"A Family" Acrylic on Board. Coyright Totsymae

Why has it been that folk run the other way when conversations come up on politics and religion? I get it and then I don’t. I know these are sensitive topics and can get on the heated side but aren’t these topics we need to be talking about in this time we’re living in? I mean, they don’t go away or get any better if we don’t have open discussions about them. It’s like sex, you know. It’s gonna be here. Sometimes, it’s good. Other times, it’s like, what the fuck, so we may as well open up some books, lay the cards on the table, put on the boxing gloves and get educated about it. That’s what brings me here today, folks.

Now. I may have my shit all twisted up and that’s why I’m soliciting your expertise on this little matter that’s been pinching on my nerves. Let me also say, maybe I take empathy too seriously, perhaps to the point that it makes no sense at all to feel anything. Worst yet, maybe what I have to say ain’t worth nothing. Be honest. You can tell me.

Well. Like you, I’ve been watching what’s been transpiring on this here globe. It’s spinning round and round, so what goes on in some other place has some kinda affect on what happens to you and me. For instance, if some young girl over in Africa is getting circumcised, as a woman, I feel that. I have a daughter, Little Totsy, so I feel that. Seriously. When my brother-in-law sat over here in my kitchen last weekend talking about the Gulf War he was in, that his unit was on the ground and didn’t know the war in Iraq had even started and they were walking the grounds and saw dead babies covered in blood with their mothers, I. Felt. That.

So. Now, we’re occupying cities across the nation. The dream of American folks’ been snatched up by Wall Street gamblers. We saw a similar movement going on in Egypt earlier this year and then, folk over in London caught the bug and finally, folk in America started saying hell naw, we’re tired of this shit too. So, there we go to marching, right. Though, somewhere along in there, we started looking at Libya’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Folk over there, according to reports, said he wasn’t making good on being the leader the world wanted him to be. I think it was the U.S. and some other folk that backed Gaddafi’s move to power. Correct me if I’m wrong on that. I very well could be. Well, when he got to backtalking and the problem became more prevalent that the poor were suffering, the wealth wasn’t spreading, and whatnot, it was a huge deal for the folk over there. Yeah, he’d done some things in the past too and he paid outta his pocket after a deal was worked out. Shit, what leader in power ain’t abused it? You know, the rebels ain’t got an endless supply of money to do all of what they’ve been doing, so they had to have some help from somebody, right?

Therefore. I’m trying to figure out, with your help, what I wanna know is what makes it okay to be glad about killing that man way over yonder? Was he doing anything any different over there than what those Wall Street gamblers did and Capitol Hill Gangsters do all the time? What makes us overlook Mitt Romney’s statement about selling foreclosed properties and letting investors buy them up by rich folk? Would the folk he aim to put out of those homes become like rebels in Libya? I kinda think yeah, ’cause they’re already occupying cities across the country. This is just my backroad logic, so if I’m drawing the wrong comparisons, tell me, ’cause I’m really trying to understand how we make certain situations okay. Does culture make it so? Is the American glass house made of some different shit? Can we really point the finger at the fallen leader anymore than we can at the folk in our own backyard? I ain’t trying to create nothing for the sake of having something to blog about, I’m just saying…

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