I have been trying to figure out the wide array of emotions I’ve been feeling since Tuesday’s election. I think I’m beginning to understand, but only beginning.

I think I took the mid terms personally, both as a woman and as an African American. I have been stunned, more often than I’d like to admit, at the spirit of the political ads that ran and the political rallies that were held. The Republicans couldn’t really attack President Obama frontally, because he wasn’t running for office, but they attacked him nonetheless by the ugly signs they carried and seemed to brush off as not being any big deal, they called him a Nazi and a Socialist and probably, behind closed doors, things far worse.

The attack on the sitting president was nothing new, but the viciousness, which I believe in my heart was and is based in racism, was profoundly disturbing. I am still processing it. I am still thinking back on what I heard, the buzz words that said to those who were in position to understand, that this black man has to go, however we do it, and no matter who gets cut down in the fray.

So, I’m wrestling with that …but I am also wrestling as a woman. The attacks on Speaker Nancy Pelosi were as sexist as attacks on President Obama were racist. I was stunned again. This woman, the first female speaker in the history of this country, was vilified by men and women candidates alike. Why? She did her job. She did it with skill, and patience and intelligence and perseverance. She did not back down, she did not whine (as does Sarah Palin whenever she gets bad press), but she was steadfast and she was effective. And for that she was cut up like a piece of paper, to be thrown away.

She was and is tough, as anyone in politics must be, especially one in her position.

So, this African American man and this white woman joined forces, along with Harry Reid, and pushed forward an ambitious presidential agenda. They accomplished something, with all of its flaws, that had not been accomplished for nearly 100 years. They did their best, followed their advisers and their guts. They did in fact bring about change; whether everyone likes it or not, it is change, nonetheless. No, there are no jobs, and I just shrugged as I listened to Republicans say that once they were in office, there would be. Well, how? Corporations are sitting on profits, not hiring. Are the Republicans saying that the inaction of the corporations was intentional, to help bring about a Waterloo for President Obama? I don’t know. Everything is so …ugly.

And I guess that’s where I am stuck, in a bowl filled with the ugliness of America. Mitch McConnell’s primary goal is not to get Americans back to work but, rather, to get Barack Obama out of office. Karl Rove is in the fray, having supplied a fair amount of money to bring on the Republican onslaught, and the Chamber of Commerce is on board for the castration of this African American man and the castigation of this white woman.

I am still processing it all. I wonder what people in other countries think of the way Americans have dealt with their president. It has all been so disrespectful. Disagree if you want with our national leader; I certainly disagreed with George Bush …but I would never have thought of being as disrespectful of him as have so many been of Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi.

Even today, Michelle Bachman, who is seeking a leadership position in the Congress, was on television spewing blatantly inaccurate information about the cost of Mr. Obama’s trip to Asia, saying that it is going to cost $200 million a day. Really? I mean, it’s par for the course for the opposition party to criticize the members of the other party, especially when the drive is on to get someone from that party out of office and out of the way. But to unabashedly feed into the anger of jobless people with such a blatant lie …well, that’s a low blow that is unconscionable and unacceptable.

I read today that repeal of the health care reform bill is not likely to happen, because the insurance companies like it, minus a few things they’d like this Republican Congress to fix. Well, if that’s the case, if repeal is not likely to happen, and if there are no jobs, which means that the economy is not going to suddenly burst onto the Yellow Brick Road and finally reach the Wizard of Oz, what will be the cry of the Republicans who have so ably fit into the molds of racism and sexism which are so much a part of America?
I don’t know.

But I do know that the ugliness of America, its spirit which is so infused with racism and sexism, has reared its head with a boldness that is troubling. I pray for the strength of the president and for Nancy Pelosi.

And I pray for America, so sick but so in denial about that sickness.

That is a candid observation.

I have not watched or listened to the news since Tuesday.

That was Election Day, remember? It was the day that the tsunami hit the Congress, flooding the nation with vicious, swirling waves of anger, frustration and hopelessness, and taking out to sea many incumbents who at least appeared to care for “we the people.”

That was the day, Big Business rejoiced, unashamed that it had doled out literally billions of dollars to temper Big Government and had won. This while people are unemployed, losing their homes, losing hope.

Helped along by the United States Supreme Court, which allowed a method of giving to political campaigns that felt ominous from the beginning, Big Business arrogantly paid to get what it wanted, banking on the anger and frustration of people who were and are drowning in deep water created by …Big Money.

Bill Moyers calls America a plutocracy … a government where the wealthy are in control and continue to get more and more wealthy while the masses slip further and further into despair. For the wealthy, this “bad economy” has been quite good, and continues to be. They had and have a lot at stake in things staying bad. So, they paid up to protect themselves and their interests.

I keep wondering what is going to happen to “we the people,” you know, the millions treading water, trying to stay afloat. If many of their advocates are treading water, too, who is “in the House” to help them? Will more money be put into privatizing prisons? What happens to education? Many of the Republicans elected are in favor of slashing funds given to public education. What happens to Social Security?

And of course, there’s health care. These newly elected want to get rid of that, too. Not good for Big Business. Screw the people. We’re talking “bottom line politics” right now, and anything that threatens the bottom line has to go.

There will be money for military spending. There is big money in killing people under the guise of caring for them. If we can get into countries, we can build businesses there and hire people for pennies on the dollar, thereby helping Big Business get bigger.

I think I am beginning to understand.

Of course, underneath all of the rhetoric of this past election is racism. What is his name, anyway? Osama? Is he even an American? The Tea Party anger has racism stitched all through it. Ku Klux Klan hoods have come out, even if they have not been worn in public. Horribly racist signs were made and carried at Tea Party rallies.

Nobody admits that the country is brimming with racist-based anger and indignation. Those who bring it up are silenced, accused of playing the “racism card.”

It is played because it is forever there. It was only some 40 years ago that the Voting Rights Act was passed, allowing blacks to vote. America likes to pretend that racism is and was no big thing, but it is and it was. Big Business knows that …and paid billions of dollars to feed into the fear and anger of people who still bristle at being called racist, though they are racist at their cores.

Well, we’re on a new page, and it will be interesting to see how this new Congress addresses the needs of “we the people.” That group of people is not the concern of Big Business; it has always been Big Government who has reached out to help and empower the masses. Big Business could care less. In fact, Big Business needs the downtrodden, because they can be used to help Big Business get even bigger.

And yet, there is no outcry, no sense of outrage. Big Business knows that. Big Business has created a maelstrom of materialism, making the masses believe that if they just work hard, they’ll be able to join the ranks of the privileged wealthy, too.

It’s not gonna happen. The system is not designed to make it happen for the masses. There must be the many on the bottom in order to feed the greed of the very few on the top, the very few who, I remind you again, doled out billions of dollars to protect their interests. Those on the bottom are so gullible, so capable of being manipulated.

Let them eat cake. Big Business will bake it for them.

That is a candid observation.

I don’t know about you, but it really bugs me that literally millions of dollars are being spent by politicians on these ridiculously negative campaigns while the country is going to hell in a handbasket.

It isn’t a partisan thing, nor is it a Liberal or Conservative thing. It’s a politics thing, and it is disgusting.

It would be different (maybe) if the millions being spent signaled that someone really cares about the masses of people. It does not. It merely means that “we the people” are being played, once again, courted for our votes but really kind of forgotten once the candidate becomes elected.

OK, so I am generalizing. There are some good candidates, and some good, honest and sincere politicians, but from where I sit, they are rare. There seems to be something about getting in power that taints a person’s soul; he or she quickly forgets from whence they came and succumb to the perks of power

Something is inherently wrong with a process that requires that the persons running raise so much money and spend so much money. I know, it’s “the American way,” but I am not convinced that in this case, the American way is the best way.

Why am I complaining? Because this vast expenditure of money seems to be a symbol of what America is: a place where profit and power trump people. There is little tolerance for the “have-nots” of this world. They are blamed for their condition and are looked upon as parasites. While people are living on streets and in shelters, due to a whole host of different circumstances, the politicians seem unaware and look the other way – toward those “haves” who can provide them with more money as they aspire to be in power.

What would happen if a politician said, in his or her campaign, that he or she, instead of spending millions on sleazy, slick campaign ads, they were going to spend millions of their own money to help a segment of the population get quality housing? Or, what would happen if a politician proclaimed that his or her campaign would be one of action, and not of empty promises, with that politician using all that money to improve shoddy schools or get equipment for inner city kids who have so little?

It would never work. Such a politician would be swallowed up by the powers that be. He or she would probably be accused of being a socialist. In a capitalistic society, there is supposed to be inequity, and besides, everyone knows that politics is a game of rhetorical exercises. If the truth be told, there are no jobs in this country, despite Republican ads that promise them. In the game of political rhetorical exercises, though, politicians are not required to give specifics. They just shape statements and arguments to appeal to and assuage the spirits of people who do not read, do not study and who rely on what they hear as their primary source of information.

That is sad and dangerous, but the politicians know it

And so they spend millions of dollars to manipulate the populace, encouraging them only to let them down once reality hits. Politicians pit people against each other, pit issues against each other and in essence, leave the country in disarray with promises to fix it all once they’re elected

Sigh. My vision of a more equitable America will never come to be, but I can’t help thinking about the people who could be housed,clothed and fed with these millions of dollars being thrown away. These millions are as much wasted money as are the dollars used to pay parking tickets, and in this country, in this economy, that seems to me to be a sad reality.

That’s a candid observation.

I am watching with interest the heated rhetoric rising from Democrats who are protesting supposed non-profits who are funneling literally millions of dollars into Republican campaigns.

It’s all legal, thanks to the United States Supreme Court ruling that said so. Donations can be made by corporations and other entities and who, exactly, is making the donations never has to be made public.

Sounds like the modern Ku Klux Klan.

Karl Rove has taken to calling President Obama a hypocrite for suggesting there is foreign money being donated. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden have sharply criticized these huge outlays of money, saying that the public has a right to know who’s doing the giving.

But the donors are protected, much like public officials and leaders kept their identity hidden as they donned white sheets and hoods as they waged a war of terror on blacks and Jews in this country.

Methinks that Mr.Rove doth protest too loudly.

It is cowardly not to say who you are. If you’re racist, say it. If you are a social conservative, own it. If you do whatever it takes,and pay whatever you have to to “get your country back,” say it! Take the sheets and hoods off! Own it, and stand on your principles as you do you!

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The KKK is not as viable an organization as it once was; more people like to pretend that they are not haters of others, but the spirit of the KKK has not died. Just review some of what we have seen with the Tea Party; review some of what we have heard.

The move is on to get the presidency away from President Obama. Democrats, who should applaud what he has been able to do are hiding and avoiding him; Republicans are touting “Obamacare” as the single worst piece of legislation this side of the new century and are playing on the fears and ignorance of the electorate to fire up their base and wrest control from this administration.

So, these secret donations of mass amounts of money is in line with “the plan” to get control back, putting big business once again in the driver’s seat, big business which cares not for the masses in general, but only in how the masses can help it make more profit.

They will pay anything to win the battle, but they want to remain secret so that their images won’t be tainted. That would not be good for business.

As I have learned more about how political systems work, I have alternated between anger, disenchantment and disappointment. Nothing is as it seems to us, the common people. The “big boys” who are in power do not care about the masses. That is a sad reality.

Case in point: my insurance company will not pay for me to get screened for ovarian cancer, which runs in my family. It would seem a humane thing for this company, Medical Mutual, to care about its clients enough to support them in their efforts to stay healthy. But no, such tests are not good for the bottom line.

I wonder if my insurance company is among those giving donations to the Republicans but would not want us to know, we who provide them the means to live the lives they lead.

I think the modern KKK should take off their hoods, and own up to who they are. They are no better than the sheriffs and judges and doctors and teachers and police officers and nurses who were members of the KKK but hid behind their hooded costumes.

There are no crosses being burned, but to be sure, there is a lot of economic terrorism going on, and the effects, I am afraid, will not be good for the masses.

That’s a candid observation.

Almost all of us can remember the days when we’d goofed up and had to go out to a bush and get a switch or endure the slap of a leather belt across our bottoms.

In our backyard we had a lilac bush which provided the most juicy switches ever for my mother, who, though she stood only about 5′,5″ seemed to convert into an alien as she brought the switch down on us, muttering a word of displeasure for what we had or had not done with each painful blow.

I grew up promising myself I would never beat my children, and I didn’t. They never got a switch or a belt. I had other means of getting their attention.

But in her book “The Warmth of Other Suns,” Isabel Wilkerson offers a take on corporal punishment that I had never considered.

My parents grew up in a time where black people had to know their place. Wilkerson says that parents”trained their children in the ways of subservience and treated their children as the white people running things treated them. It was preparation for the lower-caste role children were expected to have mastered by puberty.”

Wow. I had never thought of that.

I do remember that in my integrated school, the white kids talked to adults in ways I would never have dreamed of doing. In fact, I in general kept my mouth shut. It was a sure way to get a whipping if Mama was told that we had talked back to an adult, any adult. If an adult was wrong, she’d say, you come home and tell me and I’ll.

I obeyed my mother, but don’t think I didn’t notice that the white kids talked back, not only to teachers but to their parents as well. I didn’t understand why they were allowed to kind of do and say what they wanted, but we were not.

Wilkerson reminds us, though, that breaking the cultural protocol of those times was both deadly and dangerous for black people, and black people could and did lose their lives for stepping “out of line.” If children didn’t learn their place, Wilkerson says, “they could get on the wrong side of a white person and the parents could do nothing to save them.”

So, the switch and belt whippings were acts of love and protection? Wilkerson would probably say yes. I would say “mostly.”

I say “mostly” because those whippings also provided a vent for our parents, who were too often frustrated by the society and culture in which they lived. I swear, sometimes the whippings I got were uncalled for, but thinking back, I can see how we children, who knew nothing of grown up challenges, trying to make a way for us in a hostile world, could provide the spark for a frustrated parent to let off a little steam.

There was good and bad in the corporal punishment they gave, if I accept Wilkerson’s theory. The good is that those whippings, or the threat of getting such a whipping, kept us “in line.” We did learn how to act around white folks, and,in fact, all grown folks. I kept my mouth shut even when one teacher I had told a bold-faced lie on me. Thankfully, my mother picked up the teacher’s dishonesty, too; there were a lot of adults, black and white, who took advantage of the fact that black kids were taught “their place.” Better that I risked getting in trouble after a lie than assured myself of a beating for dissing an adult in plain sight.

Learning how to stay “in line” probably kept a lot of us out of trouble and alive.

The bad thing about it all, though, was that those whippings beat us into submission so much that too many of us grew up not even thinking about speaking up for ourselves and defending ourselves against wrong and injustice. I mean, I’ve lost that reticence by now, but for way too long, I know I kept silent when I should have said something. I would imagine there are a lot of black kids who grew up with that same problem.

The whole concept of receiving the whippings as life-saving lessons is understandable to me, at least. It is not a far-fetched idea. To this day, I tell young African American men to be quiet when they are arrested,and to stay “in line” so that they don’t give police officers, who are still mostly white, an excuse to beat them or arrest them or both. Although Jim Crow is gone, he left an aura of hatred and violence based on racism which has not gone away.

I still wince at the thought of some of those lilac-bush switch whippings…but if they were done in love, to ultimately save my life, then, Mama, I forgive you. What parents do for love may not be comprehensible by the children, but sooner or later, the fact that love guided them sinks into child minds now grown up.

That is a candid observation.