Jeff McCallum

I am ashamed to be from Minnesota. Oh, it’s a beautiful state, a wonderful place, some people even like the weather and all of us tolerate the mosquitoes. It’s just that some of us elected Michele Bachmann to the US Congress. She rode in on God’s long coat tails and ignorance I guess. I am so upset I am re-posting a poem I wrote for her “gods” several years ago and a newer one in the hope that at least one person will read it and change one vote to a vote for peace and understanding, will understand that hatred and ethnic division are not the answer to failing social and physical infrastructure, rather the reasons for it.

Going into a war takes a lot of planning

Engaging the nation in controversy

Organizing votes and voters

Reassuring the sheep repeating the lies

Gathering the reins

Enriching the rich and the powerful

Who do you think

Besides the obvious choices

Ultimately plans and profits from death and low taxes

Social and ecological responsibilities abandonment

Human beings floating in the wreckage

Tortured

Hidden in cages

Essentially disappeared

McCarthyism with a different color red

It’s a little more subtle

Listing our fears one by one

Insinuating that sexual or religious preference affects our quality of life

Tax breaks equating to one tank of gas

Are crafted to create the illusion that you too

Reap the windfalls of war

You too are a member of the party of the privileged

Instead of protesting the injustice of poverty

Noticing the color of the victims changing policy

Demonstrating that we care

Ultimately we are lulled to sleep

Satisfied that we are or someone else is doing their best

Tackling the tough problems

Racism

Inadequate health care

A national debt that will last for generations

Lies at the voting booth

Complicit in the perpetration of the fraud

Ostensibly believing we are blameless

Moreover we have nothing to hide nothing to fear

Patriot Act and NSA created for that stranger next door

Let fascism reign

Even if it means handcuffing the Bill of Rights leaving our past and future

Xeric to the point tearless remembering

Which Americans First

It a strange thing,

a modern day wonder,

in fact,

a bloody miracle

that the new acronym for what we used to call

the ethnically challenged

to put it in political correct short hand,

our rural

blue collar brothers and sisters,

our senior citizens,

have been convinced they too

are Republicans.

Will be protected from the constitution,

their nightmares and my day dreams

of the different,

of the future,

by the seeds of hatred and fear.

If not convinced,

at least bought

with rebates of around six hundred

of our dollars per vote.

America First.

Corporate America,

when drilling oil is the only subject spoken of

besides hate.

Health care, education,

social welfare,

the infrastructure

are not hot buttons

when driving the SUV to the lake

or unable to afford the drive

to the unemployment office;

basically the same thing.

Give Big Oil,

Big Business

a few more windfalls,

a softer landing than golden parachutes alone provide,

talk tax and spend and budget freeze

on the backs of every child.

Throw a few fears into the mix,

a couple of racial groups to the lions.

Fill the coliseum with blood cries

Resurrect Joe McCarthy

and those votes might not cost as much

next time.