Letter To America…
By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart
As I sit in my Kailyard I often wonder about the future.
Dear America,
It is some time since I have written one of these, so apologies if I sound rusty. I don’t think I am rusty because this has percolated in my mind and thoughts for some time.
I am delighted to have this as a platform and to have “Bad” Brad able to publish and produce some fine content. But I want to address you all. Arrogant though it may be, I think you need to know something – how you over there look to us over here.
People talk of a special relationship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America. Given the beginnings of your country that should never come as a surprise. After all, we birthed you, gave you people to build a nation with and supported the abuse of the indigenous population that followed. We profited, as you did, from the slavery we engineered, controlled and abused within the African nations.
It is a common history and a common guilt.
I live next to a city where the civic pride we have is reflected in the buildings we have built, on the money from plantations and the backs of African Americans. It is adorned with street names in honor of slave traders and abusers, and we have innocently used their names for decades. Our civic buildings contain ornate beauty of distinction which we now know are the shining beacon of our effective prowess in exploitation.
We are a little bit ashamed – I am being sarcastic.
We are very ashamed.
But Glasgow has a rich heritage of being a little, shall we say, rebellious. It is a city driven by division religiously but also proud of its status as a friendly place with honesty attached. But when riled up we are ferocious. Glasgow was the only part of the UK to have had tanks deployed to quell civic unrest. It had a rent strike which was won and led by a woman of formidable power in the early twentieth century – before they even had the vote! When the Apartheid era South African Government would not release Nelson Mandela, Glasgow Council renamed the Glasgow street where their consulate was as Nelson Mandela Place. The South Africans then had to reprint their stationary, and admit his existence. We gave Mandela the freedom of our city when he was still in prison. Once out he hastily came to say thank you. Now I may not be Glaswegian but let me attach their honesty and friendliness here – I mean no criticism, but I also mean to be straight with you.
November appears to be a tough choice for you.
Why?
In 2016, you faced a straight choice between a liar and fraudster, and the first woman nominated for your highest office. You had a chance, and you had a straight choice – you fluffed it.
You gave us, the rest of the world a President who lied, cheated and arrogantly proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he was a snake oil salesman who was creaming the profit off your economy whilst giving you a constant stream of bull. Both rise to the top, but only one has a really distinctive smell. In 2016, the USA lost more than just its sense of smell. You lost your senses.
We sat in utter despair of you.
How could a democracy, built upon the foundations of decency and honesty who rallied round the ideals of no taxation without representation, see how this billionaire monster who has no concern for the common man be voted into power. But then again, we had our own vagabonds and thieves to contend with, but recently we got rid of them.
Joe Biden was always, in our minds, a man of dignity and decency. It is often remarkable that in the US, politics can be so polarized but also consensual. The idea of some of the English political parties managing to behave collaboratively as some democrats and republicans do is frowned upon within a multi-party democratic state as ours. (I hasten to say English. We have parliaments in Scotland, Wale sand Northern Ireland where such collaboration is either mandated by law as in Northern Ireland, or necessary to have a majority in parliament like in Scotland and Wales.) In July the new Labor Government temporarily threw seven members of parliament out of their party because they voted with their conscience and not party loyalty.
Biden reminds me of Senator John McCain: A man who put his decency ahead of expediency and personal gain. There can be no better example of that than the lack of interference in the trial of his son, Hunter. How difficult, as a father must that have been? That looks good over here. Having a crook on your ballot paper carries less well. We would accept it if they repented. You know like Christians are meant to do when they do something wrong, but at least one of your candidates ain’t no Christian.
Joe has had failing health. That much has been abundantly clear. That he has moved aside is another feature of his public service and again it will have been hard. He walked into an Oval Office after a period of utter chaos and turmoil. I can but only imagine what state the public purse, morale and morality was within the American political system at that time. To conclude that, in 2024, he was no longer able to bat away the wolf from the door of the Oval Office again must have been heart rendering: awful to contemplate. He has shown true leadership by making sure he can fight but does so where he is best suited to supporting the win.
And so, Kamala Harris.
Not the process anyone would have wished for but here she is. And how good does it look that a woman of color, of ethnically diverse origins, of indigenous blood and a woman, is ready to assume the office of the President of the United States of America. Almost makes up for some of all that exploitation we jointly enjoyed all those centuries ago.
Over here it is damn good.
We think it’s time.
So, get your arse in gear.
You have a straight choice. Truth versus lies, opinion versus evidence, order versus chaos, defense versus prosecution, competency versus immorality. It is stark. The Republican Party has a storeroom filled with Kool Aid for MTG and Boebert wannabes. Don’t go there. If EVER there was a time to be afraid of the Right, it is now. Beware, not of the people in white hoods, but of the people whose hoods are invisible.
Someone much brighter and eloquent than I once said that we must remember that the holocaust did not begin with the gas chambers. It began with words.
Auschwitz survivor, Primo Levi left us all with an even starker warning to those who doubt the authoritarian ideals of the Republicans high on their own importance when he said, “the deeply rooted consciousness that you must not consent to oppression, but instead must resist it, was not widespread in fascist Europe, and it was particularly weak in Italy. It was the patrimony of a restricted circle of politically active people. But fascism and Nazism had isolated, expelled, terrorized, or destroyed these people outright. You must not forget that the first victims of the German camps, in the hundreds of thousands, were the cadres of the anti-Nazi political parties. Lacking their contribution, the popular will to resist sprang up again only much later.”
And so, as the movements of Black Lives Matter, the pro-Palestinian marchers and the Trans allies get bombasted and abused, remember too that as German pastor Martin Niemöller said, “first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
In November you have the chance to vote in solidarity with the groups being attacked with words, who are your cadres and who are truly honest believers in real and true freedom of expression, they need people (you) to speak up, because once they are all gone, there shall be nobody left to speak up for you.
Dear America, #KamalaHarris – vote for her and don’t fluff it this time, for the sake of us all.
A view from the new Kailyard or, how you look over there, from over here…
(Kailyard n. a cabbage patch, often attached to a school of writing – the Kailyard School – a genre of overly sentimental and sweet Scottish literature from the late 19th century where sentimental and nostalgic tales are told in escapist tales of fantasy, but here we seek to reverse it by making the Kailyard Observations of effective invective comment from that looks not to return to the past but to launch us into a better future by the one Donald worth believing…
Try before ye trust… – Advice often given as young people come to adulthood.
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