(dedicated to the memory of George Floyd)
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The problem with the lofty concept of nationhood is that it requires the two pronged essential ingredient of Promise and Trust to work. Law cannot be the glue, only the guard of covenant.
I have oft reflected on the traditional binary Judeo Christian theology which pitches God against Satan in a perennial war of good against evil and how it contributes to perpetuating a kind of paranoid xenophobia that militates against forging the conditions for unity; compared with traditional African pantheons which rather than pitting the devil as an outsider, view him rather as a problematic family member harmonized within the group through wisdom, rather than repudiated entirely, engendering less social alienation.
Such is the case with ancient Egypt’s chaotic Uncle Set or the West African tempter/trickster deities Elegba, ‘Papa’ Legba and ‘Bredda’ Ananse. Indeed the earliest biblical sources introduce Satan as one of the sons of God although that gets lost in the doctrinal evolution of his character when Isaiah’s Lucifer is banished from the heavenly home. (Few realize that Job was written before Genesis and represents a much more ancient pre-Mosaic thought system.)
The tendency to demonize outsider groups is the scourge of the promise of peace in society and the instigator of oppression and war. Whereas Heru overcomes Set’s chaos through wisdom and fulfilled righteousness, demons by definition must be ‘cast out’ … and sent to make trouble elsewhere.
The incursion into and looting of the US Capitol by her citizenry is an outrageous act of violence that must be understood to be effectively dealt with. Who burns down their own house? The answer obviously is that only a disturbed alienated mind is capable of an act of insurrection.
The righteous indignation aroused in the aftermath is focused (predictably) on the punitive “Who dunnit?” and everyone’s favorite scapegoat is sought for sacrifice – Donald Trump, The Proud Boys, QAnon, Antifa, BLM – I’ve even heard one group infer that Nancy Pelosi may have masterminded the plot to frame Trump. But whichever, the devil dunnit….find him (or her), catch him and throw him in the dungeon…(and of course accountability demands thorough investigation and impartial justice / consequence…without fear or favor)
Yet in this self righteous outpouring from every quarter of what is more likely to be vengeance than justice (often indistinguishable under traditional notions of western jurisprudence) the honest introspection that would reveal the culpa mea that brings the nation that has lost its promise and purpose to true ‘repentance’ is completely ignored.
Just listen as both sides of the political divide invoke the term ‘the American people’ through their narrow, jaundiced and constrictive lens, foisting randomly married values wholesale upon a populace priding itself for its individualism as if every pro-lifer is de facto fiscally conservative or every gender progressive is necessarily inclined towards socialism. The United States do not house a united people and we know what happens to a kingdom divided against itself.
Aggrieved groups will be problematic. Why does Lady Liberty welcome them with open arms? The promise of Liberty and Justice for all is the only atmosphere that makes a nation of refuge for those who no where else could breathe.
When a nation is suffocating, the law cannot create order, more often than not, only contempt.
America, you have forgotten your call. The New Colossus is a woman. A woman.
YeKengalé 