Looking Like America - Pimps, Ho's, Ghetto Grilles And The Coming Of Donald Trump.

'The black man has been marginalized, demonized, and ostracized', the Reverend Isaiah  C. Thomas shouted from the pulpit of the AME Zion Church of Anacostia. 'The white man, the whitest man ever born on this planet, perpetuator of the slave mentality, the Simon Legree of all Simon Legrees, a plantation grandee, a slave trader, captain of the ships bringing us to America, is returning to Washington to take his seat atop a white Olympus, a Pharoah whipping Nubians into submission to build his pyramids, his white fortress, his incarcerating, intimidating, interning castle of power and privilege.'

 

'Amen', shouted the hundreds of souls that filled the church to overflowing.  'Amen, brother', was the deep-throated, resonant response to the pastor's thrilling words.  'This beast, this white avenging angel is set to suck the heart and soul out of the black man, take his being, throw him back to the jungles of Africa and be done with him.'

Again the preacher paused, mopped his brow, and looked out over the rapt congregation hanging on his every word, hoping against hope that he would cast out the demon and invite Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ into this holy temple of God, to appear to black people like him, swarthy, dark, and intensely righteous, hallowed, and anointed. 

 

Reverend Thomas spoke softly, invitingly, cajolingly. 'But we ain't goin' to let that happen, are we?  ARE WE? he yelled at the top of his lungs, and the congregation as one stood and said, 'NO WAY' again and again until the very rafters shook. 'We will rid Washington of the demon', he said, 'toss him on the curb, cleanse the altar of democracy of this spawn of the devil.  OUT SATAN!' he shouted, and the congregation went wild.  'Hallelujah', they responded. 'Praise be to Jesus' was the response that echoed from pew to pew.

'Let us pray', said the Reverend, spent by his efforts, worn and weary by the labor of the Lord, to the congregation, gloriously inspired, uplifted, and ready. 

That Sunday morning the tithes, alms, and contributions were never more generous - overflowing in fact, a godly support of the faithful on their pathways to heaven.  'A good take', said Barbary Jefferson, 'a very good take' as he emptied the collection baskets. 'You were on fire, absolutely incendiary', he said to his pastor. 

The congregation filed out of the church onto the street stepping over the detritus of the slum - needles, dopers, hustlers, and touts.  The church was the only building on the block not boarded up.  The nail salons, barber shops, liquor stores, and pawn shops had all closed.  Walkin' around money, entitlements, and political patronage could not slow the dereliction and the indifference.  Anacostia was Lagos West, a crowded, debilitated, crime-ridden nasty, opportunistic place. 

The words of the Reverend Thomas were uplifting and heartfelt.  This mess, this miserable, unforgivably nasty neighborhood was not their fault, but that of the white man, his Jim Crow insolence, lifelong hatred of the black man, racial animus, bullying indifference; and now the ur-white man, the man who was building an all-white Administration, a man who promised to end consideration for the poor and the oppressed, this racist neo-George Wallace bigot, was in the White House no more than a few miles away. 

 

'You've got to put a black man in the Cabinet', Donald Trump's transition advisor noted.  We're down to just a few positions, and still not a one'.  Now, the former President and President-elect had run on  talent-and-loyalty only criteria, and not once did he give the former administration's 'look like America' rainbow nonsense a second glance.  Affirmative action would be dead, cold, and buried before his four years were up, and American institutions would once again be places of excellence, merit, and equal opportunity. 

'What about HUD? asked the aide. 'One appointment won't hurt', but even then the President-elect demurred.  The whole idea of public housing, great Soviet blocs of rancid, decrepit brick and cinder block tenements was anathema. His solution to the housing crisis would be to bulldoze those pestilential housing estates, turn the land over to the private sector, and let the market do its magic. 

'It would look good, Mr. President', the aide concluded. 'A nice gesture', and so it was that one of the more than fifty top positions in the Administration went to a black man, a solid conservative and loyalist who would do no harm, would follow orders, and like his counterpart at the Department of Education, plan for its quick demise. 

Meanwhile in Anacostia, the Jamaican crews ramped up their enterprise.  Time was short and money was to be made, so increase the cocaine, heroin, and Fentanyl transiting the inner city before the old man closed the gates. 

'So, what we goin' to do?, said LaShonda Jackson, the unofficial madam of Anacostia who had a hundred girls walking the streets for her and who turned a righteous profit every week.  Cheap as a trick was on the street corner, they added up, twenty here, fifty there, and before Friday came, LaShonda was in Bethesda buying Armani. 

'Ain't no business of his', said one of her lovers just out of Attica and back on the streets, referring to Trump. 'He ain't goin' to set foot down here, no way, and there ain't nothin' he can do about DC', referring to the municipal government of the District of Columbia, all black, all ghetto products, all former allies of Mayor for Life, The Bitch Set Me Up Marion Barry, and all bound and determined to keep the status quo, soak the white folk in Ward 3 and send it on to the people in Ward 8. 

The ex-con was wrong, however.  There was no way that a conservative white man who ran on a 'cleanse America' ticket was going to sit quietly in the Oval Office when the ghetto was within spitting distance.  Get rid of Home Rule, he had told an aide, turn DC over to the House - our House this time - and get rid of the blight once and for all. His programs of vouchers, school choice, classroom discipline, and most of all a stop to the unaccountable millions poured into the slums with no questions asked, would be the modus operandi of his administration.  'Real Americans, real black Americans will get the picture.'   

Yet none of this would change the ethos, the environment, and the zeitgeist of the inner city.  Ways would be found to make money and make lots of it, plenty to go around.  Washington has the toughest gun laws in the country, but the city is awash in guns. Not only were they bought and sold locally, but Washington had become a major supplier to Baltimore and St. Louis. And drugs? The trade was national, not local.  An insignificant percentage got siphoned off for DC street use. The bulk of it went north and west. 

In other words, LaShonda had no cause for concern, and neither did the entrepreneurs of the gun and drug trades.  Like most white men, the new President would end up not caring in the least what happened across the Anacostia River, live and let live, let the pestilence run on as long as it didn't seep out into white America. 

If you listened carefully during the Hour of the Wolf when most of Washington is sound asleep, anyone on Capitol Hill still awake can hear gunfire from across the river.  That was Washington, they said, going back to sleep. Trump or no Trump, so be it.