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FERN MCBRIDE (NYC)'s avatar

After reading the Letter, I sat quietly with an uncertain head. Did I have anything to write? I thought of a headline in yesterday's The New York Times, 'U.S. Hundreds of Police Officers Have Died From Covid. Vaccines Remain a Hard Sell.' Then I took a couple a few photos of the sunrise and texted one of them to a friend. Death is on my mind. I live in NYC. 34,402 of us have died from covid, 1 in 242. Morality, I think of that, too. The letter starts with Biggs and Roy. Abbott, DeSantis, McConnell, Trump rush to mind. Physical responses when writing their names are automatic. Mortality and Morality - tap, tap, tap - like scat singing. The breakdown of civil conduct may be at my door or in the park or anywhere. I looked for a poem.

I, Too

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes, "I, Too" from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Copyright © 2002 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.

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Stewart Whisenant's avatar

The 206 Republicans who voted to default violated their oaths of office to protect and defend the provisions of the Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, so why are they not being held accountable? People who are willing to sacrifice the common welfare of their nation for the sake of a duplicitous, disgraced former president are not fit to hold public office in a democracy and should be removed, all 206 of them. The despicable actions of the Republicans are morally bankrupt and downright criminal. But since the American justice system no longer honors the rule of law, the "seemingly inexorable slide into likely violent conflict" noted by David Herrick seems imminent. I grieve for my country and the failure of its dysfunctional political system that has enabled a faction of sociopaths, scalawags and miscreants to hold the Constitution hostage.

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