Charlottesville – Analog Artist Digital World

The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are pestilence, war, famine, and death. The fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse is astounding incompetence. After dismissing prescient advice on pandemic preparedness from the outgoing Obama administration, the Trump administration went on to weaken the nation’s pandemic response capabilities. Trump eliminated the White House global health security office that was established following the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic to foster cross-agency pandemic preparedness, and in late 2019, he ended a global early warning program, PREDICT, that identified viruses with pandemic potential. Quite simply Trump ignores science and reason. Rather than “Making America Great Again” incompetence and failure of leadership have ushered in an unprecedented public health crisis that continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of countless Americans.

On top of the pandemic the country has become galvanized behind the protests after the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer kneeling on his neck. The tide it slowly tuning as protests have been going on for weeks. NASCAR has decided that displays of the Confederate flag at races are no longer tolerated. The US military is considering re-naming bases that are named after confederate traitors like Fort Bragg names after Braxton Bragg, Confederate army officer who served as a general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. The confederacy tried to split the union and lost.

Protestors are toppling Confederate statues around the country. The statues were put up long after the south lost the war a symbols of slavery. A neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of one protester resulted in calls to tear down statues of Confederate leaders, but conservative local politicians largely managed to keep the statues in place. Those tides are finally turning. There are now also calls to remove confederate statues from inside the US Capitol building. Racism is a painful sickness this country has dealt with for a very long time.

Trump is adamantly opposed to changing the names, tweeting Wednesday that he would “not even consider” doing so. Just hours after Trumps announcement, the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would require the Pentagon to rename bases and other military assets bearing the names of Confederate leaders. Senator Dick Durbin, from Illinois said, that Trump’s resistance is so out of touch as to be almost irrelevant, it’s part of the reckoning that’s long overdue.

Some things need to be toppled.

Lights for Liberty held a vigil at Lake Eola Park to protest the inhumane incarceration of immigrants at the border. The rain died down as the chants and protests subsided around the little red gazebo. One candle lit two, which ignited four which then ignited exponentially more candles. People struggled to keep the light ablaze by protecting the flame with their hands. The storm still persisted. Protesters marched around the lake once and then concluded with a vigil and moment of silence.

As court cases tighten the noose around the POTUS, he is lashing out at others on the hill with racist rants. The deplorable conditions in the southern detention centers are further evidence of a platform of dehumanizing rhetoric. A family seeking asylum begged for their daughters sake since she had a congenital heart disease. A detention center doctor found that she did indeed have a heart condition. This toddler was told she must choose between her parents since one would be sent back across the border. She chose her mother but once her father was being escorted away she broke down and cried. How could a child be asked to choose between their parents? The doctor insisted the family be kept together for the child’s sake and he stayed with them overnight off the clock. The next day he found a different detention officer who agreed to keep the family together. Their future remains uncertain.

In Charlottesville, Neo Nazis chanted “Jews shall not replace us!” as they marched at night with tiki torches. A Unite the Right Rally white supremacist drove his car into peace loving counter protesters killing one woman, Heather Heyer, on that day in 2017. He was just sentenced life in prison plus over 400 years. The POTUS claimed there were “Very good people on both sides.” This is why Neo Nazis and his base love him so much. History always repeats itself. During the start of WWII the United States also closed it’s borders to Jews seeking asylum from Nazi Germany. Then as now, the US turned a blind eye. Southern detention centers are as dehumanizing as the American citizen Japanese interment camps of WWII. Orlando seems like a bubble of compassion in a country where the rhetoric of hate is always what makes the news. Brave people still stand as a light in the dark against hate. They give hate no safe harbor. Lets hope the storm will pass.

“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”

— Heather Heyer, her last post published on Facebook.