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Week of October 2 - 8, 2002
Bud's Eyeview by Bud Johnson

Woebeit we must keep hope alive to survive, one would have to be as naïve as those four proverbial handicapped primates (see, hear, know, or speak no evil monkeys), that symbolizes ignorance at best and/or downright stupidity at the very worse. It behooves the most patriotic American to have cause to pause and ponder how President George Walker Bush can look into the collective eyes of a history-literate world and say that we can’t trust a lying and evil despot like Saddam Hussein with no shame in his game.
Especially, when he knows in his heart that his presidency is the result of one of the biggest lies ever told in a nation that was built on lies. It’s needless to affirm or confirm my inference that America was built on lies and deception, because Native American’s profundity, “White eyes speaks with a forked tongue,” is indelibly etched in the land of the free’s lexicon. Even so, when it comes to lying, fond memories of my beloved Grandma Sally Woods-Johnson-Justice-Gaines, immediately inundate my cranial circuits. Grandma Sally, the matriarch of my maternal family of creative, innovated lairs, often told me and my brother that people fix their mouths to tell a lie the
same way as they do to tell the truth.

Hey, I’m not about to take her knowledge of lying lightly. Lies, according to granny, are self-sustaining, inasmuch as each one uttered feeds off the previous one (like a self-sustaining virus that reinforces itself), until it completely consumes any trace of the truth it’s covering up. Granny, in essence, was telling us that once you tell a lie, you must keep lying to support the original lie, lest people will know you lied in the first place. On the other hand, when people claim to be honest and truthful, once they learn the truth they must act on it one way or another.
Story telling griots notwithstanding, it’s a safe bet that if Fifth Ward had erected a Hall of Fame for its legendary lairs, my granny’s family definitely would be enshrined. Ergo, I’m not about to refute her contention that “most people will believe a lie before they believe the truth.” I didn’t quite understand where Granny was coming from until I got to college and read, “A man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them,” in 20th century French writer Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus.” If that analogy strays too far into the Outer Limits of your capacity to grasp the finality of truth, let’s just break it down and say that a lie is infinite.

For sure, one can always lie to themselves, just as most of us have learned to do. Oh yeah, we were trained to lie while yet in the cradle. And we won’t even mention the lies preachers must eulogize before putting brothers and sisters into the grave. Hey, don’t you dare crank up that Twilight Zone theme on me, you know your earliest recollection of public education (Pre-K) was standing with your Black hands over your innocent little hearts, regurgitating one of the biggest lies America ever told without an iota of shame in its hypocritical game.

It went something like: “I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag, of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, One nation UNDER GOD, indivisible with liberty and justice for all!” Oh yeah, you did it, so you might as well pray with me brothers and sisters. In fact, a recent brouhaha over the words “Under God” suggests that our tots are still regurgitating that same lie in 2002 America. So, don’t dare say you didn’t believe that “liberty and justice for all” game. Truth is, Black folks are still running around shouting, “No Justice! No Peace!” Nevertheless, I realized that we were just “playing White,” when I recited the pledge at 1940s Bruce Elementary.
Oh, you didn’t know the Pledge of Allegiance was for Whites only? And Crispus Attucks and all other heroic, made-in-America Africans, who died fighting for the land of the free, be damned. Hey, my liberty is still on probation due to lack of justice. The most I ever expected from America, other than “Forty Acres and a Mule,” was a free press (that would at least tell White folks the truth), so that it could trickle down to me. Hence, that’s why I keep trying to figure out how a “war on terrorists,” that supposedly was an angry response to a sneak attack on America (by an exiled Saudi Arabian named Osama bin Laden and his Afghanistan based al Qaeda) could evolve into a prophetic preemptive strike against Saddam Hussein.

I know Black folks ain’t got nothing to do with it, but Bush owes his people an answer. Quite frankly, I can’t help but believe that the twin towers would still be standing if the Republicans hadn’t exposed their game. Iraq, that was still mourning 600,000 friends and love ones killed by Daddy Bush, knew why the GOP was desperately playing political games with clueless Americans, because nobody plays games better than evil people who historically have played games with God Almighty. No disrespect, or disloyalty to the flag I’ve pledged alliance to all of my life, but Bush is way out of his depth trying to play games with master game players like bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein.

War games aside, Bush has to know that his game is too weak to convince career game players in Congress to play a name and shame game, with a constituency that learned in kindergarten that “one monkey don’t stop no show.” Come on George W., I know that our mainstream media has fired up flag waving, vindictive, “Ugly Americans,” that want somebody’s butt kicked for disturbing our peace on 9/11, but, from a sho’ nuff Black perspective, we know if Hussein fell dead as we speak, your show would go on.

Pre-emptive strike notwithstanding, demonizing Hussein (to rationalize bombing an entire nation), ain’t nothing but a game-- because bible reading Black folks and the good Lord knows—“We fight not against flesh and blood, but evil in high places.” I wonder if anybody knows where I’m coming from.