By: Ally Cyrino
January 10, 2017, America witnessed live on stage the last glimpses of hope for the nation fleeting away with every final word spoken by our President Barack Obama. Tears and cheers from the audience could be heard throughout the crowd. Cat calls for another four years penetrated above the sounds of the President’s somber yet inspirational words. The look of saddened disbelief frozen upon the faces of those closely scanned by the television cameras. Shadowed by the blank, expressionless stares of those who know all too well what a disappointing prospect is to follow the steps of this great leader. And with him is a whirlwind of chaos, a blustering windblown storm created by the powerful right wings of racism, intolerance, and spurned to violence as a result narcissistic rants.
The trajectory of the nation’s forward thinking, it’s years of positively acquired accomplishments, has come to a screeching halt on the tracks of progression with the upcoming presidential inauguration. Donald Trump will jolt the locomotive of ignorance into reverse, filling the railcars with the backward politics of the fifties, all led by the caboose of racism, and spewing from its smokestack the dark smoke of the intolerance of the forties.
The days to follow are the same as were the days when Russia was a constant threat to our nation’s security, and an epidemic of paranoia blanketed every neighborhood pitting neighbor against neighbor thinking the other a Russian spy. Segregation was rampant, persons of color, or difference in creed were considered to be second class citizens, when women were rarely recognized as equal to their male counterparts, and a wall of bigotry was erected by closed minded thinkers, as was exemplified in the sixties by the Johnson administration that proceeded as a result of the Kennedy assignation.
One only needs to see that what lies before us is uncertainty at best, and those who actually voted this self-proclaimed chauvinist into office will see that the very people that foreclosed their homes, repossessed their cars, or shut down their factories, are those Donald Trump has appointed as his staff to the highest governing offices in the nation. Take note America, Donald Trump didn’t care about your impending evictions, the pink slips you received at the worst possible time from your jobs, nor your families healthcare, or lack thereof. He in fact might bare the mirrored resemblance to the one who spoke those two most fearfully anticipated words to you at the closing of your coal mine; “You’re Fired!”
“Make America Great Again,” is perhaps one of the few less fractured sentences of Donald Trump’s rambling rants. Numerous are his illiterate ramblings, and reiteration of the same point continuously upon the podium, are only surpassed by his numerous ill phrased Tweets from his uneducated, unrefined, and unfiltered thinking, and very limited vocabulary. Tweets which sends his comrades scrambling to put out the many fires he has irresponsibly set with the various members of the media, or our country’s allies. He has offended the parents of a deceased war hero, mocked the disabled, he proudly announced his lack of respect for women in the most vulgar way possible!
Donald Trump has not only managed to alienate the people of the Muslim faith which he threatens with mandatory registration, and categorization. As if our Muslim brothers, and sisters are a rare breed of vicious animal to be contained until deemed safe for our society, or the unfathomable fear he has placed in the hearts of the children, of the immigrant parents who he threatens to deport. “Reversal on the tracks of progression?” I dare say this all reeks much too familiar to the rancid smell of the ignorance that emanated from the American enforced concentration camps, and the subsequent unfair, and inexcusable internment of the Japanese Americans.
Here we see as a result of his ill prepared campaign speeches he has inadvertently spurned the already racially divided groups in this country to beyond what has been witnessed in the recent decades. All Mr. Trump has managed to thus far produce is mayhem, which has given rise to the already inflammatory nature of such racist organizations as the KKK, which in turn has now propagated an inflated agenda, to a much higher platform from which to purge their hateful white supremacist views on.
Today I rode my Harley motorcycle to Venice Beach. A place I venture to where I can be around fellow artists, writers, actors alike, and there all dripping from the deluge outside was the somber faces of hopelessness. As I sat looking out of the cafes window listening to the sounds of the rain upon the walkways, and the stomping of wet shoes of the customers who stood at the doorway ready to enter. The thought came to me that this storm was actually the state of California weeping, purging its disgust over the ill-fated election of Donald Trump. The western “blue” part of the country has seen a steady flow of rain for the past week, perhaps more so than in a decade of drought, and the skies seemingly just let loose an uncontrollable cry, tears designed to cleanse us Californians of this feeling of filthiness, of the soiled uncertain future that lies ahead of us, and there above us looms the dark clouds of the impending apocalyptic inauguration, as we as a free thinking state prepare for the worst.
A republican friend of mine said to me, as I wallowed in my political despair the day after the election. “The right wing, and the left wing are that of the same bird.” Perhaps he was trying to console me, as I watched the Democratic Party crumble beneath my feet, forever frozen still in the ash as were the citizens of Pompeii, caught off guard in the wake of the volcano’s wrath? I pondered that thought today as I looked around me at all the morally defeated artisans of Venice Beach, where poets such as Jim Morrison walked barefoot on the sand, and recited his prose during the revolutionary sixties. When I realized that before me, are the disassociated, latte sipping, retro-bearded, beautiful people that are the wingless souls of tolerance, of free thinking, and life beyond what can be tangibly judged! A world of spiritual beings that cannot be divided by race, color, lifestyle, or creed. Whose liberal views allows them to love who they will, and make choices according to their own beliefs, and not of others cast upon them by an archaic theistic law. Perhaps that’s exactly what the country needs? A revolution, a long haired, unshaved, of love bead donning Hippy’s! A music filled revolution with songs of peace, love, and the eternal ever present living spirit of Rock’n Roll!
It is possible to live beyond what is initially before us. Just as it was the day gun shots from the grassy knoll stole our hearts away, when our president Kennedy was assassinated, or the morning MLK was whisked off to the “Promised Land,” and we were left to grieve alone our hearts broken, and a dream forsaken. When a lone psychopath murdered John Lennon, a gentle prophet who only ever spoke of peace, that day our innocence may have died along with him. We as a people can reunite this country through peaceful revolution. There are those who will adhere to such an idealism, just as they did at Woodstock, when peace, music, and love filled the air, and not one person succumbed to death as a result of violence. We are a people destined to outlive the tyranny that awaits us in the coming four years. Let us pray to whatever God you may find worthy of your praises that we as loving people may rise above the hateful rantings, and the narcissistic vows of Donald Trump. Writers, musicians, actors, artists alike, people who love for the sake of loving now is the time. We can make America great for everyone again!
“There is room for us all.”
Saint Francis of Assisi.
