NYU Black Renaissance Noire Volume 18 Issue 3 - Fall 2018 | Page 6

editorial
My Take
President-elect
Donald
Trump walks
to take his seat for
Late August and early September
2018
were
horrendous
the inaugural swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol
months for all of us who love great
music
and
once-in-a
in Washington, D.C., Friday, January 20, 2017.
lifetime melodies, songs, and compositions emanating
from the brains of African-American creative genius
innovators, Aretha Franklin and Randy Weston.
Aretha Franklin, the inimitable
“Rock Steady” “Queen of Soul” and
“Respect”, gospel, rhythm ‘n blues, pop,
jazz, and so-called European Classical
vocal gymnastics, the undisputed
keeper of vocal renditions of female
Black-American sacred, liturgical
musical meditations, transitioned to
the hallowed ground and space of
ancestors. She was followed in death
in September by Randy Weston, the
giant, African-American male purveyor
of cross-fertilized rhythms, who sluiced
through intergalactic space travelers
of interlocking genes of musical notes
and chords changes, influenced by
African melodic soothsayers: Duke
Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie,
and Charlie Mingus. Mr. Weston rose
up in a crescendo of beautiful,
phantasmagoric showers of powerful
farewell soliloquies that touched the
hearts of all who treasured this neglected
artistry of so-called jazz music —
Miles Davis called jazz “just music.”
Both Franklin and Weston were
spiritual, giving humans who
contributed mightily to the African
American community, the entire
American and World Music communities.
Both will be deeply missed.
The character of Aretha Franklin and
of Randy Weston stands in sharp relief
contra the amorality of Number 45,
who, by most measurements, is the
absolute worst head of state to grace
the august office he so ignominiously
occupies. What Americans and the
world have been witnessing over the span
of Trump’s past two-year presidency
and his confederacy of White Male
supremacist administrators (abetted
by a token number of Blacks, Jews,
Italians, Asians, Latinos and Native
Americans) is runaway criminal
behavior that will leave an indelible
stain on the office of the Presidency
of the usa for years to come.
On September 6, 2018, an anonymous
official or a group of anonymous officials
among Trump’s own White House
staff wrote a New York Times editorial,
advocating the removal of this abhorrent
person posing as president of this
country. This was an unprecedented
and cowardly act, since whoever wrote
it didn’t have the courage or patriotism
to resign from office. Instead, they
chose to stay on deep in the shadows
to keep their jobs and access to power.
The entire episode was as weird as
Trump’s presidency and a momentary
distraction from all the crazy,
dangerous policies Trump has engaged
in since he was installed in that high
office. Just another strange distraction
designed to switch everyone’s attention
from Trump’s emoluments problem,
his strange, secret relationship with
Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin,
his insistence that there are no ominous
climate threats (What about the floods
in September 2018 all over North
Carolina after Hurricane Katherine?),
his sadistic retrenchment agendas, his
ongoing cynical attempts to undercut
the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare),
his inhumane immigration policy,
his over 5000 lies to consolidate his
confused base supporters and his
general inability to grow into a positive,
enlightened leader who can become a
beacon of light shining from this office.
What has come to be recognized in
all of this chaos today is that Donald
Trump is a man without any core
beliefs. Rather he is an entertainer, a
master manipulator of the media, not
an enlightened, fair minded, visionary
political leader, nor a statesman, or
someone who reads, absorbs or even
cares about any kind of rational,
tolerant, thoughtful policy information
needed to govern a country as
complex — Trump only deals with his
narrow, White, racist base and never
to the wider, diverse country — as the
United States really is. And just for
this reason he is simply unfit in every
conceivable way — emotionally,
spiritually, morally, academically,
politically or professionally — to govern
a nation as religiously, ethnically,
philosophically, racially diverse and
democratic as the United States
purports to be.
It remains also abundantly clear that
the very minority group of people who
support him do not care either what
the rest of the country really needs
to be whole. Those bizarre groups of
grinning fools at his rallies are like
throwbacks to lynching parties of yore
where Black men were hung, roasted
alive, and their private parts chopped
off, and waved as souvenirs! They
don’t care that he is a kleptocrat or a
diabolically narcissistic sociopath.
They are his undying supporters, no
matter any treasonous acts he may
commit. They refuse to hold him
accountable for his daily treachery.
More than a few journalists, thinkers,
radio and cable news talking heads
have likened them to a Jim Jones like
cult figure — not a hard thing to
disagree with when you hear them
rationalize Trump’s most outrageous
behavior or criminal overreach. Some
say it’s because society today is moving
at such breakneck speed, faster than
at any other time in history, and they
can’t deal with or refuse to fathom
what is going on. Maybe time is moving
so fast many of these supporters can’t
stop long enough to pay attention to
Trump’s and his administration’s perfidy.
Certainly, the enabling cable news
shows are filling their coffers with
advertising dollars due to the 24-7/365
coverage that Trump’s tweets and
utterances receive over all tv networks.
So I ask here: what does this enabling
strategy by news organizations to
fill their coffers with money by daily
showcasing all of Trump’s clown
show do for healing and pushing the
country’s progressive agenda forward?
It is like we are all living in an insane
asylum! Which is fundamentally, at
their core, what three books published
in 2018 on the presidency of Donald
Trump argue. The three books — Fire
and Fury by Michael Wolff, Unhinged
by Omarosa Manigault Newman
and Fear by Bob Woodward — have
been all huge successes. Each became
#1 bestsellers. The books report to
readers just how out of control,
ignorant and unprepared Trump was
and is, and warned of the dire
consequences that would result from
the presidency of Number 45. Each
book elicited harsh responses from
Trump and his minions, despite
the fact the books were written by
insiders (Manigault & Wolff) and
highly researched (Woodward).
I also agree with former President
Barack Obama, who said: “Trump is
a symptom and not the cause” of the
disorder the nation is experiencing
today. Just like racism has always been
with us as a nation and will never likely
go away. But how to seek a cure for it,
or how to extract much of the toxicity
from the poison so we can better live
together is the question we all must truly
ask ourselves at this critical moment.
Despite talk of the 25th Amendment,
designed to remove a derelict dangerous
president from office, the current feeble
Republican-led Congress will never
enact it, because they are deathly afraid
of the president and their potential
loss of power. At the time of his writing,
poll numbers favored Democrats to
take over the House of Representatives
and some said the Senate as well. I
can’t predict this will happen but we
will know after the November 6th
national election. If this happens then
the nation will enter a new ball game
that will see the agenda of the orange
faced would-be autocrat checkmated,
and his remaining time in office made
exceedingly uncomfortable. For me
this would-be a good thing.
What is needed at this dangerous time,
however, is for all concerned citizens —
whether Republicans, Democrats,
Independents, Black, White, Asian,
Latino, Native Americans, rich or
poor — to cease being enablers of
Trump, sitting on their hands, trying
to equivocate the madness of Trump
agenda, hoping he will cease and desist
his treachery — which he won’t —
and to actively establish common
ground, to dialogue with one another,
to attempt to heal our badly wounded
nation, which is perilously close to
plunging off a Mount Everest-size
national crisis. The time clock is
ticking and the nation is moving closer
to midnight and the majority of the
nation has too choose sides and vote
for good, or evil, or the past versus
the future.
Once again, we welcome you to
another issue of Black Renaissance Noire
to read, contemplate, digest and
savor. We are privileged to publish an
excerpt from Iraq Etcetera, the newest
novel from the great writer and activist,
Louise Meriwether, that she says is
still a work-in-progress, as well as an
excerpt from Canebrake, a debut novel
by Quincy Flowers; non-fiction by
Wallace Ford, Stanley Cohen, a critical
essay on the film Get Out from
Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd, who also has
given us a poem to Aretha Franklin,
and Ethelbert Miller’s remembrance
of Léon-Gontran Damas; 18 stunning
images from the collection of
Ronald Maurice Ollie, which he has
donated to the St. Louis Art Museum,
accompanied by Mary Anne Rose’s
interview with Mr. Ollie and his wife
Monique; 12 powerful portraits from
Lava Thomas drawn from the mug
shots of Black women arrested during
the Birmingham, Alabama, bus
boycott, and a photographic tribute to
Randy Weston from Chris Cobb.
Our poetry pages are filled with poems
from Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, nv baker,
Sharon Olds, Ishmael Reed,
translations from the French by
Brenda Marie Osbey of the Négritude
poets, Leon-Gontran Damas
and Guy Tirolien, Roger Aplon,
Melanie Swetz, Michael Castro,
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, and
Bob Holman. We look forward to
your feedback on this and every
issue. Your continued support of our
efforts is greatly appreciated. n
Randy
Weston
Aretha
Franklin,
1968
p
p
By Quincy Troupe