Things Just Ain't the Same Anytime the Hunter Gets Captured by The Game

Seeing Red: How One Man Kidnapped 335 million People

Captured By The Game

I am known for stating, ad nauseum, that “gravity and time are the things that discipline us. They are the two things that we must bow to; we can neither alter the one, nor replenish the other.” What I mean, in essence, is that the specter of our earthly, mortal demise keeps most of us from being more harmful to one another than we sometimes are. And, clearly, some of us are more prone to harming our fellow man and woman than others and I’ll leave that, at that…for now.

Imagine a world in which humans were/are immortal. People would be unbridled by existential consequences as fear keeps us alive in many aspects. Contrarily perhaps, just maybe, if we knew we would live forever we might do better as a species. Because we would be neutered of the ability and option to destroy each other. A most intriguing academic and philosophical query to ponder. Is it not?

The philosophical, cognitive and physically vicarious notwithstanding (and I’ll be the first to admit such things are a glorious recreational playground for the intellect and sensorium), let us cleave unto the stark reality of fear. The curse of fear. The gift of fear.

Red Alert

Some years ago, I was in Medford, Oregon (an article in and of itself) visiting a friend. I love wild mushrooms and we went hunting for them. My friend was an expert at harvesting mushrooms and at some point, I saw this thing (some type of fungi) that looked as ominous as perdition incarnate. Though I knew nothing about the species, it screamed ‘leave me alone asshole if you ever want to eat another mushroom.’ It was scarlet with white spots, and when I inquired about it my friend said, “don’t go near it.”

Like the aforementioned mushroom, red seems to be nature’s (and man’s) way of telling us something is dangerous, or caution is due. Blood is red. Stop signs and stoplights are red. Fire engines are red.

For decades, red has been the most popular nail polish for women in the United States, as is the case with lipstick. Notorious gangster John Dillinger was set up by the F.B.I. with a woman in a red dress. The woman in question was known as Anna Sage. Dillinger, quite literally, “saw red” and it was the last thing he saw before a trip to the morgue.

The “pales” on your “American” flag are red (and white, like that damned mushroom). Which is a most convenient segue into the red meat and potatoes of this disquisition. You see, your 45th president, Donald Trump, wears your flag. Literally and deadly seriously.

“Don’t go near it.”

He dons (I’m really sorry but I just could not dump that one) a blue western, albeit poorly tailored, suit. He always wears a white shirt. He is both ghastly and ghostly pale like the white “pales” on your flag, which is why he paints himself orange. And he wears a red necktie on most occasions, symbolic of political vampirism and violence.

Blood dripping down one’s chest from one’s chin. The only rare variation being a blue necktie from time to time, as he perceives himself a “blueblood” and the shades are either “sky” or “royal.” These realities can be neither fictionalized nor trivialized, not even by me.

In both philanthropic and merciful defense of his tailor, I surmise that Agent Orange is not the best physical specimen to fit.

The Kidnapping, The Hostages and the Bloody Crime Scene

It is a matter of historical record that I predicted Donald Trump being elected president…from the moment he announced. I am unsure if I am proud of that fact, but it, indeed, is a fact. Without unnecessary detail, even though I am from the “big city” I have a lot of farmer, hunter and country boy in me. I just chalk it up as another of the virtually unfathomable oddities that comprise my life.

Digression notwithstanding, in order to understand a crop, you must understand its roots, favorable growing conditions and how it grows. Of utmost importance is what type of soil/nutrients it requires. Okra will not grow on the beach, and you can’t, possibly, get grapes from a turd tree.

Thomas Jefferson famously proclaimed: “What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” He was not bullshitting.

If you understand that Mr. Jefferson meant exactly and precisely what he said, you ought not be surprised at the political advent of Donald Trump. Further, as a sterile matter of brutal fact and assuming you possess an intelligence quotient above room temperature, you should also have seen the bastard coming. If you did not you are either in such a state of denial that you require medication stronger than that which you are currently prescribed, or you are a noddy. Take your pick.

The United States adores thugs, as long as they are the European ones. Think about gangster movies and how La Cosa Nostra is romanticized, glamorized and glorified, or Thomas Jefferson for that matter. Just because you eat spaghetti by the truckload does not make you any less of a worthless, illiterate, cowardly murderous asshole than anybody else.

At his rallies, Trump compares himself to “the great gangster” Al Capone, just before he talks about the “thugs” running amok in U.S. streets and how he plans to shoot them on sight. Trump’s supporters are able to delineate the good thugs (like Trump and Capone) from the bad ones (the Darkies). What’s more, Trump is a coward and would run like the wind in the midst of some serious kinetic shit going down. A man’s hands, and countenance, tell all.

When Trump was elected in 2016, he did what he does best: he sold snake oil. The buyers of the snake oil saw themselves as aggrieved aggressors and hunters “taking back.” They would make America great again. Big bad, honking, truck driving, gun and bible toting white boys and gals ready to serve up some ass whuppin’. Trump was the game; they were the hunters. They never realized that they were the game, Trump was the hunter.

The rules don’t make the game, the game makes the rules. Since the day he was inaugurated, in nothing short of exquisite irony, Trump recites “The Snake” at all of his rallies and I will, most mercifully, spare you any further elucidation. Be that as it may, and as a courtesy to you, should you possess a masochistic penchant for the absurd, I herein provide you your fix pertinent to Mr. Trump’s poetic recitations. Orange Snake

Trump tapped into fear. He weaponized fear and he amassed immense political capital as a result of the social profiteering of fear. For the most part, “Americans” are scary anyway and primed for fearmongering for a myriad of reasons. Still, Trump has been brilliant in terms of his understanding of the sociopolitical marketplace. Talk shit all you want, that boy managed to kidnap every goddamned last one of you. I am no exception which, to my cosmic chagrin, is why I am writing this article.

Our ransom is just different.

Two of the things that Donald Trump has done that, despite his lack of erudition, eloquence and, likely, literacy that will forever canonize him in political history are his federal court appointments (especially the supreme court) and coining the term “fake news.” In doing just these two things, you became a hostage. Some willingly, some unwillingly; kidnapped, nonetheless.

Now, as a Black Man in the United States, I fully understand my people have been hostages from the time we were kidnapped in the world’s largest deportation and set foot in North America. For over four centuries we have remained so. Hostages, straight up.

The point I am attempting to make is, like most terrible things in the United States, it is less of a shock and revelation to us than it is to you. I am simply the letter-carrier, someone else wrote the letter and don’t shoot me just because it is addressed to you, and I happen to be the poor soul delivering it to your home. I’m just doing my job, M.F.

When I can cause you to question what you hear on the radio, what you read in print and what the slower ones among us watch on television, I have gained control of public confidence or, at least, undermined it. Suddenly terms like disinformation, misinformation and malinformation appear. Your mind has been kidnapped and you are, now, a psychological hostage.

None of us had ever heard these terms in everyday parlance before Trump. Many do not know what to believe and the societal cancer that is sewn is malignant. I know of people that have not spoken to relatives in years due to the Covid vaccine.

“Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd, is able to make you unjust.”

Donald Trump started restructuring the federal courts from the day he took office. By the time he left the “White” House, in a mere four years, he had appointed more than 200 judges to the federal bench, including nearly as many powerful federal appeals court judges in four years as Barack Obama appointed in eight.  Federal judges have lifetime tenure and normally remain on the bench long after the presidents who nominated them have left office.

In just four years, Trump appointed 54 federal appellate judges, one short of the 55 Obama appointed in twice the time. Trump also had a major influence on the United States Supreme Court. The three Supreme Court justices he appointed – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – are the most by any president since Ronald Reagan (who appointed four) and the most by any one-term president since Herbert Hoover. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett are all age 55 or younger. Research indicates that past justices who were appointed to the court when they were 55 or younger ended up serving for an average of nearly two decades.

The bloodletting has spanned from Charlottsville, Virginia shortly after Trump took office, to the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Jacksonville Florida in 2023. Though there exist many crime scenes, the ultimate one is the United States Supreme Court where, today, arguments were heard from Trump’s legal team proffering that the U.S. President is above the law and has “total immunity.” This leads me back to the necessity for consequence.

In reality, U.S. Presidents have committed some of the worst crimes in human history and not been held accountable. It is happening at this very moment. What makes Trump unique is his boldness in flaunting his untouchable status.

If a person has free reign to do whatever they wish and they face no accountability for that which they do, that is a very untenable prospect fraught with peril. If the United States, as full of shit as it is, really believes it operates with integrity, justice, “democracy” (where is an airsickness bag when I need one) and moral ascension there should be zero qualms with a president, or anyone else, being the same in the eyes of lady justice. I mean that heifer is supposed to be blind.

Isn’t she?

Today as the court heard arguments, the newest justice on the court, Judge Brown-Jackson, made one of the most salient, albeit meaningless, comments of all of the justices.

However, I do need to digress for a moment here. Is it a policy, requirement or rule that all supreme court justices are unattractive? Every last one of them looks as though they have been beaten with an ugly stick…for many moons. Good lord! Load the muskets! To the ramparts!

That was admittedly despicable; but to err is human, to forgive is divine.

My rare tendency towards being a temporal simpleton aside, Associate Justice Brown-Jackson said to Counselor Michael Dreeben: “Can you comment on the concern about having a president unbounded while in office… a president who knows that he ultimately does not have to follow the law because he is aware that there is nothing more than political accountability in terms of impeachment. We have amicus briefs here, for example from Professor Leiderman, who says a president would not be prohibited by statue from perjuring himself under oath about official matters. From corruptly altering destroying or concealing documents to prevent them from being used in an official proceeding. From suborning others to commit perjury. From bribing witnesses or public officials.”

Like I said, salient, but meaningless. Trump has this entire nation intimidated; from Joe Biden to Mitch McConnel. From the local school board to the supreme court. From Democrats to Republicans. He knows where he is, which is why he knows where he is at.

He thumbs his nose at a gag order daring you cowards to jail him (and you won’t) because he knows you are afraid of what his army might do. If they are willing to overrun your capitol, they will overrun your streets. Many of them in the military, law-enforcement, judges and other public officials.

You are a hostage. Your whole system is a hostage. And the only ones that don’t know it are the ones suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. If I might offer some words of solace, try not to feel too terribly bad because Black People in the United States are the largest group of Stockholm Syndrome victims on Earth.

Sans the author.