Pursuing a Promised Land

by Ernie McCray

I just finished A Promised Land, Barack Obama’s latest writing.

On the whole, laying aside my concerns about “droning” and such, abrupt departures from A Promised Land, it was an interesting and sometimes enjoyable read for me.

One way it was interesting was because as I read Obama’s words, Trump, of all people, kept popping up in my mind.

I mean like Obama would write something and I’d find myself trying to imagine Trump doing likewise.

I mean when I read Obama’s poetic description of his daily stroll to work along a walkway where, at times, he “felt the first slap of winter wind or pulse of summer heat” – all I could think of was a president who has, for four years, sat on his butt and tweeted, using words from a pre-school child’s vocabulary.

Obama wrote of how he played a little pool at night with a man who was an employee and a friend as a way to de-stress before doing work in the evening.

I couldn’t conjure up an image in my mind, no matter how hard I might try, of Trump even having a friend and there’s been no evidence of him ever “working” night or day – and with Marvin Gaye and OutKast and Ms. Nina Simone playing in the background on an iPod? No way.

From reading the book I see Barack, “Bar,” walking next to his woman, Michelle, both of them smiling, obviously digging being in each other’s company.

Then I see Melania slapping Donald J’s little phalanges like she’s doing a “hand-jive” routine.

I see Obama tackling climate change and a deranged man trying to wipe his record clean.

I see one president trying to inspire a people’s hopes and dreams and one caging the children he’d ripped from their screaming mothers and fathers who dared pursue a dream of “A Promised Land” proportion.

I see, in one presidency, rules followed ethically, with no one charged for major discrepancies and I see, more recently, laws and protocols seen as the people’s enemies, resulting in scandals that sent folks to jails and penitentiaries, hoping for a pardon from the man who inspired their felonies.

Then comes the difference that’s most alarming to me, the difference in each man’s regard for the general welfare of our country.

One president relied on experts who had inroads to the best available science that could save lives during the swine flu pandemic.

And here in the past few months we’ve had a president who, while thousands of people have been dying daily from a deadly disease, has been bombarding us with his shucking and jiving and lying and telling us to rid ourselves of our fears because he got it and is still here – as though the so called “average Joe,” especially with this man having tried to shoo “Obamacare” away, can drive up to a world class hospital and get the kind of treatment that kept his Orange-ness from getting extremely ill or from dying.

He cares not an iota about anybody’s wellbeing and peace of mind other than his own.

Oh, we’ve, in essence, as I reflect, gone from life-affirming poetry to hope destroying lunacy.

But we did what people should do in a democracy, voted the scoundrel out so we can get about the business of creating out of our hardships and disappointments of the past, and with the energy that’s rallied us in 2020, what we’ve always sought: a better society.

“A Promised Land.”