I met Richard Nixon in the White House in 1972. I thought he was a much taller man. In fact, he was rather short. I had just met the most powerful man in the world and was profoundly underwhelmed. I learned an extremely valuable lesson that day.

I learned that powerful people are just people. In our country, no one is more "important" than another person. They may have more responsibilities or wealth, but they are not innately endowed with privilege by God. That is because the American ethos dictates that all citizens are equal. We have no kings or queens. No person is above the law.

More importantly, I hope we take heed of the great lesson here... that many people in our country cannot see themselves in the moral and spiritual darkness of Trump's reflection, that they have fashioned him as god/emperor out of their deep rage of threat to what they perceive as "exceptionalist" privilege, and that truth will out – no matter how much we attempt to delude ourselves with an alternative to it.

I sincerely hope the Trumps learn from their experience with COVID-19 that they are not above any law made by man or nature. Their fate will be sealed by the imperious, reckless behavior they malevolently induced others to emulate.

It may be that over 207,000 people, like Shakespearian ghosts, are karmically beckoning the Trumps to their bosoms. It may be that nature is simply balancing the books. It may be that humanity needs to learn, yet again, that there are consequences to ignoring natural systems far more powerful than ourselves.

The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been playing over and over in my mind for days, even before the announcement that the Trumps have contracted COVID-19. I have considered these words, ever more poignant now:
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on..."

We Americans have lessons to relearn about humility, connection, governance for the common good, healing, egalitarianism, respect, and reconciliation. I sincerely pray for that.

My comments about Black Lives Matter today are basically in the form of a “Reporter’s Notebook”. I spend a lot of time in the foxholes of Face Book these days. Instead of a speech about Black Lives Matter I want to give you a flavor of how people who are unconscious white supremacists respond to the movement, largely through the propagandized lens of Fox News and other far-right outlets.   

Earlier in the week, a very well known and respected Lake County right-wing conservative I spar with posted a graphic meme showing a picture of a white man and black man shaking hands. The caption read “I support my Black Friends, but not BLM, I support my white friends, but not the KKK. I don’t support Hate Groups. Skin Color doesn’t mean shit. You’re either a good person or a piece of shit.” My response to him was “Please explain to me how BLM is a hate group, or how it is, in any way, comparable to the KKK.”

There was no response from the original poster, but one of his friends kicked in to comment “I won't honor or acknowledge BLM in any way, until they stop destroying other people's property and stop killing other Blacks. Sorry, you're on your own.”

My response was the following:

“Is the BLM lynching white people? Have they been doing so for generations? Can you provide any evidence they advocate black supremacy over other races? Please show me evidence in any BLM literature or official communications (website, press releases, etc.) where they advocate for violence.
 
Making a claim that the BLM organization is equivalent or comparable to the KKK is nothing more than an expression of white fragility. This fragility, this inability to acknowledge white supremacy and systemic racism, is so profound for you that it causes you to post such a blatantly ridiculous meme without consciously thinking about how absurd it is. ''Skin color doesn't mean shit''? Really? Only a white person, steeped in privilege, and desperately attempting to erase 400 years of racism would write such a comical phrase!

Then, to double down on your comparison on BLM with the KKK is actually... well... rather pathetic. Blind fear has caused you to abandon reason in this case. I'd imagine that if we were not living in such a poisonous and polarized moment you would step back from this meme to perceive its seething racism.

So... here's my challenge to you: find a legitimate source for your claim of equivalence between the BLM movement and the KKK as hate groups and I will profoundly, sincerely apologize. Too difficult? Hell, just find a serious non-comedian black person who would say or write, ''Skin color doesn't mean shit''. Otherwise, I will consider this yet another example of how very, very difficult it is for some white people to recognize their own racism.”

Do you think there was a response to my challenge? Of course not! I have found it is impossible to reason with people who believe, against any evidence, that the Black Lives Matter Movement is not a hate group. We “modernists”... we lovers of fact, rationality, justice, and science have not recognized the post-modernist world where fact is irrelevant, science is a joke, there are no absolutes, justice is a myth, and the only thing that matters is whatever narrative you can spin to better yourself. We have not recognized this existential threat against reason because, like liberal progressives in pre-war Italy and Germany we see buffoons where others see saviors from a cruel world.

American Exceptionalism, which proclaims that our values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration, is of course, a myth. The effects of this thinking cause us to deny our true racist history of genocide and slavery and it makes us uncomfortable admitting to systemic racism and white supremacy in the present.

Why? How did we get here? How did we baby boomers, we hippies... so smug... so happy with the liberal changes we made to our nation 50 years ago fall asleep at the wheel? Well, first, we have to recognize that whether we like it or not, we’re in a fight for our nation’s soul. In this fight our opponents will not play by any rules. They recognized a long time ago that the institutions of national government and law we have so lazily relied upon to preserve our progressive gains can be assailed and compromised.

We Americans are not exceptional. These days we behave more like third-world totalitarian regimes and we need to wake up to that fact right now. We also need to wake up to the fact that the blood baths we saw between India and Pakistan in 1947, in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, in Rwanda, and other places where violence erupted along racial and ethnic lines absolutely can happen here. As an ardent student of history I am convinced of that. As a black man living in this nation I am sure of it. Every day, like other members of the Black Lives Matter movement,  I vocally and visibly fight against racism and bigotry because I know my life depends on it. I am here to warn you in no uncertain terms... we must stop Trump and his cult of power now because all of our lives depend on it

In many conversations I have had with my conservative friends a common theme that emerges is an irrational and unreasonable fear of people of color, of change, and of the collapse of institutions.
I sometimes have difficulty not pointing out the obvious racism they express because I hope to appeal to their reason and invite them to examine how their emotions lead them away from the ideals we Americans profess.

The RNC Convention is a riot of political darkness. It offers a cornucopia of madness. I submit this gem of madness that masquerades as hyperbole. Just think about the mindset that accepts as fact that ''they'' want to destroy the suburbs.

'''They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning,' Patricia McCloskey said. 'This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods.'''
 
It takes a millisecond to code switch, unpack, and translate that statement into something that is simultaneously outrageously comical and frighteningly tragic. Indeed, this kind of ''unthinking'' accompanies the precipitous fall from our heights as a world power that enjoyed some semblance of moral authority. Indeed, the shocking transformation of the once GOP into the party of Trump means that there are many people willing to abandon democratic principles when black and brown people threaten to participate. Yes, the techniques of the fascists, nazis, and totalitarians to manipulate a nation afraid of the future is well known to historians and scholars, but not to most Americans because... we don't read, or understand what we do read.

We have been down this road before when we tore our nation apart at the seams of race. The gloves are off again because we could never truly deal with our original sin and because we now have a leader of the GOP who revels in the destructive comfort of our first, most genocidal of racist waltzes.
The spiraling circle to the basement of our weakened, and now crumbled, democracy was flown on the wings of greed, xenophobia, racial and ethnic animus, homophobia, sexism, intolerance, religious cowardice, and hatred of the ''other''. Like all once great nations, it has taken us too long to realize that our era has passed. And like all past great fallen nations, we foolishly think a powerful and expensive military will keep us safe in a world we can no longer control. Good job Russia, et al!

Now... we rebuild. But first we must recognize a stark choice to be made. We will either value love for human beings and our planet or continue to devalue human beings and our planet. If we choose love we Americans can finally, and truthfully, lay claim to our lofty ideals. Otherwise, we will continue drinking from our poisoned cup and persuade ourselves the drunken gasps for air are but a chimaera.