The Non-Impeachment
An Essay on the Love of the House of Privilege
First things, the above photo is a Getty image. That is what was acquited today, not just the insurrection of the former President of the United States.
Second: No, I did not watch the trials.
Scroll past the triggering aquital of privilege and repeat after me: I am safe (if you are reading this, you probably are…safe).
Let’s create an emotional boundary. Boundaries help us process and control. The image above requires developing emotional boundaries which is why I did not watch the United States Senate Republicans aquit treason. I was not born here; my parents immigrated here. It means they chose here as did I. We chose and we stay and that takes signifigant emotional compartmentalization.
So how, on St.Valentine’s Day Weekend, do we process history, reality, and hope against the need for self-appreciation and brotherly love? Boundaries.
I seek to have the emotional boundaries like the ones my father has running around his aura like a Black man in Avatar Mode— soldered together by immigrant fortitude and ancestral righteousness.
I’m not there, yet.
But no, I knew the privileged of the priviliged white men of America would fail the feigned spirit of their ancestor’s constitution.
I mean, it was written for their entitlement of freedom. We’re still 3/5 men. Remember?
So I knew. We knew. We wanted to not know, but we knew— which is why we, as Black people, are not as emotional about this non-impeachment, no-accountability waving, faux patriotism, not worth one-salt-of-the-Earth expense of tax payer dollars trying to do justice.
When We Be Knowin’
- November Election Week: see, we didn’t know the Biden-Harris ticket would win (which is a blithering shame to see what they came out for) but we knew we put in elbow grease into that campaign…despite our feelings. It was about our survival.
- December Transition: See, we didn’t know if Biden would keep his promises with his appointments and administration but we knew that we built that house and the House of Privilege would show out at every brick and nail (stay with me, I explain this later).
- January 5, 2021 Senate races: we didn’t know the limitless reserve of Stacey Abrams and Black women and Indigineous people hence jubilation and praise ensued that we we’re granted two more years of being safe in our skin — from racism, not a viral death mongering pandemic. That’s how you praise Jesus in a storm — by finding a rain coat that can last until mid-term elections.
- January 6, 2021 Capital Domestic Terrorism/Insurrection: we sure as heck didn’t know and lacked the imagination to envision how far privilege could extend…or climb while carring confereate flags.
- February 13, 2021 Impeachment Vote: we knew. Oh, we knew.
The House that Racism Built
We knew racism is the land that the House of Privilege eternally rests upon. That House would never fall on itself while it’s owner’s children cling to it in abundance, paying prisoners to till the grounds and plant its crops. The men of that House will not easily leave it.
Hear me — they 👏🏾 will 👏🏾 fight 👏🏾before 👏🏾 they👏🏾 leave👏🏾it.
They prove that to us each and every day. Those grounds still produce for them. They can tell you that they’ve changed and that the House has new wood, has been renovated, and had a spiritual cleansing but it is a spiritual lie. God never said let me heal those other idols that you worship.
Jonah 2:8 “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.
He said burn ‘em. Throw them away. Cast them out if you want to be in Christ. We don’t need gold, idols, or the need to worship a false sense of security that will always be subject to the prejudice of the interpreter. God said miss Him with it so miss me with it as well.
That House of Privilege is built on racist grounds with blood added to it with each transaction. There is no false sense of security. We know that we are safe for about two years, maybe four. We knew the United States Senate Republicans would fail.
We are not Romeo and Juliet. The death that democracy was dealt today was not accidental. Republicans did not initiate the death, we did. Democracy is a Phoenix — a chaos magic of righteousness, adrenaline, destruction, and refining bestowing itself upon the telepathic consciousness of the Chosen. She, the Phoenix, cannot be transacted. Yet and still, she had to die today to get more people out of that House. Even if it was 6 more senators in the pursuit of preserving peace, that House is under siege.
The former House Master tried to kill his children. For a moment of madness, he treated them the same as the prisoners who work the fields and produce for the House. And for that moment in madness, they needed saving…by us. In fact, more need saving. The American Hero, Harriet Tubman, said she’d save more Americans if they had only known they were enslaved. She describes that people needing to be saved still required one important element to leave that House and be free.
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What she describes is courage.
If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. — Harriet Tubman
Privileged men who benefit from racism; do not believe in the flag; do not believe the pledge, their oath, democracy, or Lady Liberty, acquited madness and we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted and emotional by it. They did it because, while a majority of them lack a moral compass and any integrity at all, a small group of them who are convicted by their “but I’m a good person” spirit lack courage to do what prisoners of slavery did at the behest of Harriet Tubman. Can we blame people for lacking the courage to fight? Yes, if they used their words to take an oath to do so.
Desertion is illegal for a reason.
An army of deserters is no army at all and that is what we have: sworn paid indentured servants weilding the power of decision. And now they need saving from a House they built — herein lies a tumultuous problem.
Courage
I’ve been slowly gathering nuggets of wisdom and stories from my father in a collection. I want them to be the proverbs I give to my children. They sustain me and my friends often these days. One has been on my lips in abundance.
My father once told me: in the face of adversity, a white man who lacks courage still has his privilege; a Black man who lacks courage has nothing.
One is fought for, the other is bestowed. So in essence, you either earn and own your actualization or you accept the lackthereof in comfort.
You need courage when you’re Black or Indigeounous…
Without courage, a white man can exist on privilege. He can still go back to the House built on racism and be fed, sheltered, cared for, given a job harvesting racism, and showing off how much their renovated House has improved the neighborhood and subsequent city.
He has not affected his quality of life by not choosing courage to do the job he took an oath to execute. He fails yet the consequence is gain.
He is fine. They are all fine.
Yet, without privilege, it takes courage to be whole; to wake up and walk down the street past that racist land everyday. It takes courage to be ridiculed for not pledging to the land that killed your parents, grandparents, and Black sons; raped your Black and Brown daughters, inserting itself in their DNA and offspring. It takes courage to be crucified for not paying homage to that House.
That House is revered. It was the first house on this land and all the other houses are headed by people from that first House’s family. That house has produced 15, 16, at least 17 generations if not more of like-thinkers — a society. That society engineered the hospitals, police departments, schools, and government that operate this Republic. A Republic all built around that House resting on bloodied, racistly-acquired land.
It takes courage to walk away from that House and do something right when the entire house is doing and perpetrating something heinous. It’s like a scene out of Ares — a hearken terror of erasure beckoning heroes and heroines. It takes a beyond mortal fortitude to enter that House. It takes the utmost human courage to stand outside the House and speak truth.
It takes courage to walk by the House, stare its offspring in the face, and sustain their pride knowing their House is suffocating your lineage. That House hates you.
You need courage to leave that Republic with the haunted air, sucralose sweetened poison emitting from the ground in its oldest alleys drawing in dreamers like sirens, but never revealing that this Republic has a price. You need courage to pay it. You need courage to stay, pour lavendar on the dream-shattered pavement, swing an axe at the brittle seams, and let something beautiful and natural find light to heal. You need courage to rest, dream, and fight. Without it, you are nothing in the shadow of all that oppression. That would kill a man without privilege.
That would make him chaff in the wind. Who can fight for a man that is not there?
You need courage when you’re Black or Indigeounous.
You cannot pass.
They know your scent, your hair, your voice, your callous hands, the strength of your soul heavy in your footsteps weighed down by ancestors who will not leave and a God who will not forsake you. They can hear your song and rhythms echo down the street. They capture it in cloves and tie it to the chimes of their windows and doors to make a stolen harmony for which they reward themselves.
They know you exist. You are not invisible. Your grandmother’s blood seasons their food though they call it fusion.
Your brothers have fought their wars, the ones that we were not present to wage. Some of them, mislead by courage, left to defend the House. They saw the world and returned as veterans of justice. They fought alongside you. They breathed sweat within your sweat. You have bled in each other’s wounds. They returned to the Republic, to the House and were rejected because they layed with you, not in power but in service. To fight for them would mean to fight for you.
And they will not fight for you so long as they live in that House.
Leaving/Leading
A “yay” and “nay” vote are seperated by one letter, as are the words “leaving” and “leading.”
To those who have found the courage to leave that House or dare speak against its generations, keep your courage and you will always have more houses that will be your home. Our Houses’ power lies in what we have which that House does not — us.
To those who choose, everyday, in their lack of integrity or courage, to uphold that House, we lust at the day lightning strikes the chords of our unified whispered prayer. The righteousness in us will let the House of Privilege built on racist land burn.
It has to.
We will not interfere in what God has done nor in what we will do next. When the ground was bleeding, you were silent. The same, when the walls crack and you, knowing no toil, are too distracted transacting, the wind will catch a flame and hold it to your House.
Today, 6 or 7 embers. Tomorrow?
To the citizens of this Republic in which that House stands, to the citizens who saw this non-impeachment, stared at that House and wondered…when?
What we have learned from 1804 is that courage is needed to be, strategic organization is needed to continue being. Continue building the new House, acknowledging who the ancestors whose flesh hold it up. Continue. Take courage and remain whole.
