written both in response to The Guardian, Jan. 5: Brett Kavanaugh will "step up" to keep Donald Trump on ballots, ex-president’s lawyer says
and in memory of John Lewis (February 21, 1940 -- July 17, 2020, Atlanta, Georgia), American civil rights leader and politician best known for his "Good Trouble" remark:
Democracy is not a state. It is an ACT … Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call "good trouble, necessary trouble."
My Dear friends:
In this year of elections (4 billion people will cast a vote in over 60 countries), the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol not only finds the country in "what arguably ranks among the highest stakes political, legal and constitutional junctures in America's history," but also exerts its far-reaching influence at international level.
I would like to share with you some of my published poems about this attack on the oldest and most powerful "democracy."
Selected Poems:
the Capitol
two-meter high fencing topped
with a sun-bleached flag
behind steel fences
night shadows etch the facade
of the Supreme Court
Jan. 6 hearings ...
in tv's light the gray-haired man
mumbling,
fake news, I won, I won
in his room on the psych ward
The Presidential Portrait
if Trump is convicted
would you still support him
as your party’s choice?
the candidates look left, then right
while the silence grows heavier
S.U.V. motorcade
to Trump-branded airplane
to S.U.V. motorcade
to Trump Hotel and Tower ...
next, his face in the mugshot
with a red tie
glistening hair and an icy scowl
Donald Trump
behind the bars: one poster
signed for 2024 dollars
my pitbull
chasing her Siamese cat ...
Trump on TV blasts
"If you go after me
I'm coming after you!"
To conclude today's "Jan. 6th Insurrection/Sedition" post, I would like to share with you the following tanka:
Game Show 2024, XXX
in dim light
I'm half awake, half asleep ...
blonde-haired old man
draped in a red-white-and-blue
cloak of impunity
FYI: The Guardian, Jan. 5: Brett Kavanaugh will ‘step up’ to keep Trump on ballots, ex-president’s lawyer says: Trump lawyer ‘has faith’ in US supreme court justice appointed by the former president, though the court hasn’t said if it will weigh in
Brett Kavanaugh, the US supreme court justice, will “step up” for Donald Trump and help defeat attempts to remove the former president from the ballots in Colorado and Maine for inciting an insurrection, a Trump lawyer said.
“I think it should be a slam dunk in the supreme court,” Alina Habba told Fox News on Thursday night. “I have faith in them.
The supreme court said Friday it will consider the Colorado matter.
“You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up. Those people will step up. Not because they’re pro-Trump but because they’re pro-law, because they’re pro-fairness. And the law on this is very clear.”
The New Yorker, Jan. 4: The Ghost of January 6th Haunts 2024
To his original Big Lie about the “rigged election” in 2020, Trump has added ever more lies. He now calls January 6th “a beautiful day” and the nearly thirteen hundred defendants arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol martyrs and “hostages.”
A Washington Post/University of Maryland survey published this week found that, in the intervening three years, the number of Republicans who believe Trump’s lies about a “rigged election” has, in fact, gone up. Today, only thirty-one per cent of Republicans believe that Biden is the “legitimate” President, down from thirty-nine per cent in late 2021. The number of Republicans, meanwhile, who believe that Trump personally bears “a great deal” or “a good amount” of responsibility for the events of January 6th has gone down from twenty-seven per cent two years ago to just fourteen per cent today.
And The New Yorker, April 26: The Supreme Court Appears Poised to Protect the Presidency—and Donald Trump
In arguments about Presidential immunity, the conservative Justices, who avoided mentioning Trump, made clear that they are less concerned with holding him accountable than with shielding former Presidents from retribution.
Added: Game Show 2024, XXXI
fight for democracy ...
in dusk a puffed-up rooster
crows at ravens
FYI: CBS News, Jan. 5: President Joe Biden discusses fight for democracy in Montgomery County ahead of Jan. 6
"Whether democracy is still America's sacred cause is what the 2024 election is all about," Biden said. "The choice is clear. Donald Trump's campaign is about him, not America, not you. Donald Trump's campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He's willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power. Our campaign is different."
And Joe Biden's conception of so-called "democracy:"
In his nationally televised address about the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, President Biden described the American arms industry in Remarkably GlOWING TERMS, noting that, “just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” From a political and messaging perspective, the president cleverly focused on the workers involved in producing such weaponry rather than the giant corporations that profit from arming Israel, Ukraine, and other nations at war. But profit they do and, even more strikingly, much of the revenues that flow to those firms is pocketed as staggering executive salaries and stock buybacks that only boost shareholder earnings further...
--excerpted from Salon, Commentary, Nov. 15, 2023: "Good times for the military-industrial complex": American arms makers cashing in on conflict:But is it truly the arsenal of democracy?
No comments:
Post a Comment