And who can blame those who don’t feel that they have to worry about the complicated truths we have to struggle with? In this country men can be born and live well and die without ever having to feel much of what makes their ease possible, just because so much is buried under all of this black and white mess that in their ignorance some folks accept it as a natural condition. But then again, maybe they just feel that the whole earth would blow up if even a handful of folks got to digging into it. It would seem a shame to expose it, to have it known that so much has been built on top of such a shaky foundation.
“Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the field…I will pour down her stones into the valley, And I will uncover her foundations…”
The young lady wouldn't sit down for a moment, she was like a new bride sleeplessly awaiting her bridegroom. One moment uttering outrageous lies by Voloshin, the next shuddering at scenes she could only see. And suddenly she stopped--embraced them all with her eyes, their yearning, the expectation that transcended all differences... “Friends! How beautiful and terrible is this feeling! Whither are we bound? What is about to happen? Something grandiose and terrifying is imminent! We are rushing towards the abyss--of that there is no doubt! Rushing ahead in a train with an idiot driver! Faster and faster! ...ah, the terrible beauty of it. You must admire it! And how thrilled those who survive will be to know!”
…Cooke sang his song when the basic success of the civil rights cause remained an open question… …But the change came, and that world is gone.
“The mothers, are gonna pray your kingdom down…The preachers, are gonna preach your kingdom down…you’ve been building, your kingdom, all over this land. Satan, we’re gonna tear your kingdom down.”
But…they’ve sensed the life-preserving power of our humility and gone stark crazy to destroy even that! Hickman, how can you help despising these people? How can you resist praying for the day when the sacrifice will be sacrificed, when the many-headed beast will rend itself, tooth, nail and fiery tail, and die? ….How resist, Hickman? Why not pray for that?
Every week at my church, a boomer friend who respects my political judgment, who knows that I have a PhD in political science and who knows that I am one of the few on his social media taking a firm line against supporting #BLM, asks me the same question: “Are we going to be okay?” The “we” he has in mind is America.
“Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! At morning light they practice it, because it is in the power of their hands.”
“Feels like a Revolution, but who’s revolution?”
Why not? Because this America cloth…is woven too fine for that, that’s why. Because you are one of the few who knows where the cry of pain and anguish is still echoing and sounding over all that bloodletting and killing that set you free to set yourself free, that’s why again. Because you know that we were born of sacrifice, and that we have had to live by a different truth and that that truth is good and the vision of manhood it stands for is more human, more desirable, more real. So you’re in it, Hickman, and have been in it and there’s no turning back.
The acceptance…by nearly all in the leadership class, of on-offense violence in democratic politics, a tactic that by its very nature eats democracy alive.
“Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets, who make my people stray; who chant ‘peace’ while they chew them with their teeth… ‘Therefore you shall have night without vision, without divination…’”
Besides, there’s no single living man calling the tune to this crazy dance…everybody in the band and out on the dance floor is as blind as a mole in a hole…
…nightmare scenarios keep your fellow citizens from sleeping. Michelle and I attended a comic musical, expecting to be diverted, The Scarlet Pimpernel at Orem's Scera, but (while still amused) we were haunted by the genuine June 2020 fright, of beholding a giant guillotine on stage! One of the Pimpernel's songs, about standing up to revolutionary violence, seemed, uh...timely! Everything feels different. Nothing can be taken for granted. Mobs do what mobs do, in the streets, on social media, and in university/corporate email chains. Horrid rumors of and suggestions in favor of military brass defying Trump make the rounds. People give up on trusting any news. Scores are fired for criticizing Black Lives Matters… Leaders say next to nothing about what is happening, or simply repeat bromides about racial justice. You have to go to alternative sites and youtube to even get a clue where the rioters are and what they are or are not doing... The republic teeters, or seems to.
…with a blast of red and white light erupting from its rear…WE HAVE SECEDED FROM THE MOTHER…Down Wid de Coon Cawdge, Up WID DE JOE CAH! Then mahn, I say, KICK HIM ASS! …A blast of heat struck him then, followed by the opening of the door. And as a dark hand reached down, he seemed to hear the sound of Hickman’s consoling voice, calling from somewhere above.
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Compiled or written in June and July of 2020. From Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth, Shirley Caesar, “Tear Your Kingdom Down,” the book of Micah, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, November 1916, Greentea Peng, “Revolution,” and my own correspondence and journaling, including two snippets from my later IM-1776 piece “A 2020 Songlist.”
And to close, a couple of images:
The Azusa Street Revival: one of the key subterranean events of American history. Partly due to its eventual impact on jazzman-become-gospel-giant Thomas Dorsey, a clue to Ralph Ellison’s Hickman character and his dashed hopes.
Romare Bearden, Ellison’s favorite collage artist, in his studio.