Two-tone black and white 1963 Corvette cruising fast on an empty red rock desert highway.
Six blue and gold Navy F18 fighters fly 300 knots inches apart
Iowa cornfields and Nebraska wheat fields stretch to the horizon, feed the world
Windmills dot the plains of West Texas, the richest of oil fields
Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner and Bob Dylan
Elvis, The Eagles, Buddy Guy, Janis, Jimi and The Dead, The Brothers…rock n roll baby
The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln
Emancipation
Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson turn the Union flank at Chancellorsville.
Lee surrenders to a gracious Grant at Appomattox - and the Union troops of General Joshua Chamberlain - hero of Little Round Top - salute the ragged, long grey lines of Confederate veterans - who return home with their rifles. Look away, Dixie.
Slavery dies; racism survives
Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali
Martin Luther King Jr - shots ring out in the Memphis sky
Michael Jordan soars to the basket
P51 Mustangs flash in the sun over Europe 1944
Normandy beaches, Iwo Jima caves, the Ardennes. “Nuts!” From the 101st surrounded in Bastogne.
Evil commits suicide in a Berlin bunker
Mushroom clouds over burnt cherry trees and boiling lakes in Nagasaki
Pax Americana defeats totalitarianism - avoids smoking nuclear catastrophe - and rebuilds Europe and Japan - powerful and prosperous.
Sucked into the horror and futility of other wars in Vietnam, and Laos, and Iraq, and Afghanistan
American hubris flattens mud huts and hooches with laser precision
Carrier Air Wing 3 returns from 9 months at sea in constant combat, selflessly protecting international law and freedom of navigation - heroic and gallant - and only their families cheer
Hopi Kachinas, Apache Crown dance, Lakota ghost dance, Anasazi cliff dwellings, Little Big Horn, Wounded Knee
Soothing wilderness, spirit animals, wolf, grizzly, eagle. The drums and songs of the elders foretell this moment.
Diminished salmon return to hot, muddy rivers. Orca moms mourn dead calves. Wildfires rage - hot, smoky days
A 400-year land grab. Houses valued in imaginary abstract dollars are investments, not homes. The whole edifice - employment, education, consumption, production, finance - exists to lay claim to stolen dirt.
Financial shenanigans made whole by jillions of public money - printed without cost, given away by the truckload, helicoptered to the wolves on Wall Street. Still, they foreclose.
Is housing a human right? They made homelessness illegal. God help you son, if they find you sick, camped out on the street.
Pay exorbitant money for health insurance but got no healthcare
Black Lives Matter, Pride Parades, July 4th fireworks and hope
World Series, Indy 500, Daytona, Stanley Cup, NBA championship, College Bowl Championship, Go Dawgs, SUPER BOWL!
Anything football.
Anything dogs.
Immigrants live together in extended cooperative families, work menial jobs, and keep the economy humming.
Blessed by National Parks, the Mississippi River, Chesapeake Bay, the Keys, the San Juans, and The Rockies.
Liberty and justice for all. The 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Brown vs. the Board of Education - 150 years of open-minded jurisprudence - undone.
The bought and paid-for Supreme Court empowers corporations, weakens administrative power, unleashes racism, and protects wealth and privilege.
And absolves the Emporer of all wrong.
The American Experiment has failed, corrupted from within.
Political violence snips the ear of the purveyor of political violence, and he reacts with fist-pumping rage and ferocity. The crowd cheers - fight club politics.
Corrupt ambition tramples dignity, grace, restraint, gratitude, and respect.
Political media nominates a fascist madman and a feeble relic to compete for the most powerful office on earth - and we roll over and accept that it's OK.
You back the madman, and I back the relic…we no longer talk.
The center gives way; both flanks are turned. Time to retreat or die. No place to make a stand.
Can love defeat fascism?
We are about to find out.
Love your not so random stream of consciousness essay. To paraphrase Maxwell Smart, "missed by that much" and the beat goes on.