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When Barack Obama won the Presidential election in 2008, I cried. I wept for my ancestors who toiled over the years as slaves, domestics, and farmers. I sobbed for my grandfathers and uncles who spent their lives working for less pay than their white counterparts in the most perilous and toxic jobs at steel mills in Pittsburgh. All of whom persevered because they remained steadfast in their beliefs that there’s dignity in hard work, and that the country would ultimately become a place where all people would be treated equal. You see, an unyielding belief in progress is really what keeps black folks in America from going insane and Obama’s tremendous accomplishment symbolized the fruit of my people’s suffering and served as a respite from the madness of subjugation. For that, I will always love him.

However, if “Obeezy” (what my daughter calls him) would have conspired to overturn a presidential election by cheating, scheming, lying, and commanding a now documented violent insurrection like Donald Trump did in 2020, I would not love Barack Obama. I would rebuke all things Obama, renounce his accomplishments and never hold his name in high regard. I know this because those actions would shame the very souls that sacrificed before him for a better day. It would contradict the very fabric of my existence and denigrate the meaning of being an American.

So, now I ask all people who call themselves Republicans, or who wrap themselves up in the American flag, and who seem so terribly concerned about being replaced by black and brown people, please preserve our country by accepting the truth.  Inform your nativist brethren that Trump lost the election fair and square. Stand up for honest politics, more than raw power.  Love our democracy more than the evil, orange man because one man is not greater than our country or constitution. 

Call me naïve for asking, but I am desperate. Our world is literally on fire, the streets are in chaos, disinformation reigns, and I don’t want to be burned alive. The 45^th President, gerrymandering, the Supreme Court, Fox News, and the Doug Mastriano’s of our country can’t change those facts or bully the nation into an alternative reality.  Social and economic correction is inevitable. Get over it. Generate new ideas that appeal to the changing society. 

It’s time to do the right thing before the country is torn asunder.

Dear Senator Pat Toomey:

I am your constituent, but I did not vote for you. 

Yet, I do not think you are my enemy. 

I believe deep in your soul you sought public office because you wanted to make a difference. Despite the fact that we are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, I believe that ultimately you want what is best for the great state of Pennsylvania and our beloved United States of America.

Yesterday, you took an oath and swore to conduct impartial justice during the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump. Before God, the constitution, your colleagues and the Chief Justice of the highest court in the land, you said you will seek the truth. 

Please don’t break your solemn oath. 

I am not demanding that you  remove the president from office, but in the very least, vote to have all of the potential witnesses come forward and all documents related to the  investigation  be reviewed. John Bolton, William Barr, Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, Don McGahn, Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas  – they all need to sit on the witness stand.

If not, your subsequent obfuscation of verity will take  our country to a point where the law does not matter. 

Nobody wants that! 

If you are a republican, democrat, libertarian, socialist or independent all of us want to maintain social order, which in my mind is harnessed in the notion that America believes in fairness because the constitution says so. 

History shows us that our nation has not always been an honest and just country. 

But the great thing about America is we always have a chance to right the ship, that over time we get opportunities to steer our nation’s moral arc in the proper direction.

Most of us little people do our best to fight the good fight, pay our bills, respect our neighbors, take care of our families and obey the rules of the game. 

Senator, if you don’t vote for the facts, if you don’t exalt your country over your party – our national integrity will be the victim, and so the loyalty of the people, and faith in the republic.

Senator Toomey, now is your time!

As I wade through the neck deep social media fury in response to the election of Donald J. Trump to be our 45^th President, I’m emboldened by friends that believe that we can push through the intellectual and political morass, and by my 16 – year old daughter and her cohorts who marched in protest of his election in the streets of Philadelphia this past Thursday! 

However, I’m more shocked by the rampant cognitive dissonance of the particular Americans who voted for him. I’ve read statements like “America needs a wake-up call,” or, that “Hillary is an elitist, pompous and duplicitous crook,” and that “she would have increased our national debt even more,” as reasons for voting for Mr. Trump. People have literally ignored facts and data that there is no bigger crook or con man in America than Donald Trump. He is on record stating bold, orange-faced lies on television and in print about a myriad of things large and small, he has a history of bigotry, chauvinism, misogyny, and has a legacy of bilking insurance companies and welching on debts to thousands of little people who live life just like the hordes of folks that view him as a savior and/or the person they want to be Commander in Chief.  I mean, a man that brags about using bankruptcy as a common business practice, is the very man you want to reduce our national debt??? Really?

The notion that one can separate or remove themselves from Trump’s past actions, statements, deeds, and beliefs is preposterous. I’m sorry, you may think you are not a racist, but if you support a bigot, you are in the very least… okay with his bigotry, if you voted for an admitted “coochee” grabber you are somewhat fine with how he used his little hands – if you suspended disbelief and voted for Trump, there are no words or phrases, statements or intellectual ladders that can lift you or lead you out of Trump’s historic pit of wickedness and folly. He is yours. All of him and most importantly all the Ku Klux Klansman and homophobes that are clearly a part of his “revolution.” Period.

After my 15th glass of bourbon in the last four days, I came to grips with this reality and I stopped wondering how this election could happen and realized in my haze that “Make America Great Again” is just the latestpopular slogan in a long line of blood-soaked catchphrases that justified bad or evil policy in America.

In the past, we have used “Manifest Destiny” to validate the annihilation of Native Americans…. Southerners and their supporters proclaimed “State’s Rights” to justify the enslavement of Africans… the Supreme Court came up with “Separate but Equal” to intellectually buffer the brutality of racial segregation and apartheid…. “Conservatism” was appropriated as a direct response to thwart any real or imagined progress associated with civil rights… And last but not least, “Trickle Down Economics” was the mask sported while the middle class was obliterated.

This is who we are. The question at this point is…what are you going to do about it?

I will remain vigilant and pray that as Donald Trump “shakes up our country” he doesn’t blow up the world in the process.

Please God, please bless America.

When it comes to politics, I generally have been a registered democrat (small D for emphasis) yet, always wanting more from the politicians in that party.

After college, I briefly worked for a Pennsylvania State Senator, but I left that job frustrated and disappointed. So, for the last 25 years (yes that long) I’ve stood on the sidelines and relegated my political leanings to arguments with my friends and/or placed my true political opinions in the dialogue of characters in my fiction. 

But not now. 

Now, I am waking up from my slumber because I am weary of the Republican dishonesty. Sick of the GOP deceit about President Obama and their hate filled obstruction of EVERY jobs bill Obama and the Democrats present for consideration in Congress.

Hitler said, “Make the lie big, make the lie simple – keep saying it and eventually they (the people) will believe it.” 

The Republicans have adopted this propaganda tactic. And… 

-Have lied about Obama’s nationality. 

-The GOP lied about his ability to be a leader  (Ask Bin Laden). 
-The republicans lied about his ability to fix and run the economy (he saved the auto industry, housing starts are up, the addition of 4.2 million private sector jobs during 26 months of job growth). 

-They have lied about the Affordable Care Act by saying the law is unconstitutional 

These are just a few of the falsehoods Mitt Romney and his party wants America to believe, and they don’t stop. They can’t cease their blind loathing for the President because they fear moving forward.

It’s time to act because it’s clear the Republicans and their big money bosses are trying to buy the Presidential election while suppressing the minority vote across the country.

Collectively, we have to stop holding our breath with anticipation. We have to unplug from the “Matrix” of material and indifference. We have to face the Republican’s contempt for us little people head-on and EXPLODE!

Arise, speak truth, and make a difference!

For over thirty years, the Republican Party has displayed an arrogance that says they are superior to the masses; that they know what is best for the country. Their America is every person for themselves, not a country that maintains a balance between public and private interests. Their power is steeped in ethnocentrism, and they use the legislative process to mask lies and riddles.

This entitlement complex allowed them to dupe and make fools of the middle, and working classes in several ways with no remorse, and currently act like spoiled selfish children dressed up as a Tea Party.

First, they said liberalism was and is un-American. That government acting as an instrument of employment, and social change to address past inequities hindered freedom and liberty.

Then they hired an actor to champion an economic policy shaped by interest rates, corporations, and their investors as the only approach the country really needs; a monetarist approach that would lead to opportunities that would magically “trickle down” on us little people. For after all, America is a mythical “shining city on a hill,” built by rich people. 

We’ll, I grew up in Wilkinsburg, Pa and nothing is shining there!

Then, the GOP told us Affirmative Action is a bad liberal idea, but contrarily corporate welfare is good. Our masters then added insult to injury by replacing Thurgood Marshall with Clarence “uncle” Thomas, who is on the Supreme Court because of the very program he wants to dismantle.

Now, despite clear proof that an un-regulated free-market system cannot be depended upon to self-regulate, address social inequities, decrease poverty or increase the wages of the middle and working class, The Republicans want to double down on the concept that gave us the 2008 Great Recession. They want us to believe that Mitt Romney is a financial titan that will lift us out of our economic morass because he knows better than President Obama.

 Let’s be clear and tell the truth – Romney is not Henry Ford or Bill Gates. He is simply “Ritchie Rich” that has grown up to be “Gordon Gekko.” He is not even going to carry Massachusetts the state where he was Governor because they know he is a fraud.

Don’t let the masters keep fooling us. Don’t wake up a week from today saying that you should have voted… that you could have done more to guarantee that truth prevails. Make a plan to vote – make sure your family, friends, colleagues and your elderly neighbors have a strategy to get to the polls. Make a difference.
I am directing the Obama for America staging location in Penn Hills. If you live in the area and want to get involved hit me at jlewis682@gmail.com.

Let’s be clear. Racism, subjugation, and police brutality are accumulative. Like any loan or investment, hatred and injustice compounds over time. 25 years ago, I participated in the Million Man March in Washington DC.  Back then, the organizing factors of the march centered on the protest of 15 years of Reaganomics. The failed conservative doctrine that decimated public investment in education, health, the arts, and infrastructure to name a few. I have to go back because these policies were steeped in bias and economic greed which left African American unemployment rates nearly twice that of white Americans, a poverty rate of more than 40%, and a median family income that was about 58% of the median for white households. 

The foundational political calculous of conservatism is the “Southern strategy” which started With Barry Goldwater in 1964 and has been in doing so, he portrayed racial minorities as undeserving “takers,” while erasing the institutional racism at the heart of economic inequity. The message to Southern white voters was both that African Americans were to blame for their own standing in society and that government programs aimed at alleviating racial inequities would disadvantage white Americans.

This is why the slogan “Make America Great Again” has such a resounding impact and or influence on the angry mob we saw storming the capitol and we see riding around in pick-up trucks with American and Trump flags. These folks have been conditioned to think and feel that any progress for people of color is a regression of their status and power in America.