The Catalyst
In August of 2018, John McCain passed away. I was not a political supporter of Senator McCain (or anyone), but I respected the hell out him. I was in a place where cable news was covering the memorials, and I learned then - only then - the things that Donald Trump had said about McCain, what he was continuing to say, and what he’d been doing with his time as President.
It was at this point that I started paying attention. I started actually learning about our institutions and history. I began to know Representatives, Senators, Justices, Secretaries, Directors, and Advisors by sight. I followed the Mueller Investigation and Report, as well as all of the Impeachment proceedings. I developed detailed and complex ideas about what I thought government should be. But I never lifted a pencil in response.
In March of this year, everything just went straight to Hell. The Covid pandemic had us all locked up, my paid workload dropped to zero, the economy was in freefall. Added to this was the social unrest following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
On June 1, in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., a location adjacent to the White House, a crowd of peaceful protesters was violently dispersed by crowd control officers using flash grenades and gas. This was done so that Mr. Trump could stroll across the square - Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in tow - and take an awkward photo, Bible in hand (lol), in front of a church.
At that very moment I was researching quotes from Will Rogers that I could illustrate and use as promotional material for my illustration business. I found this:
“If we ever pass out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone:
‘America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership.’”
The execution took care of itself.
After 20 years, I had created a political illustration. That’s what it took.
So, I had done a political piece. Finally. After all the raving at my wife and daughter, I did what I do, barfed my feelings into a visual form, and I could go back to letting all of it fester. Done and done.
The next week, President Trump announced that he would be holding a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth. And I knew what that was about.
He wanted my hometown to tear itself apart. He wanted the dark history of racial tension and violence in Tulsa to be exacerbated by his presence. As this was his first rally since March, attendance was potentially going to be enormous. With the public health danger being what it was, his most rabid supporters were the ones that could be counted on. Perhaps some “very fine people”, these were the ones least likely to find common ground with the participants of the Juneteenth celebrations happening mere blocks away. That event had been cancelled due to Covid, but was reinstated in response to Trump’s rally. This created an enhanced Covid risk in the Black community, but their hand had been forced. I’m not saying The President of The United States was fomenting a race riot on the streets of Tulsa, but I’m thinking it pretty damn loud. He wanted to climb on top of the BOK Center and play his fiddle while Tulsa burned. Then he could call in his troops to “dominate” the streets of my community.
I was back at it a week later.
In the best anti-climax of my life, nothing really happened. Tulsa won. After a nation-wide uproar over the timing, the rally was moved to the next day, June 20, in a nod to Trump’s true motives. I’ll admit that there’s a non-zero chance that no one in the administration/campaign knew what or when Juneteenth was. But there are also some crafty racists in that mix, and crafty people tend to know their foe.
In the end, the arena was less than 1/3 full. His Covid Roadshow took an uptick situation and accelerated it to full-blown spike, even landing our Governor with a case and Herman Cain with a death sentence, but there was no chaos in the streets like he wanted.
And my teeth were set. Observation and contemplation had been replaced by cognition and execution.
