VCC Magazine Winter 2018

America , If We Can Keep It By Marcello Rollando

marketing, religious intolerance and political hypocrisy—can we discern through the chaos designed for our distraction, the call to echo, indeed augment, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John & Bobby Kennedy—and, Marion Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Zora Neale Hurston, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rachels Rosenthal & Maddow, Heddy Honigmann, Zana Briski, Mika Brzezinski, Clare Hollingworth, Edith Windsor, Maya Angelou, Heather Heyer and her mother, Susan Bro? Could Elijah Cummings’, we must fight for our Democracy , be Franklin’s admonition anew—a call to defend America from the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world? Franklin, arguably the man who invented The American Dream , explained, “when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.” Could assembling antagonists to our Agriculture, Management & Budget, CIA, Commerce, Education, Energy, HUD, Interior, Justice, Labor, United Nations, SBA and Treasury be the smoking gun in the Russian hack of our 2016 elections—hiding in plain sight? Keeping our Democratic Republic requires being what we’re for, more than what we oppose: • Protecting America’s homeless from tactics used against lepers by the Roman Empire • Honoring family values , by supporting DACA families and aiding American families living in Puerto Rico • Standing tall with Standing Rock, rocking the world by our humane example that defrosts ICE and dissolves ISIS The courage to remain the Home of the Brave , comes with admitting both stains and gains, not wallowing in the impotency of Isolationism… • Malice toward none, with charity for all • Imprisoning innocent Asian-American civilians • Military Industrial Complex using Marshall Plan for financial imperialism • Being willing marks for McCarthyism, Dulles & Koch Brothers • Allowing LBJ escalation and Nixon expansion of VietnamWar • Self-righteous overreaction to inappropriate sexual behavior by a president, aiding and abetting a Wall Street White House waging endless oil wars • Destroying lives in the name of, protecting our borders • Banning words/terminology from government agencies

Is it possible what denies the USA a balanced center, is an invasion of the need for revenge? Could recurring emotional hotspots be what’s spinning our moral compass, flip- flopping our political pendulum and wielding derision in the face of our diversity? Are we willing to bequeath our grandchildren unlearned history lessons, without a key to understanding? Democracy hackers entangle those already in disarray: the depressed by recession, fearful of being

forgotten, and seduced by the folly that deliverance comes from empire. In the 158 years between the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the 1945 death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, we managed, through the sickness and health of slavery, Civil War, Ellis Island, KKK, Women’s suffrage, Jim Crow and two world wars—inconsistently clinching Benjamin Franklin’s gauntlet, “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Despite tainting Exceptionalism with a superiority complex and being erratic in our divorce from monarchy, imperialism, demagogues, and despots, between Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address and the 1914 Christmas truce—we kept our Republic. Whether perceiving or contradicting recurring clouds of past mistakes, calculated misinformation fertilized by a few, is again casting shadows over wise perception. False prophets preaching past greatness, conjure illusion, rather than incredulity, leading some into the tunnel vision of self-fulfilling antagonism. The intentional erosion of America’s euphoric core, rarely appears unmasked. Pitchforks and torches would expose manipulative war profiteering, skewed to lose the next wars in a Hall of Mirrors reincarnation. Believing campaign promises can save us from our accountability, is succumbing to the veil of Versailles—projecting us into the World War II excuse, we didn’t know . Ultimately, Americans rose from the tragedies of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 because of our dreams for future generations and the hope with which dreams embrace inner peace.Achieving that, our healing strength emanated to “friend and foe alike”—even unlocking the apathy of church, state and corporate leaders. Thus, we remain, government of, by and for the people. For those now hearing the still small voice within, yearning to breathe free from a seventy-two-year simmering pot of corporate

See America, If We Can Keep It , continued on page 29

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WHRO -World (Norfolk)—Tuesday 5 p.m. • Thursday 5:30 p.m. ARC TV (Southwest Virginia)—Wednesday 1:30 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. Norfolk’s Neighborhood Network, TV-48 —Sunday through Thursday 5 a.m. & 8:30 p.m. Thursday & Friday at 10 p.m. • Saturday at 5 p.m. Suffolk Network, TV-190 —8:30 a.m. & 5:00 p.m. daily Weekly show information is on Facebook— THIS WEEK IN RICHMOND Past shows may be found on YouTube. For more information: http://ideastations.org/tags/week-richmond

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