Dear Trump voter,
I hear your cry, “America
has gotten away from us.”
& I applaud that you see through
the “neoliberal media”
that is pushing TPP and Nafta on you,
and acknowledge that in some ways
Perot would have been much better
For America, and Americans, than Clinton
(wouldn’t have signed Nafta or The Telecom Act
or maybe even the draconian racist “Crime Bill”).
But if America has
gotten away from us
I need to ask you where it’s gone
And from studying your facebookpages
It seems you think Mexicans and Muslims
(and since some of you still call Obama a Muslim,
those blacks who “don’t know their place”)
It seems you agree with the media’s spin of reality…
But I’m curious if the phrase “Bigger is Better”
Has anything to do with why
America has gotten
away from us?
It may be more to blame than Mexicans and Muslims
Who you feel have done you, have done us,
Such grievous wrong….
Do you ever wonder why they tore down
Your city’s downtown to build malls
(and moved the state college
from smaller campus
in the center of town
to a larger more –factory like school in the suburbs)
And then tore down the malls
To force you to shop on-line
And make it harder to find a job in retail?
And who are they? Mexicans? Muslims?
And what about TV?
It too seems like an ideal candidate (or suspect)
For why America has
gotten away from us
(TV’s not always a hate machine….)
And social media is better?
And bigger is always better
Bigger farms----
(surely some of us still feel the farms)
more impersonal, slave-like
as Powerful philanthropic organizations
such as the Rockefeller foundation
and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
have pushed “Green Revolution Chemicals”
on the coffee-growing countries….
(not seen on TV)
But smaller may be better
“In fact, even in raw economic terms,
despite many myths to the contrary,
small farmers tend to be as efficient as large farmers
in resource utilization and productivity per unit area.”
To speak of sound fiscal policy
Rooted in agriculture
At least as analogy with the urban
Which tends to sweep the farms
Under its (green) rugs
Like a head increasingly cut off
From the body as it whitens and music
Becomes less a water fountain
And more Evian and Aquafina…..
No, I’m not asking you
To vote for Hillary
Or even to recruit you for the Bernie Bros
Much less vote for me…
I’m too busy running for resident
To run for President
And maybe you can relate to that
If America got away
from you
Or we could wonder why less walls
May have advantages over more walls
And I look at the Hollywood Walls,
Netflix walls, TV walls, and facebook walls
Or “gangsta white walls,” car walls, SUV walls
Prison walls, whether public or private
That seem like gross parodies
Of the magical wall that can fit a family in a wedding ring…
I do not need to blow these walls up
(though I sometimes may act that way
coz I know you love theatre in those walls),
I know a nation needs walls
But walls need windows or doors
(who says walls with doors are less sturdy
or that glass houses will deny you
the privilege of throwing stones you seem to love?)
--even robert frost thought windows
and doors were kinda sexy)….
I can be reasonable
And negotiate a compromise position
(and secretly it isn’t even a compromise
coz its really what we need
but it’s more rhetorically effective
if I say I really want bloody
revolution
but I can act civil for the civic poetry crowd)
I mean the wall you think you need
Is already there, already here
Been here since the “southwest”
Was stolen from Mexico
Before they had a chance
To fully steal it from the natives…
What we really need is a window
(some already have one
though the flatscreen blocks it)
or a door to walk through…
do you assume the Mexican immigrant
wants and needs to sever her roots
from her homeland?
If assume you must, why not
Assume that she wants
To bridge Mexico and the USA
In a human way
On the level of everyday people
To counter that inhuman 1% way
Nafta (& The Telecom Act) did
When it took America
away from us
And building yet another wall
Won’t do anything to stop
The fast moving frictionless flow
Of capital from leaving your pocket….
Building the wall will
just strengthen
The Nafta you claim to
hate…
And wouldn’t it be cool
If your grandkids got
A better education
Like in the majority
Of countries in this world
Where being bilingual by 5th grade
Is somewhat standard
In a globalized world
We don’t necessarily need
If you’d be willing to give up
Coffee, sugar, and oil for instance—
Not that I am suggesting anything so radical—
Just for a consistent position
And maybe learning about the struggles
of the small farmers against the corporate farmers
in Colombia, Vietnam, and Ethiopia, for instance
may allow you to stand in better patriotic solidarity
with the small farmers who Big Agro has made
an endangered species here in the good old USA….
Of course, the “neoliberal media”---
Even the corporate country music stations—
Rarely ever mention it (remember Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid).
You don’t have to fight for those foreign workers
But knowing about them may tell you more
About what happened and is happening to this country…
I can celebrate your anger
2.
Trump recently said something
I think I agree with—
To paraphrase---
“it used to be that cars were made in Flint
and the water was bad in Mexico
now cars are made in Mexico
and the water is bad in Flint”
Nothing in that that necessarily means a wall
As I read it
Not that car factories in Mexico
Necessarily mean the water is better in Mexico
(unless its bought in bottles
from American and European conglomerates)
which would certainly support the claim
that getting rid of Nafta would help America
(well, Americans)
and it could also help Mexico
(well,Mexicans)
but the miseducating media
makes it seem like NAfta
robbed the US to pay Mexico
and if they can sell bottled water
and Saddam Hussein as behind 9/11
certainly they hide the real enemy
behind the Latinos working slave labor
who stole your jobs (not that you’d work slave labor)
until you remember you’re a consumer
and celebrate the low prices
while wearing a Trump Suit
made……..guess where?
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