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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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Joe Morgan
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As protests erupt across the country in reaction to George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, America is also marking the anniversary of one of its worst incidents of racial violence — and one that was covered up for decades.
May 31 and June 1 mark the 99th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, when a white mob descended on an affluent black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood District, which was known as “Black Wall Street,” was decimated in a matter of days. Roughly 1,200 homes were burned, 35 blocks burned, and an estimated 300 black people killed.
Shelley never gave this sonnet a definitive title, but since its posthumous publication in 1839, readers have known it as “England in 1819,” a fitting pinpointing of time and place. Two hundred years later, we still read “England in 1819” as an exemplar of a topical protest poem, casually referring to headline news and caustically voicing outrage at political incompetence and authoritarian violence. Percy Bysshe Shelley: “England in 1819” by… | Poetry Foundation
England in 1819 by Percy Bysshe Shelley
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
England in 1819 by Percy Bysshe Shelley
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Through all this, President Trump has spewed division with ill-chosen tweets about looting and “shooting” or “vicious dogs” and overpowering weapons. He has attacked Democratic leaders as their communities burn. He flails rather than leads, his instincts all wrong for what confronts the country.
At a time when presidential leadership is most called for, at a time when Americans look to a president for words to unify and heal, many hope this president will resist that call — an extraordinary condemnation of the way he leads in crisis.
...
The coronavirus is not under control, and fears of a second wave persist. As the spread slows in some areas hit hardest early on, it grows in other places. The lifting of restrictions on businesses and other activity has in some places brought out crowds of people indifferent to calls for social distancing and the wearing of masks. The massive protests in cities also risk accelerating the spread of the virus.
Trump once, twice, multiple times, dismissed the dangers. Now the pandemic has killed nearly twice as many people as were killed in the Vietnam War and the death toll continues to rise. Black people have borne the brunt of the pandemic, dying at rates far in excess of their share of the population. Hispanics, too, have been hit disproportionately.
Economic pain abounds. The number of people filing for unemployment, though it has slowed in the past two weeks, has reached an astounding number, with roughly 40 million Americans out of work — the worst joblessness since the Depression. Many, if not the majority, of those are people who can least afford it: low-wage workers already struggling to pay their bills.
Many small-business owners, the backbone of the economy, are barely holding on. Some have been forced to close, and more could follow. Now, in some neighborhoods in big and medium-size cities, they are experiencing another threat from the flames that engulfed their livelihoods.
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