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Divided America

Bob Rashkow

It’s not about red nor blue / It’s certainly not about WHITE / More like warm colors vs cool colors / Pastels vs vivids / It’s a stain on the Carpet of Liberty /
Take up this gun - take up a flower
You see a difference, a division
It’s about exclusion vs inclusion
It’s about hate vs love
HOW DO WE LIVE? ? ?

It’s about thinking as opposed to - not thinking
It’s about - - not wanting to KNOW
Simple has become complicated
Complicated has become simple
We’re too scared to learn the difference—?
So easy / To just say it, right out / You-will-be-my-friend/ You-will-trust-me-always / I-will-be-your-friend / I-will-trust-you-always / We will share and enjoy-our-love-and-happiness.
So hard / Hard to turn your back / Hard to resist giving in, breaking down, losing your cool / to not say to yourself / I have made a decision / I know what’s good for me / I know what’s good for my country, for my family, for my friends and neighbors / So hard so painful so shameful / Easy became difficult, difficult became easy /
I do not want to be around you
I do not want to trust you
I would rather be scared to death of you
I would rather talk down to you and whisper about you behind your back.
I wouuld rather vote for people who would see you burning and bleeding and pleading
before you could earn your privileges
safe, comfortable, veiled within this complication
content to evaluate every person everytime
you are fat you are gay you are tall you are short you are autistic you are a bookish nerd you are female you are male you are Irish Turkish Spanish you’re a Negro you’re a Jew you’re a Muslim you’re Catholic Protestant Atheist you’re this you’re that you’re not that you’re not T H I S
secure. safe in my brown purple deep green deep blue—and RED, yes, red too, bloody bloody hateful hateful red
It’s a divided nation / it’s easy to admit this has happened / it’s hard to say when it happened /
Maybe it was in the 50s with Joseph McCarthy
Maybe it was in the 60s with idealism & Vietnam
Maybe it was in the 70s when we suddenly became submissive again
Maybe it was in the 80s with Reaganomics and 1-upmanship
Maybe it was in the 90s with the first Gulf war and almost impeaching Clinton for doing what Joe Average does all the time
Maybe it was in the 2000s with Dubya and 9-11 and Iraq and Homeland Security and the Patriot Act and torturing innocent people..............and all THAT shit.

Maybe it’s now.
Maybe it’s right now - with our first black President, envied, despised, blamed for everything except the Apocalypse.
But—this requires thought, doesn’t it.
And you don’t LIKE to think.
It’s too difficult for you to sit down and think.
To sit down and learn.
To try to figure out what happened / to consider why it happened.
It’s an assignment, it’s a quiz, it’s an exam, it’s an essay question, it will affect 75 % of your grade: Why did this happen and what might you have done to prevent it?
This DIVIDED NATION
The choice is always yours - the gun, or the flower
We will have to come all together as one,
Or this division will destroy most of us.

The young man points the trigger
The trigger finds its mark
The flower explodes
                                 into
                                         millions   of   blood stains

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