A RE-PUBLISHING OF A TRIBUTE I WROTE TO REP JOHN LEWIS WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF THE TRUMP INAUGURATION................................................................
Sitting at a Wegman's lunch counter the other day in a relatively affluent Cumberland County, PA neighborhood, I was privy to a conversation between two affluent-looking aging men. One was speaking in very insulting and derogatory terms about Congressman John Lewis' decision to deprive the Trump $1,000,000 inauguration spectacle of his presence.
The man commented on the bad taste and impropriety of such an action and echoed Trump's "Tweets" about doing something to help his own constituency. I bit my tongue but wanted to yell at them that this now elderly gentleman had had his head bashed in by police truncheons for demanding his right to vote, or even to sit at the same lunch counter with our friend.............................................................................
Now he is doing both, and what's more, occupying a seat in the US Congress! Now he wishes, and has every right, to protest the inauguration of the man who would deny him these rights again. Don't these gentlemen know that, thanks to the efforts of the "Grand Old (Republican) Party", most of whom now are ex-"Dixicrats", dedicated to returning Southern "Jim Crow" style reforms to the entire country and complicit with the "Tea Party", "Alt Right" Russia and various white supremacy groups and right wing PACs. They are allowing this man and his despicable crew of cynical billionaire industrialists and racists stage a virtual Coup D'Etat in the name of making America great again, and only Mr. Lewis (and now some 40 more Democrats) has the clarity of mind to protest.
To my mind, any effort to resist this travesty should be rewarded before we all lose our civil rights, environmental necessities, democratic system and every other right guaranteed us under the Constitution that these "Quantrill's Raiders" would deny us. And the irony is that they are led by a New Yorker! I can muster an iota of empathy for the blue-collar supporters of Trump who have been duped into believing he will bring back their jobs or give them a better and more affordable health care program even though the "Trumpists" were probably among the corporate C.E.O.s who are enriching themselves at their expense, but I have no sympathy for the aging, comfortable suburbanite who voted for him out of old-fashioned bigotry!