LANDFALL, RAPTURE, AND RACISM byRolandWise

For some time now Americans have been busy as bees editing one another’s dialogue ensuring the much needed political correctness be mimicked and replicated from sea to shining sea. And while some goodhearted PC folks really do believe that our purple mountain majesty ways of evolving and saving the day places America one step closer toward eradicating the foul smell of racism particular to the Deep South, well, they couldn’t be more wrong.

And if you don’t believe me, come on down to the Southside and smell for yourself; for the emotional stench of old hate and backward ass ignorant thinking and chatter is piling up here higher than hurricane Katrina’s debris fields have piled themselves along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and for what, to save face?

As a Southern writer, a Wandering Angel, and a wannabe humanitarian, I have had just about enough for everybody since making landfall here myself on the day Katrina did the same. And while I continue to tell myself there are no mistakes in life, and that it was no mistake that a medical emergency involving my grandmother, which turned out to be a false alarm, had brought me back home at just the right time, I am here to witness first hand these upheavals of racism and backward thinking in relation to the relief efforts and tremendous need emerging from the ravished Gulf Coast.

Once stranded here in redneck Northern Florida it became clear that my civic duty and responsibility was to commit treason and report back the truths of what is really being said around the supper tables of the South. The burden here is heavy as I gather up the emotional affects of the racist hurricane jokes already being rolled off the line into the ears of those looking for relief from their small fearful lives. I get sick to my stomach over the wafts of ignorance drifting in one ear and out the other as I am hearing the ill willful tone in voices from men and women, and children alike, as they defend Bush’s inaction while quickly damning Katrina’s victims for not having the sense enough to get out.

And with socioeconomic reports clear about the yearly income levels being less than 10,000 dollars for the average family left behind during the rapture of the city of New Orleans, I still hear folks making comments suggesting this poverty was the impoverished people’s fault while sitting there smug and fat after a barbecue dinner in their lazy boy recliners watching Fox news as if these reports were the newest latest reality TV show called Hurricane KAT.

It seems that the order of the day since the hurricanes landfall has been to save face for Bush, and then perhaps save the lives of stranded Americans. We are glued to the TV while people are glued to their rafters suffocating as the waters rise past the eves of houses cutting off vent holes that once brought the oxygen into the crawl spaces full of insulation that would have been suffocating in and of itself. And Bush cut his vacation short is all I heard. Jesus I thought, how have we gotten to this place. And although it is clear that the victims of hurricane Katrina are indeed victims of Bush’s vast reaching incompetence during the aftermath, the automated deployment of the right winged Jesus freak defenders of this so called commander and chief are so flustered in their anger and protectiveness of Bush, that they having a hard time containing their bent toward racism.

At first glance these outburst of inhumane ways of thinking were offensive to me, and I wished they would just stop or that I could turn off Fox news for just one minute of peace, but then it occurred to me that these catastrophic events are pushing Southern buttons like never before, and this may well prove to be the perfect storm of controversy that will push these backward ass crackers to their limit, calling them out from the woodwork they have been hiding within like termites chewing on the structure of freedom, so as to be identified as the haters they really are still today.

To better understand the dealings with folks down here, try and think of them as bratty ass children and how reasoning with a child who is having a tizzy over a toy he wants or dolly she lost is a lost cause. In short we are dealing with basic primitive fear and neediness, and with Bush (their big daddy) devoid of empathy while speaking about this disaster, think about all his followers and how devoid they are of the same emotions, and how they are more like his little band of no neck monster children than the constituency of true Americans you would expect to follow the commander of the free world. They remind me of the small-minded little brats we all were as kids saying ‘my daddy can beat up your daddy’ and ‘this is my yard so get out.’ But now they are older and some no more wiser, out in the world kicking and screaming on larger levels, saying my God’s bigger than your God, my skin color is better than yours, and this is our matrimonial process to ensure our version of family wins out, so stay off the lawns marriage.

In counseling school I learned how when parents raise children this way they raise killers and psychopaths who believe in their minds that it is all about them, and that they can do what it takes to fulfill their desire for power no matter the cost to another. I see this trend happening still in my family, raising kids by terrible example, my salvation way back when being the color of my sexual preferences, which by the way I thank my lucky stars to be a homosexual. For in that blessed birthing I am not backwards, but forward thinking and free unlike many of my Southern constituency. Being clearly out numbered down here by the Bush Brats, I have no doubt the supper table at my parent’s house may well become a lynching block if I don’t find some liberals to run with soon. And although the lack of advocacy I feel right now is paramount to any other time in my life, I am here, I am queer, and Southern, and have this list of all the buttons to push, and I am all about the pushing of them with the belief that the change needed must come from within. That is they are termites of freedomw, then I am a termite of them. That the at best the beauty of being PC is only skin deep here in the South and while the rest of the world may have evolved into a shinny new PC penny, the people here are in limbo rushed to have dug in their heels and gone underground with their hate, creating a railroad while quietly laying track the rest of the world cannot see.

The train I hear rumbling beneath my feet is heading toward its political portal now, and the undeniable beauty of this train load of rednecks is that in the mind of these folks down here engineering this undertaking, their grand central station is the White House and their conductor is our so called commander and chief. Now it does not matter whether Bush wanted them or not, they are his, and he is theirs, and that only spells disaster for the lot of them.

So after reaching some sort of understanding that the evils of this country and those who are being played out as [false] good will eventually eat themselves into nothingness, I had to shift my energies toward the relief effort. My not having a physical address at the moment, as I felt reluctance in signing a lease on a place in LA before I left last week on the emergency now affords me the liberties I plan to exercise over the next few months. By the time this article runs, I will be set up in Baton Rouge, LA meeting with folks, being blessed to work with folks that need loving right now as much as I do. I also believe that as I seek out these victims hoping to help them work through this tragedy of Southern proportions that the glimmer of forgiveness and hope I will see in their eyes will in turn work out the tragedy in my own heart and heal this Southern boy, ushering him into a very different family of humanity. I keep on asking how the poverty here could be ignored to the point of rapture with so many folks left behind, but in the end, as those lovers get together and love, it will be the haters that are left behind, and those that preach the return of Christ will sit there in their lazy boy chairs and miss the rapture hook line and sinker, while all of us new residents of a very new heaven on earth reap the benefit of the communion of tomorrows that lay ahead of us.

Enough For Everybody is a not for profit charitable organization designed for nomads [like the Wandering Angel] gallivanting along the corridors of time and synchronicity seeking out and utilizing humanities bent toward helping others; thus focusing intent on commissioning significant acts of kindness on behalf of folks in need of receiving and giving. In short, we rely on what we distribute and consciously believe that there is no better way to connect the evolving dots of humanity than to connect them within ourselves first crafting the unique shapes of individual kindness while using the tools of humanities innate desire to fulfill needs.

Our goal is to rebuild such an infrastructure and we intentionally strand ourselves within the empowerment and self-realization of sameness created almost instantly when giver and receiver have a chance to commingle. By finding and meeting needs one at a time, as well as affording that same privilege to those we help, everybody begins to ‘pay it forward’ within confounds of a creative new storyline. This act of self and other centered love working together has the potential to meld past misunderstandings and hate into strong platforms of good will, beckoning forth the new tomorrows we so desperately need.

Hurricane Katrina although devastating has brought forth an opportunity in this country like never before in the history of the free world. Yes there have been greater disasters in the world, but not on the shores of freedom, which means it is time to practice the freedom we preach. And this is not only about helping in obvious ways, but to meld together human to human and help sooth the pain one might feel about being left behind, stranded and unable to get out of harms way. These conversations with the victims of this hurricane are going to have to occur one by one, day by day, for years to come, and there is Enough For Everybody.