Hours and hours of television was dedicated to a sermon delivered by former Obama preacher Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The public was subjected to months and months, of the media’s fixation on Hillary Clinton’s emails. The revealing upshot of which was that she loved her grandchild and that John Podesta has a recipe for a scrumptious Risotto. We learned that former President Obama liked arugula and tan suits. We know these things because there were days of reporting and ridiculous teeth-gnashing over meandering emails and choices of cuisine and wardrobe. One could say that Obama and H. Clinton were so accomplished that trivial pursuit was the only critique Republicans and a willing press could pursue.
The current preoccupation of the press, and therefore the public, is the death and apparent murder of Gabby Petito, almost to the exclusion of all other news. I have more than sympathy for the Petito family having suffered the loss of my young niece [Tiffney Holsey] who was murdered in 2009. She disappeared on July 24, of that year. Little notice was taken by the press—or the police until a family member lobbied a local news station, questioning the racial disparity in coverage of young black women and young white women. My niece was the mother of two and after exhausting family searches her decomposed remains were found a month later on August 7, 2009. I mentioned that painful memory because it seems either one’s lack of melanin or perceived scandal makes headlines in missing person’s cases.
Amid the Petito coverage, is another American tragedy. Our country is under threat and the more we learn about it the more the public, the press, and even politicians want to ignore it. For my family and the Petito family, the death of our loved ones is the only story but unfortunately, as I painfully learned, it is not the only story. Yesterday—it was revealed a pseudo-Trump lawyer, John C. Eastman, had not only thought of how to pull off a coup, but drafted a six-point memo, solicited the Vice President to join in, and presented it to Mr. Trump. In a nutshell, Eastman was calling for complete renunciation of our election process. He proposed that Mike Pence abdicate his responsibility, which was to certify the vote and recognize new sets of electors, who would set aside the election of Joe Biden and declare Donald Trump President and Mike Pence Vice President.
This was on the heels of also finding out that Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and Trump’s merry band of legal representatives were pushing a story the administration knew was a lie. We could have experienced a successful coup in this country and it seems it is being covered as a sidelight. Have we become inured to political dangers by the constant barrage of Trump lies; or is it because the hands carrying American flags that sought to destroy the country had white faces? Is treachery now acceptable by waving flags, and incorporating words like Patriots, Heritage, and America the beautiful? The repugnant display of riders on horseback herding Haitian immigrants like sheep or cattle is being excused by conservatives as …American patriotism. The pushing and shoving of children and women while on horseback is what we get if a dangerous pseudo-Americanism excuses everything. Cruelty, lawlessness, and insurrection are not being a patriot or an American.
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