We invite you to join us for an exploration of human vulnerability and the timeless beauty of the unadorned form. “OBSESSIONS” is an ode to the human spirit, a celebration of the profound authenticity that lies with us.
Dr. Cornel West. Artwork by Thomcat23, Copyright 2023
Text by Malik Mubashshir, Copyright 2023
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The Impossible (and Unfortunate) Dream:
Cornel West’s Quixotic Bid for the Presidency.
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Cornel West should absolutely not be running for president.Now, don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against Dr. West per se. He is an accomplished scholar, prolific author, public intellectual, social justice activist, pop culture celebrity icon, as well as a voice on behalf of the oppressed and downtrodden.
That said, there is nothing in West’s history that suggests that he is remotely qualified for the position of Chief Executive of the United States of America.Before some of you respond, “What qualifications did Donald Trump have?” allow me to say, you make my point.Is that where we set the bar of national expectation for this country’s leadership? Let us look at this situation realistically.
1. Cornel West is a political novice.He is a gifted and eloquent intellectual who has never held public office.A visit to his campaign website: https://www.cornelwest24.org reveals West’s political wish list. If elected, President West goals are “Dismantling the Empire,” “Unleashing Democracy” and “Saving the Planet.” It is a platform chock full of excellent ethical positions and prophetic passion – with no hint of how he plans to achieve these lofty goals in the hardscrabble game of realpolitik.
Perhaps one of the early warning signals that West is not ready for political primetime was his affiliation with the People’s Party. Started in 2017 the People’s Party has been bogged down in allegations of sexual harassment on the part of its party leadership, and general organizational dysfunction, including a lack of democratic processes, obscure and questionable finances, ableism and racism, among other things. As if this weren’t enough to give candidate West pause, the People’s Party has no track record and no nationwide ballot access for a serious presidential campaign.Was West not aware of his chosen party’s liabilities?As criticism poured in for his association with this group, West soon dropped the People’s Party and decided to work with the Green Party, which at least has a history of running presidential candidates for decades.
2. Which brings us to the next point.Third-party presidential candidates, even in the best-case scenarios with widely popular candidates, are doomed to failure and can only serve as spoilers rather than as a viable option. Thus, even if Candidate West were able to mount a successful campaign, that is, able to generate enough popular support for the massive fundraising necessary, able to get on the ballot in every state, and establish a platform with broad appeal to the electorate, he would still – if history is any guide – find support drastically reduced come Election Day. There has been a Green Party and Libertarian candidate in every presidential year in recent elections and they rarely received more than 1% of the popular vote in presidential elections. There’s a good reason why Bernie Sander’s chose to run as a Democrat rather than a Green Party candidate in 2016. He was serious about his run and was in it to win it!
3.This leads me to the very worst thing about Cornel’s ill-timed run for the Oval Office. With Cornel West having slim to no chance of winning his bid for the presidency, what will he accomplish by running?Simple. He will probably be a spoiler whose campaign will siphon some votes away from the sitting President, Joe Biden.We have seen this play before with many observers believing that Jill Stein’s third-party run in 2016 took some votes from Hillary Clinton and helped Trump to win the election. Now, to be clear, I have serious doubts that Cornel West has the mass appeal to win over a large number of voters. That said, whether West draws great support or little fanfare, the 2024 election is too critical to take that risk. Even West has said that the country may face a choice of a “neo-facist like Brother Trump” (brother fascist?) or a “milquetoast neo-liberal like Brother Biden.”Think about that for a moment.Are we really making a case for the moral equivalence of a swing toward fascism with a business-as-usual-moderate-liberal option?If ever there was a time for the voters to “choose the lesser of two evils”, this is that time. Of course, we can’t know yet how Trump’s legal problems will affect his run, but he is still far and away the front runner for the GOP. That should tell progressive and moderate voters all they need to know about their choice. Even if the GOP has to lean toward DeSantis, or a similar wannabe Trump, it represents just another cycle of rabid culture wars, racism, sexism, corruption, hypocrisy and the usual fare of today’s Republican Party.This is the party that wants to gut Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements. That wants to remove the true history of this country and its foundation upon genocide and slavery from school curriculums. The party that is hell bent on taking away women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ trans rights to safety and security. This is the party that wants to make America great again by reversing every civil rights victory won by the struggle, blood and tears of African Americans, and turning the clock back to the 1950s. With so much at stake in the 2024 election, with our country’s future and the future of our seniors, our youth, and the ones who Cornel rightly recognizes as “the least of these,” tenuously hanging in the balance, can we really afford a spoiler’s vanity run? With our nation fighting a close and pitched battle for its very soul, can we really afford Candidate West at such a time as this?
Revealingly, in his campaign video, West concludes by asking, “Do we have what it takes? We shall see. But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.”
At least he knows he’s going down.Let’s not go down with him.
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About The Author: Malik Mubashshir is a beloved History teacher at Friends Select School, Philadelphia. Mr. Mubashshir is an alum of Harvard University with Master’s degree in Religion and Religious Studies. This is his first contribution to the blog.
Photo of George Krause and Tony Ward courtesy of W. Keith McManus, Copyright 2023
Text by Tony Ward, Copyright 2023
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Quality Time With a Legend
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I first met George Krause at an exhibit of his work in 1974 at Photopia Gallery on South Street in Philadelphia. This was the first time I was introduced to his work and was taken immediately by his mastery of the craft. His early black and white street photography from the 1960’s are included in the canon of photographic history evidenced by his inclusion in the seminal publication in 1973, Looking at Photographs, 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art by John Szarkowski, who at the time was the director of photography at the MOMA.
We became friends when I invited him to exhibit his work while I was a graduate student at the Rochester Institute of Technology from 1977 to 1979. Here is a draft of a letter I sent to George regarding the invitation to exhibit his work at the institute and his response.
Letter to George Krause from the Tony Ward Archives 1978.
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From the archives of Tony Ward 1978
George, now 86 years young called me on the eve of the recent annual Photo Review picnic as he and fellow octogenarians Larry Fink and Neal Slavin were being celebrated at this years event which was held at Haverford College in Haverford, Pa. On the eve of the celebrated gathering George mentioned that he was going to visit noted photographer Lawrence Salzmann at his charming home in Powelton Village the day before the picnic. Many thanks to W. Keith McManus for capturing this intimate moment with a dear friend and mentor to many photographers world wide.
Insurrectionist Stewart Rhodes. Art work by Thomcat23, Copyright 2023
Free Reign
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By A.H. Scott, Copyright 2023
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For a moth with a constant craving for the flame of fame, Donald Trump would diminish without the oxygen that is just relinquished to him, time and time again. This time, the king of the callous and cruel kingdom has taken full rein of power when given free reign by CNN.
They gave it with slightest of resistance and he took it. Or, should I just say he grabbed it? He pounced and eviscerated with sharpest of tongue having a penetrative finality.
When you’ve got free reign, well, of course there is never any real consequence. You can just jet off in your private plane and golf, and golf, and golf some more. Oh, yes, anywhere around the globe, you can travel around and there is no consequence at all.
Screw being humane! You go ahead and just do whatever you feel or want!
Oh yeah, and by the time the law does catch up with ya’, it won’t matter, cuz’ you can delay, obfuscate, and just play out the clock or beat it, which is done so deftly by you.
On Wednesday, May 10th, 2023, it all was all there. Donald Trump unbound of any dimension of decency. It was only 24 hours prior on Tuesday, May 9th that he was found liable for defamation and sexual abuse by a New York jury.
Would anybody think a multi-million dollar verdict could possibly steer the former President of the United States in pulling back from going over the edge of normality in tossing a boulder of salt into a wound? Hell no! Trump lets it rip!!
Trump’s hack-kneed performance of some sort of bottom-feeder humorist of Luciferian banter and hollow strains of that audience’s laugh track exemplified whiffs of Riefenstahl to it, as that town hall at St. Anselm College in Golfstown, New Hampshire was televised on CNN. Oh yes!! I just wrote that. It is exactly what I am comparing that ‘town hall’ CNN hosted as a poisonous propaganda of Donald Trump’s willful triumph.
“CNN went in the tank to get Donald Trump on there” – Chris Christie, former governor, R-New Jersey[1]
Free reign comes, whether it is taken or given. It isn’t some amorphous thing out there in the ether, above the fray.
Donald J. Trump in the past has been positioned to be denied the reins of absolute power. In 2016, the Republican electorate minted him as their presidential candidate. And then, the odious “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced and his political plug could have been pulled. But, oh no, they stuck with him and dragged him across the victory line into the White House.
Once inside the White House, did Donald Trump change? (snickers) Of course he didn’t.
The first impeachment could have led to a removal from office by Senate Republicans voting with their colleagues across the aisle. But, hey, the guys and gals in the GOP stuck with him.
I mean, how much worse would Donald J. Trump get? I guess it’s like what Maine Senator Susan Collins quipped about the President learning his lesson[2] back during that time.
“I believe that the president has learned from this case” and that he will be much more cautious in the future.” – Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine[3]
But, hey, Susie – the only lesson Donnie learned was how to concoct something more monstrous than just a phone call of extortion over military aid to a foreign country and bring the destruction of democracy right into the halls of Congress.
In the tumultuous tornado of events that surrounded the days before, during and after January 6th, 2021, the reign of Donald Trump was on that uncertain precipice of maintaining the perceived or actual political strength which he was dealing with. Yet, as bizarre and cock-eyed of sanity as it is to admit, Donald actually was holding the Trump card over the Republicans, who had run scared for their literal lives through the halls of Congress from the maddening crowd of insurrectionists aiming to keep their leader in office, by any means necessary.
Kevin McCarthy chided Trump’s actions on January 6th, as did Mitch McConnell right along with him. Yet, as the days slipped away, McCarthy went down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss up to Trump and McConnell made a decision not to vote for the affirmative in Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment.
Oops, another chance lost for the Republicans to wash that man right out of their hair. But, hey, they made their choice to do that, as their constituents back home showed their allegiance to Trump.
Now, past his White House years, Donald Trump is a man under investigation by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith and District Attorneys Alvin Bragg and Fawnee Willis. And as of May 9th, he has been found liable for defamation and sexual abuse of a woman by a New York jury.
And, to that woman named E. Jean Carroll, I applaud her courage and her patience. At any time along these years since she has taken Donald Trump to court, Ms. Carroll could have just given up and slunk back into the shadows of silence, and dropped the case. But, she did not. She stood with an iron spine and focused vision for justice.
In a sane world, a person who had just been found liable for multi-millions for defamation and sexual abuse would hold their head low and keep their mouth shut. But, in today’s America, we are in the maelstrom of Trump’s Kingdom of Cruelty, which is that acceleration of abhorrence which exposes the being that Donald Trump actually is. He breathes contempt for humanity, as his adoring crowd snickers and scoffs at the basest regaling of tawdry tales of that man’s brutality.
Donald Trump’s free reign ends when the Republican lawmakers and electorate decides to turn their back on him and all which he embodies. But, that is unlikely, for he is the reflection of their intolerance[4], misogyny, and an all-out sadistic streak of fervency.
“I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican” – Senator Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama[5]
Is Donald Trump leading or is he just following their lead?
CNN may have given him the stage. And, some in among the political masses that are wanting to turn the page. Yet, it is that thirty to forty-plus of the Republican voting electorate that pumps his rage. For those that are the believers, Donald Trump is their sage.
In fact, when I use the word ‘believer’, it isn’t used as a folly. Donald seems to have his own lifeline[6] to the big guy in the sky with the group called “Pastors for Trump”.
“We pray for our leaders. And God we ask that every single man and every single woman that has been elected who refuses to bow down to your will, God, may you remove them and you uproot them and may you replace them with men and women who know your voice and will obey your voice.” – Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, founder of Pastors for Trump[7]
Free reign is America’s pain; for what may be just, is not for everyone’s gain.
“Free Reign”
By
A.H. Scott
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“Free Reign” FOOTNOTES:
1.-Chris Christie: ‘CNN went in the tank’ for Donald Trump – Raw Videos via ABC
2.-Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski Think Donald Trump Is No Longer a Danger – Slate Magazine
6.-President Donald Trump Joins Pastors For Trump LIVE – Jackson Lahmeyer
7.-Pro-Trump Pastor Prays for God to ‘Uproot’ Lawmakers Who Won’t Bow Down – Realtime News
https://youtu.be/z9bo-9uscLw
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A.H. Scott
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.H. Scott is a poet and essayist based in New York City and is a veteran contributor to this blog. To access additional articles by A.H. Scott, click here: https://tonyward.com/a-h-scott-the-through-and-through/
“She’s going to go through some things.” – President Donald J. Trump, July 25, 2019[1]
In 2019, when then President Donald J. Trump said this in a telephone conversation to President Vlodymr Zelensky about United States Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch[2], it was just another gross choice of words tossed out by the tactless head of state who was trying to besmirch Ms. Yovanovitch[3] and strong-arm President Zelensky for manufactured dirt on Biden.
Yet, in this moment of April 2023, the words he spoke back then have seemingly become the ultimate karma for him. Like the old adage goes, turnabout is fair play.
And, now, Donald – you are going to go through some things. You are going to go through the process. And, don’t think you are above catching a case. Because, Mr. Trump, you have caught a case. And, now you are going to through some things. Some things you never thought you in your gold toilet world would have never thought could come your way. It is called THE PROCESS.
It’s not your guilt. It’s not your non-guilt. It is the process through the criminal justice system that you are now a cog in the machinery of.
As I write this, I am not even getting into the merits of the charges or the indictment which has come from the grand jurors in the case. Or, even the verdict that shall come at the conclusion of this court case.
I am just focusing upon the process itself. And, the fact that now it is being proved that no man is above the law. Donald Trump is going to go through the tough slog of a process which every other American citizen has to go through. It’s tough, unpleasant. But, it is what it is. And, for all of those who are grousing and howling over the fact that this person was even brought up on charges, I say this: He’s going to go through some things. That is a fact. You can’t sit at the defense table for him. He’s gotta’ do that for himself. Even his secret service detail isn’t going to do time for him if the verdict is that of guilt. He’s a grown ass man of almost eight decades. He’s the one who has to take it; because, he is the person who is ‘Individual-1’[4] in previous court documentation.
Donald Trump has lawyers on retainer, unlike the rest of us out here in America who would have to scrape by with a legal aid lawyer or public defender if we had to go to court. So, he’s not some poor, pitiful persecuted soul that needs a glory choir or a J6 Prison choir to hum a hymn of salvation for him. Karma has come to your table, Mr. Trump. And, the bill of your past actions has come due.
At Centre Street and all the other courthouses in the Foley Square area of Manhattan, there are people going through various levels of the process night and day and day and night, 24/7/365. Have no doubt that none of them want to be going through the process either. But, you know what – they take it. And, now for once in your life, you have to take it, Donald.
Take it deeply and take it truly, Mr. Trump.
After all, you always have said that you are the common man of the people. Well, now’s your turn to be common, Donald.
Being a commoner like the rest of us, you must now push doors open for yourself to make an entrance[5] when going from the processing room where you get fingerprinted and into the courtroom to have the 34 counts you are charged with read out loud by the prosecutors.
As a criminal defendant, a man who was once the most powerful leader of the free world was now seated with his attorneys[6] at a table and having two bailiffs flanked behind where he was situated. Ironically enough, the one court officer that was positioned directly behind Mr. Trump was an African-American woman. Oh, the visual of that was richer than a million bars of gold, as a woman of color was overseeing[7] a person who viewed her as less than or unworthy of his acknowledgement as an equal human being to himself.
Yet, this person seated at the defense table seems to have lost that affect of arrogance exchanged for a cloak of cowardice in the locale of a courtroom.
Donald Trump is running. He’s running scared and empty of lost illusions of being a man of power and frittered away wealth. Speaking of which, even he cannot stroke off enough coins from his followers in the current claim of persecution to fill his need for cash-cash-cash.
Finally, he’s just a recently indicted[8] citizen running his mouth. In running that mouth like a babbling brook or falls of Niagara; Trump still thinks he’s the man running the show of what will happen and how things will happen. Uh-uh. Not anymore. You are now stuck in the process of the criminal justice system.
Nobody – which includes the former President of the United States of America is above getting slapped with a gag order from a judge. So, hey, Donald, you keep on swiping and sniping at the Manhattan District Attorney[9] Alvin Bragg (and, his family) and also Judge Juan Merchan (and, his family) with some daydream of thinking you can do that without any comeuppance.
Even for you, Mr. Trump, there can be a lengthier leash of time and dimension over what is and can be verbalized by you. But, at some point there’s a gag[10] and a muzzle that you can be acquainted with.
Any citizen can catch a case. Yeah, and none of us would like it. But, shit, we wouldn’t be huffin’ n’ puffin’ in distress over being tapped on the shoulder by the authorities. We would just have to take it and go to court[11] to handle it. Sit your butt at the defense table with a legal aid lawyer or if one is lucky a paid defense counsel and go through the evidence that the prosecution presents. The jury will sit and listen to witnesses. And, voila – thumbs up or thumbs down by the jury. Yep!
Donald Trump and all who are in his crying choir are acting as if he was just strolling along Fifth Avenue and police cars with sirens came up on him, cuffed him and tossed his ass in the back of the cruiser, okay? He was given that largesse of being able to surrender to the court. In fact, how many of the Trump cult would be given that space? I’ll tell you straight up, none of you would.
Only one person is going to be in that courthouse on Centre Street dealing with what those 34 charges are. And, his name is Donald John Trump.
“Spent time there today as you possibly read, with a local failed district attorney, charging a former President of the United States for the first time in history on a basis that every single pundit and legal analyst said, “There is no case, there’s no case.” – Donald Trump[12], April 4th, 2023 (post-indictment speech at Mar-a-Lago)
And, if that is true, when you go through the process completely and are found not guilty by a jury then you will be free of these 34 charges from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. But, then again, there’s many a case about to brew around your galaxy, Mr. Trump. So, make sure you keep that plane of yours fueled up for other locales around this country for many months in the future.
Mr. Grab Em’ by the P-word/S-Hole Countries/Fine People On Both Sides/Gotta Fight Like Hell For Your Country/and etc. and etc. is the man who is going through that certain something – and it’s called the process. Man up, Donald! Deal with it!
“The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.” – Donald Trump[12], April 4th, 2023 (post-indictment speech at Mar-a-Lago)
Um, no, no. That is not what the 34 charges are about. It wasn’t a fearless defense of a nation. It was a criminal cover-up on behalf of your appendage. Oddly enough, it brings me to a thought of wonder, where is Melania?
Suddenly, she is invisible and silent on behalf of her husband. Not even a peep or press release on him being innocent[13] of these charges has come from her corner of the Trump kingdom.
Donald made his bed (and, many more) and will have to live with it. The third Mrs. Trump is a devoted mother raising their son, Barron. Away from the glaring lights of the hubbub in the ballroom of Mar-A-Lago and the verbal battling surrounding her husband’s legal doings up in Manhattan, this spouse is trying to maintain a smidgen of dignity in the swirl of Donald’s quagmire[14] of dubious doings.
As for her spouse, all he cares about is keeping up the appearance that his financial house is of sterling assets and zero liabilities.
“I don’t need banks. We have a lot of cash. I built a great business with my family, built a fantastic business. I have a son here who’s done a great job and I have another son here who’s done a great job. Tiffany and Ivanka and Barron will be great someday. He’s tall. He is tall and he’s smart.” – Donald Trump[12], April 4th, 2023 (post-indictment speech at Mar-a-Lago)
Most people get indicted and lay low. Not Donald Trump; he goes on the attack against public servants, while sputtering his fantastical daydreams of recapturing the White House for the second time in 2024.
“In the wings, they’ve got a local racist democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call, even more perfect than the one I made with the president of Ukraine.” – Donald Trump[12], April 4th, 2023 (post-indictment speech at Mar-a-Lago)
11,780 votes which were spoken from President Trump’s lips cannot be erased from an audiotape a la Rosemary Woods back in the Nixon era. We all heard it and now the judicial system will do what the system is going to do in the process of the grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia.
But, hey, it would only be a fool to take to poking and prodding at the prosecutor who is investigating him over top secret documents. I guess it takes a Trump to fall into that foolish vortex.
“Then you have a radical left lunatic known as a bomb thrower, who is harassing hundreds of … my people day after day over the boxes hoax, do you know the boxes hoax as we call it?” – Donald Trump[12], April 4th, 2023 (post-indictment speech at Mar-a-Lago)
So, the grievance performance of Donald John Trump continues to roll along, as day turns to night, night turns to day, and he erroneously squawks of mythical plight.
The through and through of the process of the American judicial system has come to you, as the whining and wailing won’t unwind the indictment or make the charges you are faced with vanish. Once this process begins, it runs to its’ conclusion for whomever is named in the indictment.
Rest your heels at the defense table and get to know the location of the restrooms in the courthouse on Centre Street, because this reality for you Donald J. Trump is now your life.
Still as he thinks it is still 2016 and he is royal leader of a juggernaut of years gone by and heralded as some sort of Orange Jesus by those who think they hold court as nobility and jesters in the gambit of politics would be a non-ending glide of ascendancy, they are all sinking in quicksand of consequence.
Well, it’s 2023 and I stand among the peasants outside of the Trump kingdom to say to all who think a certain person is not meant to face a discomfort of the American judicial system four words: Let Them Eat Cheeseburgers!!
Vive, le Process!!!
“The Through and Through”
By
A.H. Scott
“The Through and Through” – FOOTNOTES:
1.-Marie Yovanovitch: I Felt ‘Threatened’ By Trump – Politico
2.-“TAKE HER OUT”: CHILLING RECORDING CAPTURES TRUMP THREATENING UKRAINE AMBASSADOR MARIE YOVANOVITCH – Vanity Fair
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.H. Scott is a poet and essayist based in New York City and is a veteran contributor to this blog. To access additional articles by A.H. Scott, click here: https://tonyward.com/a-h-scott-thoughts-on-memory/