Brexit and Trumpism edge the Atlantic like bloated slices of day-old Wonder bread, damp and rancid from a cutting board too precious to clean, the pre-abolitionist teak and acacia insets too familiar to notice.
They don’t even know they’re racist.
Smirking in London tea gardens, the noble peers twirl parasols against the harsh sun of southern lands, whence come the raj-infested gains of bitter conquest. But we don’t need them anymore! Goods appear like magic on our shores.
Wearing patriotic polo shirts in Washington, the white supremacist doughboys spray golden showers in sound-surround, cackling with Russian oligarchs over canceled Deutsche bank loans. We'll never run out of browned-skinned help! Sacrifice a child now and then on the Aztec hills, we can disappear its parents.
The exceptionalism of Brexit and Trumpism are the latest flavors of imperialism. The entrails of this plague host the parasitic remains of colonialism, along with ever-current epidemics of misogyny and bigotry. Add to this a fresh 21st century xenophobia and the pretense of self-sufficiency: the Masters buy fake silicone Margaritas now.
These mad movements are not unlike the War on Drugs. Those who define them and us are in charge. They grow, buy, and sell, while trampling underfoot the unlucky ones who get in the way. Addicted and gaunt, in need of care…they are sinful, willful reprobates, lock them up!
So when they slap down silly borders among the Syrians and Palestinians, Shiites and Sunis and Kurds, they return to afternoon chai oblivious, turning up the TV to drown out the bombs dematerializing a thousand homes, the tractors tearing out olive groves and crushing the screaming children. Don’t let the dirty Bedouins in, we have no room, lock them up!
And when they give guns and money to the foul officials and gangs raping and destroying the peoples of Central America, they trot out on a favorite ranch horse in Texas to shoot at helpless ducks, glorying in second amendment freedom to point the stick in all directions. So the multitudes arriving exhausted and ill at the Rio Grande…they are lawless gypsy foreigners, cage their babies, lock them up!
Taking with brutal force what they desire, these exceptional supremacists thoughtlessly destroy the living ecology of cultures South and East and West. They displace the hungry ones now begging to enter their feudal fortresses. Like crusaders, they devastate families, demolish homes, steal trees and oilfields and gold, shred histories and shatter dreams.
I hit you, you fall down, I punish you for falling down.
And like beaten children scared to approach abusive parents, the distraught peoples hold out bloody hands to beg, their lives now splintered and broken, pleading for one more chance.
I'll be good, you'll see, I'll work hard. Please. Please let me in.
Exceptionalism
2 JUNE 2019