all the time. Perhaps Biden felt that Israel would be more acquiescent to his candidacy with Harris-Emhoff at his side. I just don’t know.

Annexation means possible war with powerful enemies. Is Kamala equipped to carry the fight?  I don’t think she’s ready. 

Otherwise, it’s a no-brainer for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

It has to be Trump.

There is no one else. 

Editor’s Note:  Within hours after we published this essay Israel announced an agreement with the United Arab Emirates. According to the New York Times, “…the two agreed to ”full normalization of relations” in exchange for Israel suspending annexation of occupied West Bank territory.” Palestinian authorities called the agreement a “sell-out” by the UAE. 

Maybe someone will put their finger on why Demmings and Rice didn’t make the cut. Maybe cabinet appointments await them for which they are better suited. It’s speculation. It’s something to watch. Maybe Biden will tell us in the next few days.

Meanwhile, pig Trump snouts about for something nasty to engorge his advantage. Biden and Harris will have to become as meek as lambs and as smart as serpents. They might want to take an oath to keep their wits about them. 

A significant portion of the voting public tends to be racist and misogynist — perhaps more now than ever, because of Trump. Kamala is a fighter who isn’t afraid to slash and burn when politics demands it. I wish a more righteous path could bring victory.  I believe one exists, but I will never know for sure because my time on Earth is coming to an end. 

Kamala made claim that both her parents were active in the American Civil Rights movement. As first-generation immigrant professionals, it’s difficult to understand why they would jeopardize their citizenship doing political acts that might prove disqualifying. In those days, Civil Rights leaders were labeled Communists by FBI Director Hoover. America blocked Communists from citizenship. 

I hope Kamala is speaking truth. She might not know what the truth is. Maybe she romanticizes stories parents told. She wouldn’t be the first. 

This contest is going to be cast by liberal media as a wrestling match between billionaire Trump and the little people represented by Biden and Harris. We’re in a carnival funhouse of mirrors, politically. Americans, many of them, always seem to feel that the next candidate, the next election will open a door that leads to their extrication from all the lunacy inflicted upon them by the wealthy and the power-hungry. 

This election 2020 is not that election. The wealthy, well-connected, and powerful are here to stay into the foreseeable future. As Trump always says, It is the way it is. 

Is it really true?

Some are advocating an election boycott — at the very least they plan to ignore the top of the ballot to send a message to the watching world that Americans are fed up by lousy choices and elites who refuse to defend and protect them.  

I’m tired of throwing the dice to pick our leaders. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.

Or do we? 

Trump is authentic but crazy.  Kamala might be phony, but she’s smart as hell and in the prime of life. Which candidate will do the least harm to everything Americans believe in and defend? 

I’m not sure anyone knows. 

We don’t have much time to learn more about Kamala. We have to ask questions and move fast to understand her as best we can before putting her into a place where everything she says and does will affect our lives for good or ill. 

I’ve watched elections come and go. One president in my lifetime was the poorest. He owned a peanut farm. He was the only president who never killed anyone or ordered anyone killed.

Everyone knows the name ”Jimmy” Carter, right?

I met him once. His righteous aura scared me almost to death.

The country spit him out like a bad seed. 

Billy Lee

Postscript:  19 August 2020: Acceptance speech by Kamala Harris thrilled me. It was better than expected. I regret some portions of essay above, but my Editors have chosen to embarrass me by not allowing retractions or alterations. They have reasons. 

Note from Editorial Board:  Our policy is that everything Billy Lee writes be true. Opinions are fine, but fake facts are prohibited. When mistakes are discovered, it is policy that they be fixed ASAP.  Meanwhile every issue raised in the essay is to be viewed not as statement of fact but as question begging answers. We agree it’s not enough to be anti-Trump. Hating Trump is not by itself qualifying. Caution advised.   

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HATING CHRISTMAS

Bevy Mae and me live on a cul-de-sac with a lot of old people everywhere. Some of the houses are empty; folks go to Florida, mostly. Some travel to second, third, or fourth  homes located only God knows where. None have Christmas decorations. It’s too much work when people are old and no one comes to visit.

A black kid who must have spent a lot of time making Christmas candles came to our house yesterday. He displayed his wares and gave what I thought was a carefully memorized pitch for the homeless.

How much? I asked.

Most folks give twenty dollars, he said.  I held an iPhone at the ready pre-dialed to  911 in case he tried to rob me.

After looking the boy over, he seemed like a good kid, so I put the phone away and paid the money. The last thing he said as he stepped back to leave was, Thank you, sir, for answering the door. It means a lot at Christmas.

I wondered if I should tell him that the reason people weren’t answering their doors was that they had already left town, most of them.  No, I thought. Better not tell him that.

People live in my neighborhood who I think must be more paranoid and racist than me. Some no doubt refused to answer, because they darn well aren’t going to deal with a door-to-door salesman at Christmas-time.  Especially if they look like someone who might hate them because they are unable to feign even a little trust — a little kindness and love —  during Christmas season.

It’s scary when strangers approach the house who are male, black, and have never been seen before.

Christmas is supposed to be white as snow, right?

What if I misjudged the young man? Is it wise to tell someone just because they present well that the neighborhood is empty? Their friends might come back to pillage and loot.

Cul-de-sac where Billy Lee lives.

Yeah, it’s going to be a crummy Christmas.

Here are ten things I worry about that make this end of year holiday season especially depressing  — and it’s not the weather, which right now is grey and overcast.

1 –The GOP raised taxes on 25% of the public. Guess who made it into that illustrious group? Me.  I’m in — according to a questionnaire about finances conducted by the New York Times. 

2 — The president left the White House without wishing the country a Merry Christmas!  It’s another campaign promise the oinking chief-commander broke.  What good is being free to say Christmas if the president won’t say it? Everyone should be used to his lying-ways by now. Sorry — the fat-man continues to irritate me. 

3 — Will the president start World War Three on Christmas Eve? It’s just one more thing to worry about. I’m not going to bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head this time. Will he obliterate North Korea because they tested bombs and missiles, something the USA has done thousands of times? Who the hell knows? 

4 — Will he fire Robert Mueller, a decorated Marine veteran and arguably one of the most honest men in government? Or will he perhaps fire a random person on Christmas, because, why the hell not? 

It’s Christmas, people! The orange-man demands results. He doesn’t mess around when it comes to making America great. He fired the former FBI director James Comey, because his attempt to clear Hillary Clinton three days before the election failed.

You’re fired! quacked the presidential duck. He did it for Hillary. He really did. He was helping an old friend. That’s all it was.

I watched him say so on television. Maybe it was fake news. I can’t tell anymore. .

5 — One of the best gifts? Trump gave Americans the precious gift of the ObamaCare Repeal. It’s what he said. I saw the video on the nightly news. He promised to replace it with something way better.  Can’t wait to open that present. Unaffordable healthcare is a wonderful thing. It prevents countless thousands of Americans from going to hospitals where they risk being hurt by doctors who are only in it for the money. 

6 — Family members who have shopped say the crowds in the stores are minimal. Despite the commercial hype on billionaire-owned media, store sales have crashed. 

7 — The stock market noticed. It’s down. Yes, Russian oligarchs  are playing games by pulling out money. It’s a fun prank, especially during Christmas.

Why not?

I confess; I cut back on Christmas spending. The economy can go belly-up — I really don’t care. I don’t put money in the stock market; I don’t vacation in Vegas. The wealthy are on a shoplifting-spree, like under former President Bush. The greed of his fellow-travelers crashed the country in 2008.

The current fool’s friends are worse. So will be the results. How long will profiteering take to cut the legs off the middle-class this time around? Not long, methinks. 

8 — Churches campaigned for the biggest boob ever to run for the highest office ever in the history of the world ever — and of all human-kind, ever. He’s huge, the orange fat-man.

Churches organized bus-runs to take congregants to hear Franklin Graham  “on tour” pretend to anyone who listened that he was politically neutral while he ranted against witches (like the unnamed evil Methodist, Hillary) and abortion.

Omarosé Onée Manigault-Newman predicted that people would bow before the new leader before history as we know it ends. Omarosa is one of the many misfit toys the orange man fired during his climb to ultimate power. 

How can anyone go back to those crazy churches should their bozo-president actually screw-up everything at Christmas? The allure of Christianity rides on the back of a thrice-married billionaire who went bankrupt in the casino business, of all things.

Somehow the president hadn’t learned that casinos don’t make money, they launder it. It’s a big difference.

When things go to hell in a handbasket (as they certainly will), which churches are going to get the most credit?

If the orange-clown kills millions of people to make a point, who gets the pat on the back? Jesus? 

9 — I have sons who have made more money than I ever imagined was possible back in those times when I held them as babes in my loving arms. To a man, they think things are just fine. No worries.

Yes, health insurance is expensive, but think about this one thing for just one minute. Now is not the time for stupid, right?  Rich people don’t buy health insurance. They don’t need it. Anyone who hoards fourteen-thousand piles of one-million dollars per pile (like the president claims) doesn’t worry about a $200,000 hospital bill. Billionaires spend more on Rolex watches. 

Video clip of recent Navy UFO sighting here.

10 — During the past week, the media informed the public on three different occasions that at this moment in time when the Russians are dismantling the United States, UFOs scramble over the skies of the world on every continent. Is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard the ominous rumblings of UFOs late at night while they are trying to sleep?

Since the last news report days ago, not a peep has been heard from the media. Not a line of warning by the replicants who sit in the seats of media-power. They are life-like, aren’t they?

So Perfect. So Desirable.

They seem to never mispronounce words or make grammatical errors. Sure, they screw-up. They do.  Listen. Sometimes they say boob-el instead of bubble. That’s how you tell.

None of this is happening, right?

Surely everyone understands by now. It can’t be happening.  Not now.  Not ever. 

Cover eyes, ears, and mouth.

Stop screaming.

Why don’t you believe?

I’m a pontificator, for Christ’s sake. 

I’m trying so hard to warn you.

NOTHING IS REAL RIGHT NOW.

Billy Lee

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TRUMP

Statement: The Billy Lee Pontificator Editorial Board

This essay is a collection of Facebook rants that Billy Lee wrote and later deleted, because he is a coward and feared readers might turn on him; even stone him to death. Billy Lee deleted his tantrums from Facebook, yes, but he copied and pasted them into what he thought was a secret file on his blog site.

Billy Lee has no secret files; not any he can hide from us, anyway — his Editorial Board.  Nuh uh…No way…. We got to reading his ”secret” files the other day, and guess what? His Trump file was pretty good.  

We decided to tell Billy Lee to stand up; to act like a lion, not the mouse he so often seems to be. Publish this stuff, we told him. Even Billy Lee Junior and Fannie Jeane agreed. They talked him into it. They really did. It was them two, not us.

So here goes: Billy Lee said we could publish his warnings about the orange-man — who he fears will destroy the country we love if he doesn’t make some changes to his deplorable personality. Billy Lee insisted that we encrypt the name of ”orange-man” to protect our site from harassment by Trump trolls and bots. No problem.

The Editorial Board

Note: On September 18, 2016 Billy Lee removed the encryption we used to hide his essay from web search-engine spiders. He told us that he wants to stand (or maybe crash and burn) on the words he wrote. NO FEAR!  he choked between bouts of episodic projectile vomiting. NO FEAR!

Note: On November 9 (11-9) news outlets declared Trump the winner of the 2016 presidential election. We wish our new president the very best. We pray that he will reassure all Americans that he loves them and will serve with the humility and respect for human rights and freedoms that his high calling demands. One way to start is to apologize to the civilians (non-politicians) he insulted and falsely accused of crimes and human failings during his campaign.
The Editorial Board

Trump

Ted Cruz of Texas took many evangelicals away from Trump. For this, we must thank him for his courage. His sacrificial act at the Republican National Convention brought wrath from the Trump goons, but he was trying to save America from making the worst mistake in our history. God is good.

Editors Note: (November 19, 2016) Exit polls now show that Trump received the largest percentage of evangelical votes, ever. 81% voted for him; Hillary Clinton received 16%.

ted-cruz
Senator Ted Cruz says he is a follower of Jesus. A Trump surrogate called Cruz a ”Zika virus.” Cruz refused to endorse the GOP presidential candidate because the orange-man slimed his wife, among other insults.

A top Trump super Pac leader called Senator Ted Cruz a Zika virus. The GOP doesn’t want him. Good riddance to the Zika virus. The rhetoric reminds me of Hitler: the way he painted his detractors.

Editors Note:  On Friday September 23, Cruz tweeted that he would vote for Trump to honor a promise he made before the GOP convention to support the nominee; Hillary Clinton was too liberal. His ”non-endorsement” lasted two months; it ended two days before the first presidential debate. The Pontificator endorsed Hillary Clinton on February 10, 2016. 

I’m feeling good vibes about America tonight. Our neighborhood sounds like the happiest war zone anyone could ever imagine. [from a July 4th Facebook entry. The Editors]

God is healing our country, apparently, even when we can’t see it, some of us.

All we have to do is love and forgive. The rest is easy. Be confident and do what’s right. That’s the goal for summer and fall and into the elections. All else is up to God, whose angels protect us twenty-four seven.

Ted Cruz, you are a beautiful man. Thank you for what you said and did at the GOP cross-burning. They called it a convention, but you knew better. 2,500 delegates showed up; 18 were black — less than one percent.  

Nobody in leadership attended; not the Bush family; not the McCain’s; nor the Romney’s — not anyone of integrity, good will, and national stature. It took bravery, Mr. Cruz, and you showed it. May God bless and protect you.

My take away is this: these are very sad days for Trump and his family. He loves America, he says, but he’s lived inside a bubble of privilege his entire life. He doesn’t understand which way the wind blows, and he seems dangerously close to a heart attack every time he speaks. (He’s 70 years old.)

Despite his words, which some take to be patriotic, he and his friends plan to wreck America (much like Bush W. almost did) by making the country a hostile, unfriendly place for people who want to use the freedom granted by its Constitution to warn us of our follies.

The people who support Trump, many of them, behave on the internet like vicious animals (apologies to my furry friends in the animal kingdom). Team Trump seems to carry a lot of race-hate in their hearts as well as hatred for my gal, Hillary, who I love. Log onto the Internet and go to their Twitter feeds, anyone who doesn’t believe it. Hillary Clinton is Mother Teresa compared to many of them.

Editor’s note:  On January 6, 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report (click this link), which concluded that agents of Russian intelligence created bots on social media to intimidate and suppress Hillary Clinton supporters. Billy Lee received threats on Twitter from a few of them.

Despite all this hate, many Christian pastors and opinion leaders have jumped on board the Trump train — if you ask them privately, which I have. It disturbs me to hear pastors defend Trump; they say he ”accepted Christ” a few months (or years) ago; yes, he behaves badly; we must give him the benefit of every doubt — he’s a ”baby Christian” after all; he needs time to grow.

gott-mit-uns-german-belt-buckle

It reminds me of the excuses religious leaders gave Hitler, who not only claimed to be a Christian tasked to carry out God’s Holy Will but encouraged his minions to stamp the words, “Gott mit uns” on their military-issued belt-buckles.

God is with us, Team Hitler chanted as pastors and congregants alike took the world to war and caused the deaths of nearly 100 million people in a futile and absurd quest to exterminate the progeny of ”those people” they blamed for the Crucifixion of Christ. To add context, the crucifixion was a state-execution by the Roman Empire of a rogue rabbi carried out over two-thousand years ago.

Today the Jesus-haters are Muslims, they tell us. We are supposed to elect a candidate who says he will exterminate them — the really bad ones anyway plus their families — at least for right now.  Later … well … we’ll see about that — after we figure out just what the hell is going on.

What is going on — what’s wrong with America — Is this: our elites aren’t carrying their weight; they aren’t supporting the people in the countries that protect them. They are — many of them — decadent, immoral, insensitive, and entitled.

Trump is a billionaire. No matter how well-intentioned, he is the last person we should pick to lead our country.

On the RNC twitter feed, a trumper challenged me for posting the following:

“A few minutes ago on Fox News Congressman Darrell Issa said Hillary was 72 years old. She is 68; Trump is 70. Turn FOX NEWS off.”

The emotions of the haters are high right now. It’s probably a good time to get off the Internet and let these lunatics implode on their own. I’m a coward anyway. Until today, I didn’t have the guts to challenge them. I was too scared.

I must have blocked at least 100 tweeters so I could follow the Democratic convention on Twitter without seeing grotesque images and reading threats in the feeds.

[As of the day of this posting, Billy Lee has blocked over 3,000 Trump lunatics.  The Editorial Board]

The amazing part for me was to learn that Twitter was also blocking crazies. What I blocked were trumper-nazis who were somehow getting by the censors.

What I learned is that it doesn’t matter if Trump is good or bad. Who knows? — he might be a Christ follower — some Christian leaders say he is. What matters is that he and his movement are unleashing the dogs of war on the American people. These dogs stalk the Internet; they worship guns; some have tens-of-thousands of followers.

They say vicious things; they make veiled threats and not so veiled threats. They post disgusting images. They rally around Trump with confederate and American flags; they carry guns; they ride hogs and choppers. They’ve got it all figured out.

The cure for what’s wrong is violence, they believe. They embrace the cure. They worship cruelty. They behave like bullies. They take no prisoners. They show no mercy — at least on Twitter.

In the real world outside Twitter they might be little-old-ladies in combat boots texting away on iPads inside nursing homes for all I know, but I block them anyway and pray that their hero never makes it to the White House.

lock-her-up-at-2016-gop-republican-convention
Trump supporters worked themselves into a frenzy at the GOP convention. They chanted, ”Lock her up! Lock her up!”  They never explained why.

After the GOP convention, I felt more confident he won’t win.  

Lock her up! Lock her up! his delegates chanted. It sounded to me like, Crucify her! Crucify her!

Only haters scream words like these. Sometimes they get their way. Haters locked up Christ Jesus and killed him, right? Some people said, he did nothing wrong. Some said, he loved others. He healed people. He lived a perfect life.

To paraphrase Hillary Clinton: What difference did it make?  Right now, I’m not sure about the results of the approaching election. Some polls show that Trump will be president.

The Russian mafia is working with the GOP to take down Hillary, some people in the intelligence community report. It’s a nightmare scenario.

During a debate last year, Trump explicitly said that he’d met Putin while the two of them sat backstage waiting to appear on 60 Minutes.

”I got to know him very well because we were both on 60 Minutes; we were stablemates,” Trump said at the time.

Trump insisted this summer that he doesn’t know Putin. He’s never met him.

Trump married two women from communist countries — his first wife, Ivana and his current wife, Melania. The one non-communist he married, Marla Maples, bore him a child out of wed-lock. He later married her.

Marla and Donald divorced before a sunset-clause in their prenuptial agreement expired. Marla got nothing — a reported 2 million dollars out of the many thousands-of-millions Trump had accumulated.

Has anyone visited Trump Twitter feeds to see who his acolytes are?  I did.  I saw thousands of bots with 5 followers and 25 tweets flooding feeds with pro-Trump, anti-Hillary nonsense. It was annoying and scary.

I also found Trump worshippers, some with tens-of-thousands of followers. I blocked the worst of them — the ones with pornographic images of Hillary, or assault weapons, or threatening messages in their bios.

People are afraid of Trump and his rabid cult of followers; he promises to enable cops to become even more aggressive than some already are.

Is it any wonder that the Donald has zero-percent support among black citizens who must endure a militarized police-state that the USA has engineered to suppress righteous rage?

People are afraid to advocate for what they know in their hearts is right, because GOP thugs scare them. Most white Americans are not accustomed to being scared; to experiencing fear; they aren’t in the habit of self-censorship to protect the people they love (except at work, where disagreements with owners can cost folks their jobs).

We can’t let fear stop us from speaking out. We can’t let Trump thugs terrorize us into silence — not while we still have a chance, no matter how slim, to stop them. 

Here’ something to remember:

After the Russians captured Hitler (to be historically accurate, no one ever claimed responsibility for finding him), German citizens said they knew nothing about concentration camps; they were shocked when the allies forced them to walk through the slave-labor camps where six million people toiled and died, many by poison gas and immolation.

After Trump is elected, we won’t hear about the bad things that are happening in our country. It isn’t going to be on television. People are going to disappear, and we won’t know why or how.

Trump will muzzle the press (some are saying that his surrogates already have), but we won’t know. A nation that can’t figure out FOX NEWS is not going to understand sophisticated attacks against democracy by people who are truly evil.

It’s why we have to speak up and vote. We have a chance to stop the rise of fascism in America. We have to take the chance we still have.

Tony Schwartz wrote Trump’s Art of the Deal.  He spent 18 months at Trump’s side following him around to listen to conversations, phone calls, and observe relationships. He wrote the book; Trump signed it. Trump and Schwartz split the money 50/50.

Like Trump, Schwartz is a ”tweeter” who I started following recently.

tony-schwartz-art-of-the-deal-2
Tony Schwartz made millions from the sale of the book he wrote for Trump: The Art of the Deal. He is warning voters that Donald is a sociopath.

Schwartz now says: I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.

Schwartz says he wishes he titled his book, The Sociopath.

What bothers me is that people who have read Art of the Deal believe they know Trump. The writer says no — they read a book designed to sell a lot of copies and make money, which a ghost writer penned. (The writer was Schwartz himself.) 

Tony Schwartz didn’t seem to believe that Trump would run for president someday. He now regrets the bad thing he did for money.

It’s too late. But it’s good that he is sorry.

Can I spend a few moments discussing the race riots that occurred in Milwaukee this summer? Milwaukee is relevent to this essay. 

I spent four weeks in 1974 living within the limits of this Wisconsin city. Being a Navy kid, I had spent time in many places both inside the USA and outside — in Europe and Asia. I remember thinking at the time that Milwaukee was the most racist place I’d ever seen. I couldn’t understand why people didn’t object.

Here are some reasons:

In 1974 socialist Germans who hated minorities ran the city. They would have loved their fellow German, Donald Trump, if they knew him, which is possible  because he was the son of Fred Trump, the German billionaire developer who built 27,000 segregated rental units in Queens NYC and was rumored to be the richest American. His son — in his late twenties at the time — was already wealthy and making a name for himself in Manhattan.

The people I worked for in Milwaukee told me that the police were able to prevent blacks from coming into the white areas by using traffic stops. I never saw a black person while I was there. But I heard a lot of racist talk from whites.

Blacks made nearly half the city’s population.  I heard white people talk about how bad they (the blacks) were, but I never saw any in the month I lived and worked in Milwaukee. Remember: 1974 was six years after an assassin murdered Martin Luther King and  ten years after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Segregation was illegal.

Today — 43 years after — only one city in America has more poor or more homeless than Milwaukee. It doesn’t shock me that the city experienced race-war this summer. It doesn’t surprise me that the city crushed the insurrection and that we no longer remember it, most of us.

America’s beer supply remains safe and sound. 

I am afraid for the black people in Milwaukee, because as bad as the national-socialists mistreated minorities when I visited, the current leadership demonstrated this summer that they are capable of worse. 

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency will reduce risk to racist supporters who hope to suppress minorities. 

Like I said earlier, I’ve been on Twitter. I’ve read the feeds. Under the right leadership, a genocide is possible. Some would say we have a slow-burning genocide unfolding right now.

Trump is unleashing the dogs of war; dogs who destroy civilizations. With almost three months to go, how will anyone patch the breach in the dam that holds back barbarians armed to the teeth with weapons of war? Go to any gun range and watch Americans practice. 

Wake up. Everyone. Take a stand now. It will be impossible to make a difference once we are standing behind razor wire waiting for our turn in microwave ovens. These monsters are not going to stop with blacks.

They will move on to the journalists and people they think are radicals. Eventually, they’ll burn the unfit, the retarded, the disadvantaged and of course, the Muslims.

Then they’ll show their true colors: they’ll go after the Jews; people with birth defects; autism; bad breath; body odor; torn jeans; the list of defects and moral failings that bother them will get longer, not shorter.

Somewhere along the line, the attacks on Christians will begin. Some say the attacks have already started. The take-downs of Ted Cruz and John Kasich were the first of many to come; operatives will sprinkle the suppression of Christians into the mix like salt; no one will notice — not until it’s too late to do anything about it.

We’ve seen this movie before. It is the natural course of empires like Germany, Japan, Russia, ancient Egypt, Persia; and of course, ancient Rome — the list is long. We in America will be living in it soon if we don’t vote to stop it.

A billionaire candidate staffed by paranoids to advise him doesn’t need GOP money; he doesn’t need anyone’s approval; he doesn’t need to buy television time.

He has access to communication networks involving AM radio stations, private mailers, internet ads, and e-mailers to spread whatever conspiratorial excrement he chooses to dispel; he can easily discredit and defame reasonable people who might dare to defend our country and the shared values enshrined by our constitution.

evan-mcmullin-ex-cia-candidate-for-president-2016
Evan McMullin, ex-CIA official and presidential candidate.

Fox News, OAN, and Rush Limbaugh among others in this network have driven their stupid listeners into a psychosis of evil. It’s disturbing; I would say it’s terrifying. Even our CIA worries.

Evan McMullin, former CIA officer who is running for president, told Thomas Roberts of MSNBC that providing security briefings to Trump …is a threat to [national security], because he has been co-opted by Vladimir Putin, he is aligned with Vladimir Putin; he would not be able to secure a security clearance at even the lowest levels…he doesn’t know the first thing about fighting terrorism…

David Preiss, former longtime CIA briefer to the presidential candidates, told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC that after the 2000 election the CIA continued briefings to Al Gore who they believed won, and suspended briefings to George W. Bush until a few weeks later when the Supreme Court stopped the election-law mandated recount of votes in Florida to give the presidency to Bush who CIA analysts believed was the loser.

If the CIA was correct about the election, it must have irritated its directors when Bush falsely claimed that the CIA told his staffers that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — a lie that some believe began the unraveling of our country. The Great Recession that followed the stolen election and illegal war wiped out one-third of the accumulated wealth of the middle-class; you know, folks like me and my life-partner Bevy Mae.

I hope our readers will have the common sense to vote against Republicans at every level of government so we can set things right.

This summer in Dimondale, Michigan Trump told white confederate militia members from nearby Charlotte about black people. Speaking directly to blacks, none in the audience, he said: You live in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. What the hell do you have to lose?

The answer is: everything. The New York Times reported a few weeks later that Trump might be 650 million dollars in debt. No one really knows. Could they be right?  If true, it means that every black person in the USA has a higher net worth than the Donald.

Aren’t folks tired of predators running everything, ruining everything, wrecking everything, taking everything, and playing everyone?

As our Editorial staff has advocated for two years now, the United States must establish an internationally enforced limit to personal incomes and estate sizes — for the simple reason that unlimited wealth destroys self-governance, democracy, and the benefits of civilization which ordinary citizens want and deserve.

image
Billy Lee believes incomes and estates should be limited to some reasonable ratio of the minimum wage. The reason: to prevent legalized looting of our institutions. People could easily buy expensive homes and remain well within the limits proposed by the Pontificator. The Editorial Board

The limits can be very high and do no harm. My suggestion has been to link the minimum wage to a maximum income and estate size; my recommendation is 1,000 to one for income and 20,000 to one for estate size; we’re talking about an estimated $20 million per year income limit; $400 million maximum estate sizes; inheritances might be limited to $5 million per inheritor.

Limits like these will encourage entrepreneurs but discourage looting like the kind we see going on in our financial sector. During the Bush administration a director of one of the stock exchanges drew an annual salary of $150 million. That’s crazy wicked.

Limits prevent isolated individuals who lack supporters from unduly influencing elections. Wealthy men like Trump won’t be able to get off the ground their drive-for-ultimate-power unless many other (hopefully reasonable) people get behind them at the start. Healthy democracies don’t need a Lone Ranger to rescue them.

The process we are witnessing now — where fawners and sycophants leap on board the choo-choo train after it has already left the station — shouldn’t happen in a democracy like ours. The stakes are too high.

The apparent nepotism of the Trump campaign demeans and insults the brave and free people of the most exciting country on Earth — the one country where ordinary people govern themselves; where the wealthy and the powerful don’t rule over us until we are able to thoroughly vet them; until they earn our consent by becoming transparent under scrutiny.  

Otherwise, it’s not right. We all know it.

Possession of wealth beyond certain agreed-upon, international norms should be a felony enforced by national and international courts. People who exceed limits could be given one (or possibly two) grace-years to turn over the excessive portion of their wealth to charities or the government — otherwise they spend a year in prison while the courts trim their assets to the lawful limits.

No one runs for public office after a lifetime of plundering and taking until they divest themselves to the lawful limits. 

How can anyone trust someone to hold high office who says they have accumulated 14,000 piles of a million dollars each? The person is either a liar or they aren’t. If they are telling the truth, someone should be asking, how does a person accumulate that much money without cheating people; without hoarding; without recognizing the needs of the poor and miserable who are all around; who refuses to help by sharing what they plundered?

The truth is — for anyone who has the courage to face it — behind every great fortune is a dark secret; sometimes many dark secrets. It’s true. Folks can believe it, or not.

How can anyone who understands the difference between right and wrong even consider casting a vote for the current GOP candidate? How heartless are some Americans?  Very, according to some polls. Yes, more than a few people are uninformed. So what? Ignorance is not an excuse. For those who don’t have time to investigate the candidates, I do. Take my word for it.

We are on the precipice of bad things. Unimaginable things. Men like Trump get worse after victory, not better. People are going to die. Seriously. Many of the people who support this sicko are gun nuts who are still fighting the Civil War. Consider the movement behind the Donald when making the decision to participate, to vote, and who to vote for.

Who leads America is a serious issue. Election is no joke. People who don’t vote share the blame if we get a bad result. We can’t elect men who cheat on their wives; who hate minorities; trash the environment; hunt endangered animals; lie compulsively; build casinos; fleece contractors; steal, cheat, and take revenge on anyone who dares to refuse to worship them and the ground they walk on.

We can’t elect men who are unable to tell truth from fiction; who won’t apologize to people they’ve hurt; who spread preposterous conspiracy theories; who destroy people they think are disloyal to their self-centered vision. We just can’t.

The candidate’s children stand to inherit windfalls — if they stay on message; if they hang on to their seats on his train. We are not going to hear dire warnings from them — though they know better than anyone what a hairball he is.

Billy Lee

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DEGENERACY

In 1949, almost a year after I was born, the latest edition of the 30 volume Encyclopedia Americana hit the streets of America. The collection of big books was the first multi-volume encyclopedia sold in the United States, starting way back in 1829.  Each year it grew in size, sometimes adding new volumes to cover more subjects. By 1949, it was truly comprehensive.

I own a complete set of the 1949 edition, which my wife’s dad passed on to me after his death a few years ago. By all accounts, the volumes were a sensation when first published. Not only were they successfully sold door to door throughout the United States, but libraries everywhere stocked them on their shelves for scholars and the public alike to explore and absorb.

1949 was a few short years after the end of World War II.  Colleges overflowed with legions of returning GIs who studied for free courtesy of the recently passed GI Bill.  The Encyclopedia Americana became a beacon of knowledge and enlightenment for hundreds of thousands of optimistic Americans who were ramping up their skills to conquer the ignorance and backwardness of a world they knew all too well from their recent exposure to the wars overseas.

After perusing these volumes during the past few years, I have been struck by how much we knew in 1949, and by how much we thought we knew but didn’t.  I was dumbfounded by racist patterns of thinking, which seemed to permeate the collection. It came as a complete surprise. Modern people could be excused for thinking that Hitler himself wrote some of the articles, I thought to myself.

People have said that racism is the original sin of America; that we have never come to terms with the bad things we did (and continue to do), because some of our European forefathers — scientists even — believed that Africans were medically degenerate. 

Our country enslaved blacks because ostensibly responsible people told our ancestors that Negroes were animals, like lions or tigers. Of course it was OK to work them like pack-animals, some thought. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.  Besides, slavery was in the Bible.

After slavery ended, whites continued to segregate the races. And they  still do.

Look at Florida if you don’t believe it. In the State of Florida, segregation is a way of life. Americans, some among us, seem to be oblivious to the evil of our actions and unaware of the demonic origin of many of our ideas about what is true and what is right.

We tend to repeat lies that hurt whole classes of people; lies that help no one but drive to despair and even suicide folks like South American immigrants, gays and, yes, Middle Eastern refugees who struggle to get by in a society that seems to value only excellence and perfection, money and power, symmetry and form, orthodoxy and moral rectitude.

We look down on, shun, and isolate authentic human beings who typically possess attributes we don’t admire like humility, lowliness, incompetence, average intelligence, awkward manners, social inadequacy, clumsiness, unreliable physical ability, psychological disabilities, ugliness, poor hygiene, ravaged skin, lack of hair, too much hair, unpleasant smells, thinness, fatness, and on and on.

We condemn millions to long prison terms who have done nothing more than act like fools; who have made mistakes, which with a little maturity and wisdom gained in the fresh air of freedom they might not ever make again.

Many readers can probably think of many undesirable attributes of human beings they find repulsive and would repress with long prison terms if only they could. It’s a desire best left unfulfilled.

Gated Arizona Community
Most are not permitted beyond these gates. They aren’t worthy.

Our inability to accept and live next to people who have less money, less education, different physical traits; who might be less attractive and less polished; who may not understand the world as we do; who are different in some way we find compelling is destroying our humanity; our ability to love and accept others.

Think about it.

We wreck any chance for happiness; any sense of well-being for tens of millions of ordinary people — probably hundreds of millions — who, it turns out, have very few advantages in this life of dog-eat-dog competition; it’s a fight that some lack the temperament to endure. Bigotry is demoralizing for those bullied by it; it is diminishing our country and our world.

We seem unable to even look at people with physical disabilities and handicaps; the blind; the deaf; the burned; the paraplegic; the paralyzed, the mentally incapacitated, the depressed, the hyperactive and the socially fearful.

Many Americans are hiding themselves behind gates, guard shacks, and walls to avoid facing the simple truth that people are diverse; God demands that we accept and respect everyone, because each person — even those who are unattractive and ungrateful in our own morally-damaged sight — are made from the stuff of God Himself and are in the reality we shun truly beautiful and deserving of respect and deference.

Jesus said that God loves the wicked. He loves people who are weak and powerless and undesirable. How can we do less?

Well… one reason is that we are degenerate, everyone of us, whether we are able to see the ugly truth or not. The most admirable person falls short of God’s glory.

Who believes it’s true?

Anyway, I thought that these two entries from the 1949 Encyclopedia Americana, reprinted below in their brutal original version, might help open the eyes of folks who are blind to the cesspool of ideas which have corrupted the spirits of our country; which have driven some people to avoid, ostracize, exclude, and kill people they think are unworthy to enjoy the advantages and privileges they demand for themselves.

These tombs of hate from our past sat on bookshelves and in libraries where they were read for many decades after their publication. Hatred poured forth not only from encyclopedias like the Americana, but from all forms of media and public discourse, it turns out.

The nasty rhetoric of race, exclusion, and the exaggerated elevation of our elites into a pantheon of god-like celebrities has poisoned our minds and our souls; it continues to poison our churches and schools; the military and our public institutions. It’s painfully evident in the rabid venom-spewing aspirants we find in our politics today who I won’t name.

Why demean a good essay by recognizing deplorable people? The president is a public celebrity who rose to power on an ocean tide of hatred. I guess it does no harm to call him out. 

People claim they mean well and are doing God’s will, but golly-gee, someone has to say it (it might as well be me): the movement to transfer children from public schools into homeschooling; the stampede to place civilians armed with concealed weapons into churches and schools; the attempts to scare women out of exercising their constitutionally protected freedom to make healthcare choices involving their bodies; fire bombing healthcare clinics that help the poor; intimidating writers like myself who publish views unpopular with morons — all are symptomatic of a country that has become less free, more fascist, less brave — certainly less accepting, less tolerant, less nurturing, and less forgiving.

America is a mean-spirited place for many people. Even upscale people in high places are afraid to speak their minds plainly out of fear for the faceless billionaires who pull their strings and determine their futures. Look at all the safe-talk on television. Some people call it political correctness.  What does that term mean?

It means people’s careers get ruined if they speak about certain subjects in a frank and unconventional way. When was the last time you heard a celebrity advocate for something as innocuous as a progressive income tax?  Shorter prison sentences?  Maximum incomes?  Estate size limits?  Limits on inherited wealth? 

What accelerates and widens inequality can’t be right.

Our celebrities are held in-check by tight leashes. And it isn’t the public holding the leashes. To remain in the spotlight, celebrities must wear muzzles. Does anyone think they are going to complain? 

Try to remember the names of celebrities who said something controversial and were never heard from again. You might remember their faces, maybe even some of the shows they were on. Few remember their names, more likely than not. They dropped off the face of the earth. They disappeared. The list is long, it really is.

I write about forbidden subjects all the time, but I’m not a celebrity. No one controls me, not since I resigned my memberships in certain organizations and work for free. But the public doesn’t read my blog. And, yes, some subjects are off-limits even for writers like me who want to believe they are free. 

I don’t write about Israel or North Korea or drug cartels; I don’t bad-mouth artists; I don’t condemn creative people, because people with unusual points of view who have talent are fragile and easily frightened to silence; money and fame drive people into isolation bubbles. I don’t publish articles about my sexuality. I tried once; it didn’t turn out well.

Sometimes I break my own rules, it’s true. But let’s get back on message.

I don’t feel like I’m overstating. Below are two examples of a vicious way of thinking, which was mainstream in the decades following 1949. Today in 2015 some folks continue to embrace crazy reasoning.  Who will exorcise the evil winds that freeze-dry hearts to raging cold?

Tolerance isn’t enough. It’s uncommitted and indifferent. 

Embracing outcasts in love is the way. 

It’s not possible to embrace the marginalized in love when advantaged people segregate themselves by income, class, and race.  No one can help when they push aside those who don’t think like them or look like them or act like them. No one who believes that diversity is a plague to be avoided can help desperados who need a hand up. 

Think about it.  

Who can save their children and grand-children when they lack the courage to confront the billionaires who built the gilded cell-block we call America? Billionaires built prison-America to protect themselves from us.

Here’s the problem. Most folks don’t know the names of the billionaires who rule them. Who can reason with the wealthy? Who can find them?

The truth is, they find us, usually when they need someone like a soldier to fight to protect their property or a worker who will add value to their estates by performing tasks for low wages.

The problem is: they don’t love us. Otherwise they would live in the world where we live, but they don’t. Then again, they might allow us to live in their world, where the water in their pools is blue and clean and the sun is warm. But they won’t do that either.

Maybe someday. Someday maybe if they change, they will. They will unlock the gates. They will throw away the keys. They will let us in.

On that day we will become one people, one nation, indivisible, under God.

While we wait, we change ourselves. We learn to live unafraid. We learn to share our advantages. We teach ourselves to love the unloved. 

What else is there? 

Billy Lee

[The following are excerpts from the 1949 edition of The Encyclopedia Americana.  Billy Lee does not endorse any of it. The Editorial Board.]

Degeneracy, pic of Encyclopedia Americana

DEGENERACY.  Unfavorable environment is now generally recognized as the chief cause of the failure of individuals to attain the physical, mental, and moral norm of the race. In certain individuals, however, a defective constitution may predispose them toward an inadequate development of mental, and especially moral, qualities. Such individuals are known as degenerates. 

In many such cases the basis of degeneracy is a lesion of the nervous system or of the sense organs. Congenital blindness and deafness can result in idiocy unless early measures are taken. However, the fundamental defects may be obscure and inaccessible to the pathological anatomist of the present day.  The neuro-sensory defects are often, but not always, accompanied by malformations of a more conspicuous character, known as stigmata. 

These include various distortions of the external ear, facial asymmetry, very early or very late closure of the cranial sutures, polydactylism and other digital anomalies and various signs of imperfect or abnormal development.  Individual stigmata may be present in a person of normal mental and moral make-up, but the concurrence of a considerable number of stigmata is a fairly good sign of degeneracy.

The forms assumed by degeneracy are very various. The mental defect varies from utter idiocy, where the patient is unable to protect himself from immediate physical danger, through imbecility, where he is still incapable of carrying out the daily processes of dressing and undressing, washing, etc., to the various grades of feeble-mindedness, in which he is able to satisfy all his immediate personal needs, but cannot earn an independent livelihood nor associate with his fellows on equal terms.

The causes of degeneracy are manifold.  The racial poisons of alcohol, drugs and venereal diseases are responsible for a large proportion of the cases, though in many cases alcoholism and drug habits may be symptoms rather than causes of degeneracy. Any factor which enfeebles the mother — poverty, illness or the like — may injure the mental and moral constitution of the child as well as its physical constitution.  However, the most important cause of degeneracy is in all probability the inherent inferiority of the stock.

That certain forms of degeneracy exhibit a pedigree conforming to the Mendelian law is now an established fact.  This hereditary quality of degeneracy, together with the fact that degenerates are often likely to have many children, owing to their immorality, makes the problem of degeneracy a most serious one. 

The so-called Jukes family cost the taxpayers of New York State millions of dollars in the course of the 19th century.  For this reason many States have enacted laws making it legal in certain cases to perform on degenerates operations designed to prevent their propagating their kind. 

See ALCOHOLISM; CRIMINOLOGY; DEGENERATION; EUGENICS; FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS; IDIOCY; INSANITY; PAUPERISM.

Bibliography. — Gillin, J.L., Poverty and Delinquency (New York 1926) ; Slawson, J., Delinquent Boy (Boston 1926) ; Glueck, S. S. and E., Five Hundred Delinquent Women (New York 1934) ; Chassell, C. R., Relation Between Morality and Intellect (New York 1935) ; Lunden, W. A., Juvenile Delinquency (Pittsburg 1936) ; Burt, C. L., Subnormal Mind (New York 1937) ; Karpman, B., Case Studies in the Psychopathology of Crime (Washington 1944).

DEGENERATION — a work of Max Nordau (1895), which aimed at a scientific criticism of those degenerates not upon the acknowledged lists of the criminal classes.  Degenerates, asserted Nordau, are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists. 

These, however, manifest the same mental characteristics, and for the most part the same somatic features, as the members of the above-mentioned anthropological family, who satisfy their unhealthy impulses with the knife of the assassin or the bomb of the dynamiter, instead of with pen and pencil…. 

Now I have undertaken the work of investigating the tendencies of the fashions in art and literature; of proving that they have their source in the degeneracy of their authors, and that the enthusiasm of their admirers is for manifestations of more or less pronounced moral insanity and dementia.

One word best describes my reaction to the above entries from the 1949 Encyclopedia Americana: Yikes! 

Billy Lee

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In 1958 when I was a fourth grader our family moved to Quonset Point, Rhode Island where my dad was soon promoted to lead HS-11, one of the Navy jet-helicopter squadrons defending the east coast from attack by Russian submarines.

We moved to Quonset Point with some trepidation because Hoskins Park — the housing project for military families in those days (now sold, redeveloped, and renamed Wickford Point) — had a long waiting list; we didn’t know where we would live or if we could afford off-base housing.

As it turned out, we got a lucky break. A Navy Lieutenant — who was a Negro — moved his family into Hoskins Park. Some white officers found out and decided their families weren’t going to live in non-segregated housing. As a result, vacancies popped-up, and we got in; we moved-in next door to the Negro officer and his family.

In 1958, my family moved to Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Inexpensive on-base housing was overcrowded. We didn’t know where we would live, or if we could afford to live anywhere.

Lieutenant Brown, his wife and two daughters, lived in the two-story, condo-style apartment on the other side of a thin concrete wall from us.

Despite the custom that white and black families didn’t fraternize in those days, eventually I had encounters, conversations, and interactions with all the members of the Brown family.

Over time, I came to understand how traumatized they were, each in their own way, living in a country that, basically, isolated and mistreated them.

Guess-Whos-Coming-to-Dinner
My parents accepted an invitation to the Brown’s for dinner — an event that had all the drama of the movie, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, released nine years later, in 1967.

One encounter involved my parents. The Browns invited them for dinner to get acquainted, and after agonizing about it, Mom and Dad accepted.  I think Dad wanted to check them out; to make sure his kids would be “safe” living next door.

After the meal, Dad reported that the Lieutenant’s wife, Jean (Alston), was a good cook, but he couldn’t shake a queasy feeling in his stomach, which spoiled his appetite. He had never interacted with negroes, except servants (everyone called black people negroes in the 1950s); he certainly had not eaten food at the same table. And, unlike my dad, Mr. Brown was a graduate of the Naval Academy.

In that sense, the lieutenant kind of outranked him. According to dad, Academy graduates favored one another and worked hard to help each other achieve promotions. They put non-Academy graduates (like dad) to great disadvantage in the competition for rank, which was fierce inside the Navy.

A black Academy graduate presented a dilemma. Brown was a graduate of the elite Naval Academy with all its privileges and protections; at the same time, he belonged to a race that was, to put it politely, undervalued both by the Navy and the country at large. It was unfamiliar terrain for dad and made him uncomfortable. I remember my parents writing a thank-you note to the Brown’s for their hospitality but as far as I know, they didn’t return an invitation.

Another incident occurred a few weeks later that changed the way I thought about people and what they sometimes go through. It happened on a day when my fourth-grade teacher decided to punish me for violation of good-citizenship. I sassed her, she claimed, because I insisted — in a loud voice before classmates — she couldn’t tell me what to do! She wasn’t my parent!

In my mind, it made sense. To show how wrong I was, she kept me after school to clean the blackboard. She forced me to practice my reading. I left school an hour late.

When I arrived home, I saw Billie — Lieutenant Brown’s sixth-grade daughter — standing on her porch a few feet from ours, crying, and shifting back and forth on her feet in a puddle of — I took a second look to be sure — her own pee. I couldn’t believe it; I didn’t know what to say or do. I ran inside our condo to tell mom.

I wish I could say that Mom brought Billie into our place, helped her clean-up, and gave her a secure place to wait until her mom got home with a key. But mother did nothing like that. Instead, she became animated and began to marvel about how such an embarrassing calamity could befall a sweet girl like Billie. I became annoyed. Why didn’t she ask us?  I interrupted. We would have let her use our bathroom!

Maybe she was afraid to ask, mom said. Maybe she was afraid we would say, no.

So afraid she let her stomach burst? I yelled.

Little Rock 9 segregation racism black suffering
1957. Daisy Bates tries to enter Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to rescue her and eight other students from angry whites. It was the following year that our family moved to Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

Some weeks after, I stood alone in the playground behind our building when Billie walked up. We didn’t speak but sat down together on the ground to draw pictures in the gray clay beneath us — clay the housing complex we shared was built on.

It didn’t seem right to sit with someone and not talk but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Billie was a couple of years older. We had little in common, it seemed. We concentrated for a while, in silence, on our art.

Then, she looked up. She fixed her eyes on mine. I didn’t look away. I tried to hold her gaze. Finally, she whispered. She said simply, I hate being colored.

I felt the blood drain from my face. Hate was a bad word. We didn’t use the word hate in our family.

To hear Billie whisper, hate, about herself — hate about something she had no control over or responsibility for, which she couldn’t change, wish away, or escape — upended my internal world. In that moment, the ground shifted beneath my feet.

Somehow, hearing her speak those words — and the mental image I had created in my memory of the day she danced in a pool of her own urine — conflated in my mind. As Billie waded ankle-deep in her own bodily fluids, I heard her screaming.  I hate being colored!!!  I hate it!!  I hate it!  I hate it. 

In my imagination, I took my place beside her. I raged against God and all the earth for making her colored; for allowing white people to be so insensitive, so mean, so un-caring, so ill-tempered, so prejudiced. 

—————

Billie’s father supervised a motor-pool near, but outside, the Quonset Point military base. According to friends of my mom, he was some kind of gas-station attendant. One warm day, he saw me playing outside and asked if I wanted to take a ride with him in his new convertible. I said sure.

He said he wanted to show me something. He was in charge of something and wanted to show me what it was. He wanted to show me what he did. At his work. 

I thought, this is a crazy request. After all, I didn’t know what my own dad did. He’d never taken me to work or showed me anything having to do with what he was about when he wasn’t home.

So, I climbed into Mr. Brown’s convertible, top down, and off we went. It turned out that he was good at small talk. I listened happily to his resonant voice and enjoyed the sun and warm breezes as we rambled along. We passed through some old guard shacks, a few barbed-wire-topped chain-link fences, and entered an area so remote and wild, it was hard to believe we were still in Rhode Island.

We drove through a dense grove of trees and up onto a hill. Mr. Brown slowed the car and stopped. The sun blazed into the open convertible. Look, he said. He frowned, then nudged my shoulder and pointed. Look down there. 

M113a
There were more military vehicles under Navy Lieutenant Brown’s command than I imagined there were cars in the entire world.  This photo of a military motor-pool in a western state reminds me of what I saw in Rhode Island.

Below us for as far as my eyes could see, in a valley that stretched to the very edge of Earth, sat thousands of green and gray trucks and jeeps; armored personnel carriers and tanks; military vehicles of every stripe and size, all neatly parked in long straight lines. As a naive fourth grader, I found the view hard to take in. There lay spread below us more vehicles than I imagined existed in the entire world. 

It was the second time a member of the Brown family stunned me. I was speechless. Then I said, you’re in charge of all of those trucks?  Navy Lieutenant Brown smiled, sadly, I thought, then looked at me like Billie had.

I am, he said.

Billy Lee

Editor’s Postscript:  This story is grounded in the memories of a fourth grader of events that occurred almost sixty years ago. The make of Mr. Brown’s car and the nature of the installation visited may or may not be accurate. 

After writing this article, Billy Lee learned that Mr. Brown, sadly, passed away on May 22, 2012, at age 85 from cancer. After reading old press releases, he discovered that historian Robert J. Schneller had published a book in 2005 about Mr. Brown’s experiences at the Naval Academy called Breaking the Color Barrier. In 1949, it turns out, Midshipman Brown became the school’s first black graduate. 

Unknown to Billy Lee, Wesley Brown had become an historical figure. Billy Lee has asked the Editors to add biographical notes to his post.

In 1958, neither Billy Lee nor Mr. Brown’s neighbors knew that the young Naval officer owned the distinction of being the first black midshipman to graduate from the Naval Academy. In the racial climate of the 1950’s, an achievement like Mr. Brown’s would have been seen as the exception that proved the rule: Negroes were inferior. It would have been bad taste in polite society to call attention to Lieutenant Brown’s achievement. 

None of Wesley’s neighbors, Billy Lee recalls, had any idea of the hell he went through to become a Naval officer. In any event, white people in 1958 were so blinded by racism that they would have thought, had they known: Wesley’s accomplishment was of no consequence; it was not worth mentioning or even thinking about. 

It’s hard to believe now, but white Americans in 1958 didn’t know their country had a race problem.

esley Brown was the first black graduate of the Naval Academy. During his four years at the Academy, where he studied engineering, he lived alone. He said he didn't want a roommate. I believe he yearned for one, but no one would share a room with him. Wesley was gracious and had too much class to call attention to the racism of his mates who were the best and brightest young men in the USA at that time. Prevented by racists from joining the Academy choir, he joined the track team where an upperclassman, the future President Jimmy Carter, befriended him.
Wesley Brown was the first black graduate of the Naval Academy.  Because no white midshipmen would share a room with him, he lived alone during the four years it took to earn his engineering degree. When classmates blocked his admission to the academy choir, Wesley joined the cross-country track team where future President and upperclassman, Jimmy Carter, befriended him.

wesley brown

Wesley Brown became the first black American to survive the racial hazing at the Naval Academy and graduate. I knew him to be a happy person with a charitable attitude toward all people. He was a kind and gentle neighbor who, during the year of 1958, made me feel good each time I saw or spent time with him.

His wife, Jean (Alston), led our church choir and taught me to sing. We did a television show under her direction. His daughter, Willetta (Billie), transformed my view of the world with a single sentence. I read somewhere that Carol, the youngest daughter, did well in life.

After our families parted ways, Wesley’s family grew to include sons. Eventually, Wesley Brown and Jean divorced; Wesley married Crystal Malone in 1963. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander before retiring in 1969 to pursue other interests.

As my story tells, it was racism in the Navy that made it possible for me to know the Browns. Midshipman Wesley Brown changed America for the better. He suffered to accomplish it, but he kept his pain to himself and his closest friends.

I am proud to say that once, I knew Wesley Brown and he knew me.

Billy Lee

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