“A citizen’s opinion; A solitary voice in, and from, the wilderness.The Charlotte Affair”

“A citizen’s opinion”

“A solitary voice in, and from, the wilderness”

“The Charlotte Affair”

By

M.A.Simo

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If you read this is – or not- is because at one time or another our paths have crossed and you are considered, at the least by me, a family, intimate, a distant friend or merely a casual acquaintance that at one given time exchanged e-,mails.

Therefore to avoid any sign of prejudicial preference or distinction; since it’s an “Opinion” that would be impossible to express to each of you in  an individual basis,  I've decided to address myself to you collectively and in alphabetical order.

If you have an opinion; share it in the same way in which without reservation I tangibly put down my thoughts for you to read and, I will give you my word, whether I agree with your thoughts or or not, that I will pass it on in the same fashion that I hope you'll send this “Opinion” forward to whomever you think would objectively read it.

The questioning of “Should we truly be two societies? The have and the have Not society; or are world and climate events leading us to the inevitable reality that we should all be a rich and middle class society with inalienable rights united  for the benefit of all and the environment in which we reside?” 

The sacred words that he predicated during times of paganism and imperial oppression were, “Love one another,” not , “Love you first... and then the other.”

It's the premise of the debate. It is the reason behind my exposed perspective of our present and shared situation.

I pledge my first allegiance the first day of my, ethnically segregates, ninth grade class at Thomas Knowlton, Junior High school # 52 in the south Bronx, six days into my thirteen year and on the day in which most Latin American countries celebrate the bringing of gift to the newborn in the manger by “ Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar ;The Three Kings Day.” January the sixth of nineteen sixty five.

Five years after, as my older brother had done before me, I voluntarily took, as a then legal alien and still not a naturalized citizen, my military oath to defend the democratic ideals of this nation. 

A few weeks earlier, December twentieth to be exact, in the time that it took the silver wings of VIASA to carry us from the West Indies to the decimated borough of the city of New York, our odyssey towards the pursuit of happiness in The United States of America began for my two brothers and I. Instantly we went from being the wealthy sons of an industrialist father, to the poor ones of a mother who was a humble, factory shoe maker.

Half a century later, through the opportunities afforded by our adopted land, like the ashes of a phoenix, the three of us, an accomplished Merger and Adquisitions Director and CPA, a Deputy Minister of Tourism and Dominican Reform Activist, and an a Public Relation Coordinator, ex Radio Station Manager and aspiring writer, rose through the available cracks to become proud and productive parents, grandparents and citizens, caught amidst turbulent times of this twenty first century, seeing the prevailing dreams that we hoped for our children and their children possible disappear before their time.

The following is my ambidextrous, not right or left, opinion. What you'll read is what I perceived in a period of two weeks, in two radically opposed conventions and in the reasoning of a first Lady and two American Presidents embroiled in a dogged battle for survival. I titled it “The Charlotte Affair.”

 “The Charlotte Affair”

There are epic, mesmerizing moments in human history that draw us in from the comfortable, exiled, bleacher seats from which we watch our world unfold and make us, in our own individual way, join the individual and collective scream in the middle of the wilderness.

The three day Charlotte Affair did that for me as I’m sure it did for a great multitude of idle citizens blinded by divisive political allegiance and not by righteous common sense of a society  beneficial to the aspirations of all.

It was impossible not to be inspired by the eloquent magic and conviction of those speaking from all segments of society on behalf of the logical and conscientious path that, I believe, we need to continue following.

Each one of the three evenings was like a symphonic crescendo that reached its climatic peak on Thursday, when, “B.H.O,” aka, “Barry” took over the director’s baton. 

She preceded him and came in stage left to the centered podium, while he did it stage left and walked toward her. Their bodies met precisely in the middle of the dark mahogany, wooden convention platform of the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina; a site that once ago had served as one of the centers for the sale of Africans into human bondage in the eventual “Dixie” of America.  

She was wore a purple dress sprinkled with white shapes that barely touched her neck and flowed along her shapely curves to just above the bend of her knees.

He wore a dark blue suit and light blue tie that accented his ivory and ebony, amber tanned face and big ears.

In between a sweet and tender public embrace, in which their hands gently caressed each other’s back, her lips were seen softly mumbled as she, at the lobe of his right ear, whispered…“Go get them, baby.”

It was the inevitable moment that had been familiarly set up by her on the same stage on Tuesday night, when the windy city daughter of a Democratic precinct captain and city water employee with the personal, French, first name and the historically recognizable name of “Robinson,” -synonymous with “Jackie,” the color barrier breaking athlete, who like Clinton, wore the number forty two - took center stage. 

Michelle spoke, in her inimitable Capricornia way, and once again helped us pictured, in collages of words for the canvas of our minds, what most of us already knew about her proud, humble, and formative years in the small and happy home in which she grew.

Now she, openly preached to the quire about the lifetime partner that happens to be the father of her children and the time honored love of her life and our president.

In that instance, from my solitary perspective, what had transpired in Tampa the week before instantly dissolved, among the rear winds of Isaac, into insignificant and illogical political rhetoric and inspired my voluntary inclusion, from the exile of my four walls, into the spirit of America's battle for the inalienable right for choice of destiny.

To second the first lady's initial motion towards what should be a crystal clear choice, she was followed by Bill, “Bubba,” Clinton, the evening of Wednesday.

In his own, incomparable, Arkansan reasoning, twang, Bill became an expert and irrefutable witness against the prosecution. 

He laid it out in the same silky fashion in which he had withstood Washington's lash on his back in the mid-nineties. When, even with lipsticks circles in his trouser, they couldn’t stop him from resurrecting, at the end of the twentieth century, a middle class that was born after the end of the “Mighty, Righteous and Victorious,” Second World War; The admittedly economic escalon that helped the middle class flourish with a  post war industrial boom which was still infant prior to the tragic days of the mythical “Camelot” White House.

It was a passionate defense for the survival of a social status that he had helped ferment and that was consumed by the Military Industrial Complex that "Ike" warned about and the fictional, Wall Street, “Gordon Gekko,” fallacy that “Greed is good for America” instead of measurable responsibility.

They had maltreated him for the single weakness that befalls the male of the species; the same one that in the precincts of the man’s inner self, we men will admit to; “A man’s innate  inability to defeat the persuasive voice, that guides one of our two heads,  and eliminates the most compelling argument in order not to turn down the mouth of a young, new flower, heatedly inspired by our experiences or achievement.

If we said; “Let he that is without sins, throw the first stone” and we were all truthful, few stones would be thrown. 

Here was Bubba’s opportunity for the vindication of his achievements as well as  his opening statement in defense against the route that the opponent suggest we take.

In contrast with another moribund ideology, at the same time, this instant was the “History Shall Absolve Me” moment of two American Presidents, the forty second and the forty fourth; the latest whose number of succession reminds us of the same digits worn by two eventual giants of the grid iron fields of Syracuse whom in their individual personalities chipped a little of the granite path for us.

One, the incomparable Jim Brown, the Cleveland Brown’s  great, rebellious running back and barrier breaking actor who admittedly told the comedic genius of Richard Pryor “So, what are you going to do about your embarrassing problems with the cocaine pipe, Rich?” and the tragic and gentle immortal, Ernie Davis, the other.

Two dignitaries from different ethnic back ground and social spectrum morally united in defense of dignity and the logic of bilateral cooperation. A moment that ironically, and unlike the original one, was taking place on the Democratic Political convention of the biggest consuming oriented society in the planet.

William Jefferson Clinton, was a peasant and royal oxymoron in his cool and calm southern rhythm. He was adamant in his purpose and determined in his resolved to obliterate, without a single shadow of a doubt, every single, contradicting and illogical argument spewed forth from the “right” and equally “wrong “opponents.

 Now was his time of retribution and he pointed it out by symbolically aiming an index finger in the air toward the invisible blackboard of a science that is precise; the application of which had once upon a time during his leadership given us a brief whiff in the breeze of the way the aroma in which the air’s perfume should smell and feel for all; the “We the people” feeling. Not the first you, and then, we, feeling.

“Arithmetic!” Bubba shouted. A fact that the Mayan and the Incas civilizations knew, even before the Wampanoag settled in Plymouth; a science which never fails. 

Arithmetic; the undeniable fact that you and I are two equal. That two and two will always equal four!  Simple! 

In what was utterly genial in its delivery, Bill employed a most humble, diplomatic and profanity free way of eradicating arrogance and an ignorance with the use of the common people's phrase of…“It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.” The proverbial…”Touché.”

His tale was a white haired, round table Knight, discourse on why the concept of running a country, like running a business, could lead to running a country for the profits of business, which could result on the already evident early omens of oppression by the ongoing acts of voter’s obstruction.

Most Caribbean, that for economic or political reasons migrated and settled in the United State part of North America can attest about and against the doctrine of “running a country for business.” They have the undesirable tendency to turn into ruthless alliances that repressively evolve into dictatorships.

Think of the Somoza’s, The Batista and, my own, the Era of our “Benefactor,” Trujillo and "Papa Doc," Francois Duvalier.

“Where there is subjugation there’s ultimately “insurrections.” Most are violent; like the one in “Quisqueya” in sixty five, which was revolting in the inevitable and wasteful ultimate sacrifices committed by a brother's arm conflict strife against a brother.

In America, at this junction and time, any miniscule and inappropriate attempt by the Elephant followers to circumvent the process, if witness by the Mule back riders, could spark one almost entirely by design.

America’s streets and barns are arsenals of weapons and their experienced users and those who intend to usurp Lincoln’s pledge in  Gettysburg of “A government of the people by the people, for the people.” will only, as Yamamoto once prophesied; “Awake a sleeping giant.” that at this frustrating and demanding stage of our history should not be... “Disturbed or tested.”

Bubba, was masterful, but now came the awaited time of rebuttal of what had been tried to be distorted by the one who, like “Bubba,” was unmercifully hounded for trying to do, under extreme circumstance, the actual doing to correct a mess inherited from eight years of “W”.

He told the facts without hubris and in a most brutally honest way, reminded us that; “You didn’t put me here to tell you what you wanted to hear; you put me here to tell you the truth.”

There, before our expectant eyes and in-tuned ears, stood a once unlikely candidate that behind the arduous forward struggle of his predecessor, and with the promise of “Hope” for the people forever changed a union and defeated the once invincible “Jim Crow” and the proverbial Status Quo.

Poised behind the podium now stood an elegant, eloquent, humorous and  incumbent “Commander in Chief and President” who surfaced from within the rose cracks of the sidewalks, on the bended back of the few steps that America and economic opportunity afforded in order to be able to walk, study and distinguish himself, within the elite sacred and hollow, halls and walls of learning of the “Ivy league.”

A missionary who amble the paved and still same paths in Lincoln's state, who, unlike his opponent, was not born with a silver spoon in mouth, lived in the real time world and by no means was willing to concede to the backward illusory narrative of an Alternative Universe.

He justly deliberated on something that a generation of us “Baby Boomers” had been waiting to see and hear since the “Flower Children’s" days when, from an unwanted, unjust and obligated conflict in the delta we returned and were despised for it by them.

Here was a diplomat that finally envisioned and recognized the emotional residue that eternally remains in the memories of actual veterans of modern combat and their need to be helped with the malignancy of post dramatic trauma and in the gradual re-integration of them into the norms of society after servicing and defending the cause with the ultimate selflessness and sacrifice. 

Who could debate the Solomon mind of a soul who advocates in favor of the strongest and smartest of our human genders for their inalienable right to decide for their creation bodies for themselves?

Who, that is faithful believer in the biblical words could believe that a man who openly confesses to an entire nation; “I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, "I have been driven to my knees  many times- oh lord- by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go;" could be percieved as a non-believer?

The human earthling that so eloquently cited those words has to be, by the content and meaning of the words themselves, righteous.

Who could one not laugh at the reality of the sarcastic humor that echoed in gest the cynicals voices in the corridors of Washington; “Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning,”

Someone like that has to have been placed on us to see the irony, frustration and realities that he reflects to and for us. 

How could one argue with a reason that professes: “As Americans, we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, rights that no man or government can take away.” How could any reasonable mind argue against that?      Is the embodiment of democracy; the sustaining pillars of the  founding fathers declaration.

When he clamored; “We insist on personal responsibility, and we celebrate individual initiative. We're not entitled to success. We have to earn it. We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk- takers, the entrepreneurs who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system, the greatest engine of growth and prosperity that the world's ever known.” How much clearer of a statement is required for the other side?

He is not demanding anything but the responsible share of the collective pie, the collective dream, the collective pursuit of happiness and the American Dream.  Who could argue with the vision that a Healthy American people will not be happier and more productive if given the opportunity?

In conclusion, I find it incomprehensible that those wealthier and more affluent in our society would not want a healthier and relaxed society from the ever impending doom of medical cost. The result would invariably be a happier citizen, a more productive and creative worker that will inevitably motivate the evolution of the lower and middle class and by natural default, “Profits.”

Collaboration and responsible share is the undeniable path for all our disputes and all our resolutions. I, all for one and one for all,  will contribute with these thoughts to the defense of logic, arithmetic and my elected president, Barack Hussein Obama,  as a solitary voice in and from the wilderness.