Enter the Dragon
The most memorable scene in the beloved 1973 kung-fu classic Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” is the mirror scene, where our hero, Lee (Lee), kills the uber-villain Han in the hall of mirrors–not before being cut several times before he finally figured out the truth to the illusion before him: “destroy the image [the reflection/what you think you see] and you will break the enemy.”
Now, today is the presidential inauguration of billionaire-businessman Donald Trump. He will be the 45th president of the United States, with the promise to make “America great again–or greater than ever before.”
Excuse me, but when has “America” (the United States, that is–we tend to forget that the U.S. is not the only country in North America and then there’s South America–and nobody, especially Trump supporters–wants to be associated with THAT America) ever been great?
Was slavery great?
Was the departure from British rule/control great? Look at all that tea they wasted. Tsk. Tsk.
Was the Civil War great? It’s 2017 and Mississippi still hasn’t recovered from it.
Was share cropping great?
Was the Great Depression great?
Were lynchings great?
Were enlistments into WWI, WWII, Vietnam, etc. great?
Were the McCarthy trials/blacklisting great?
Was the Civil Rights Movement great? Maybe the outcome was, but definitely not the reasons it had to start in the first place.
Were the Gulf War and the Iraqi War great?
Was the Recession, especially the housing market crash, great?
Were the Oklahoma City Bombing, the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center bombings, the overall damage done on September 11, 2001, the Boston Marathon bombing, etc. great?
Were Hurricane Katrina, Super Storm Sandy, etc. great?
Were the oil spills great?
Was the Flint water catastrophe great?
Were the shootings of unarmed black men by police officers (or want-to-be/wannabe police officers in the case of George Zimmerman) great?
Were the long prison sentences for victimless crimes, especially as they pertain to minorities, great?
Were the constant crimes posted on social media great?
Were the large number of sexual assault cases, especially on college campuses, great?
Was the prolific use of the N-word–no matter the f****** spelling–ever great?
Were homelessness, starvation, untreated mental illness, and abject poverty great?
And the sad thing is, this is the nadir. It would take probably another 30,000 blog posts–maybe more–to discuss the zenith of issues that made “America” not so great, let alone “okay.” Hell, the fact that Donald Trump is president challenges the United States’s claim to superiority.
Nevertheless, people see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Trump sounded good to you, and he began to look good to you. It’s like phone sex–the voice/message and fantasies created by it gets you every time.
So, he got you–a lot of you. Most of you protesters/backlashers are full of sh**. If you actually voted for Hillary, she would be president. You voted for Trump, or worse–you didn’t vote at all–and like all weasels, now you want hide behind a facade of injustice because it’s a better “look” for you.
But he’s in now. And we’re all along for the ride (I will say this: my life has not changed for the better or the worst because some schmuck was president; if you got through “W.”, trust me, you can get through anything).
Let’s see if he fulfills all those promises–let’s see if he can make the United States of “America”–good for EVERYONE for the first time in her history.
Being “great” is like a mirror, a reflection of an image that only rings true to me; and if we keep up this mirage, that somehow we were all well-off at a previous point in time, so we’re going to revisit it, and build upon it, then there is no doubt we will invite the enemy in.
And…
The enemy will destroy the image.
