CUT TO: SUMMER OF 2016.
Obama was president and Pokémon Go was at an all time high— quite possibly was the closest we’ve come to a united people in recent memory.
I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school, and breeching my way into adulthood.
As any good adult-teenager hurtling through an agonizing existence does, I dropped acid and turned on the news. Big mistake.
“Black Lives Matter Protests.”
“Pulse Nightclub Shooting.”
“Donald Trump v Hilary Clinton”
Boom. Boom. Boom. These matters hit my chest like rounds of rubber bullets, and they hit hard as I was not yet supremely desensitized and tenderized to our grim reality the way I am now. I wasn’t completely jaded or cynical yet as I hadn’t fully caught a whiff of the rotten underbelly of the corrupt hellscape we call ‘MERICA.
Blissfully, I’d been sleepwalking. Though each subsequent American Event harshly peeled away the sheets of my mental slumber, I was only just beginning to fully awaken to the sober truth of what this country actually is:
A Cor(rupt)poration. A for-profit business model. A pyramid/ponzi scheme in the highest degree.
How was it that we could watch viral videos circulate of Black men being shot and killed by police for no reason at all, and be so powerless to change any laws?
How could 49 human souls, simply enjoying their lives, be shot dead in minutes, and nothing at all be done by the government to prevent such an action from occurring?
Wide-eyed, I watched as Donald Trump, renowned & reinvented conman, paraded as a “savior” for the common people (poor whites), and the Democratic party uplifted Hilary Clinton as the only viable alternative. Nauseating.
I racked my brain for answers, for the “Why?” of it all, then it finally hit me.
Capitalism. It always comes back to capitalism. Our government “leaders” were all bought and paid off by mega-corporations whose only interests were in furthering their profits and return on investments. The NRA. Citizens United. ALEC. The list goes on and on and both sides had blood on their hands.
It was so obvious all along, the truth callously hidden in plain sight. I felt horrified and angry, yearning for the words to capture these feelings & revelations.
In a spontaneously channeled poem it all came to me, and I wrote words down that 7 years later, still ring extremely (if not more) true to this day.
Since 2016, I wasn’t sure when the timing would be right to share this, but as countless children and civilians are mowed down, Black people are brutalized and murdered, and members of the government gawk as if nothing at all can be done; and with another presidential election looming in the not-so-distant horizon, I figured no better time to share this poem than now.
The United States Inc.
by Siete White