If Truth Is Detrimental To A Nation Perhaps That Nation Ought Be Indicted

Isn't It True...

Opening Statement: The Glass Menagerie "Exhibit A”

In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, the primary moral is the destructive nature of living in the past and clinging to illusions instead of facing reality. The play explores how escapism provides only temporary comfort. That temporal comfort ultimately leads to disappointment and unhappiness.

It is a dirge about putrescent porcelain souls entombed in urns that are cracked, displayed, and dusted daily. The Glass Menagerie is less play; than it is exhibit. An exhibit of people embalmed in memory and addicted to what never was, clinging to illusions.

Williams’ play is no Southern or “Hillbilly” elegy, it is Amerikana. Illusion as architecture. Nostalgia as anesthesia. Truth hidden in mythology. A defendant that saunters through a museum lined with mirrors covered in arrogance, comforting racism, and cultural cowardice. Mirrors additionally covered with hypocrisy.

A blanket over reflection is not protection, it is policy.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that I will present you with a case of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I will function as both prosecutor and Black “radical” truth-teller that will pull down the blankets on the museum’s mirrors. Do not interpret this case as violence. Do not call it “too much.” Do not label it as anger. Because what it is, is revelation. In a courtroom, the prosecutor represents the people, not themselves.

The Defendant’s Glass Jaw: “Exhibit B”

In the brutal sport of boxing, a glass jaw is a vulnerability where one is easily knocked out via a single hard blow to the chin or jaw. This situation is due to lack of conditioning, insufficient training or damage from past cerebral concussions. In essence it is a weak spot.

Down goes Frazier, down goes Frazier, down goes Frazier!

Cross Examination and Preponderance of The Evidence: Isn’t It True?

Isn’t it true that approximately 96% of the Original American population was wiped out following European invasion, primarily due to disease, warfare, and forced displacement? Isn’t it true that Europeans brought diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza to Original Americans that had no immunity, leading to widespread epidemics and high mortality rates? Isn’t it true that Europeans slaughtered those Americans to steal the land and its resources? Isn’t it true that policies like the Indian Removal Act led to the forced relocation from ancestral lands, often resulting in starvation, disease, and death during the journey (which we now see in Palestine)?

Isn’t it true that you kidnapped and forced Alkebulanians to North Amerika to be enslaved, brutalized and raped? Isn’t it true that rape is the reason why they have so many different hues, hair textures and other physical attributes unlike any other group? Isn’t it true that their transatlantic journey from Alkebulan to North America, known as the Middle Passage, typically lasted between two and three months, though it could range from one to six months depending on factors like weather conditions?

Isn’t it true that journey was characterized by horrific conditions, with enslaved Alkebulanians chained together, naked, and forced to lie in filth (vomit, feces, menstrual discharge, blood, snot, urine and…tears)? Isn’t it true that likely far more of these people died horrifically than even the Original American genocide or the “holocaust” simply because they were not considered as human beings but property, thereby having no birth or death records?

Isn’t it true that they were lynched and picnics were held, including your children, as Black bodies swung like Strange Fruit from magnolia trees? Isn’t it true that your “Black and White” police vehicles are derivatives of slave patrols, just as are the police themselves? Isn’t it true that the descendants of those enslaved Alkebulanians are disproportionately, and regularly, murdered, abused and brutalized by police with relative impunity, if not immunity? Isn’t it true that the targets that your police fire on in training are an image depicting a black humanoid silhouette on a white background? Isn’t it true that the youngest person ever fried in your electric chair was a little Black child named George Stinney; so diminutive in size that the chair had to be modified to cook his tiny frame?

Isn’t it true that their names were erased, given they were “property?” Isn’t it true that their languages were erased (and they spoke many)? Isn’t it true that their “witchdoctor” religions were erased and Christianity foisted upon them to give subservience some type of spiritual credibility? Isn’t it true that cultural genocide was committed upon them?

Isn’t it true that you are the only people to use a nuclear weapon on a civilian (or any) target; yet you demand no others do so? Isn’t it true that Israel has “undeclared” nuclear weapons, refuses inspections by the IAEA but that is acceptable to you? Isn’t it true that you, in the last 20 years, have killed millions in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and to speak nothing of so-called AFRICOM? Isn’t it true that you have assassinated leaders not only in your own nation, but around the globe?

Isn’t it true that you killed millions in Vietnam? Isn’t it true that twice as much ordnance was dropped in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia than all world wars combined? Isn’t it true that half a century later there is unexploded ordnance in all of these countries and it continues to kill and maim; often children? Isn’t it true that as a nation you have abdicated responsibility for subsidizing and eradicating this UXO (Unexploded Ordnance)?

Isn’t it true that you only fight wars with Europeans when it is white people killing white people? And isn’t it true that the overwhelming majority of your violence and war is directed towards the world’s majority—melanic people? Isn’t it true that never, ever, have you gone to war with Europeans that are killing black, brown, red or yellow people?

You no longer have the right to remain silent.

Closing Argument: Hillbilly Eulogy

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I began the people’s case by referencing the seminal play by the legendary Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie. I decided to use the play as an emblem, an “exhibit” of how this country preserves its past, real or imagined, not to learn from it…but to escape to it.

The time for reckoning has arrived and the universal order of things, ultimately, bend toward and demand justice. The people have laid out a damning case of repeated criminal activity that shows a clear pattern. The judge will issue instructions to you before you begin deliberations.

The judge will likely speak of many things, but the one thing I can assure you of is that the judge will talk about justice and your responsibility to it. That means you must return a guilty verdict in this case. In the words of Ayn Rand: “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."

The prosecution rests.