Observations and random thoughts.
Series 2020, volume OnePointFour.
By WILLIAM LEDFORD
It’s sorta kinda official. Tupac Shakur is not dead, he’s alive and hiding somewhere on the Navajo Rez. That’s according to a filmmaker named Rick Boss. He claims that Tupac survived the shooting in 1996, escaped the hospital in Las Vegas and of all places, he ran to hide on the Navajo Rez. Boss is currently in the process of making a film about his theory. According to Boss, Tupac fled to tribal land because, “That’s the only place you can hide out where federal agents can’t come in unless Tribal Council agrees for you to come onto their land. It’s private.” His words, not mine. Hmm…that’s kinda news to me because my experiences with the Feds were burned into me since the 70s so, even though it’s sovereign land, it’s also considered federal land and I’ve never known the FBI to knock and politely ask before searching on federal land for a federal fugitive. Maybe things have changed. Didn’t know Tupac Shakur had that many fans in Navajo Country.
You gotta be a Blue Oyster Cult fan to get this reference. Joan Crawford has risen from the grave. Well, not Joan Crawford but Joe Biden’s campaign to be the 46th President. His campaign was resuscitated during the thing called Super Tuesday. And it was genuinely super for Biden supporters as he kicked serious butt in the South, did damage in the North and threw cold water on Bernie Sander’s victory lap. The devastation was complete as Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren shut down their campaigns and threw support behind Biden. So, what do we know now? We know this. An old White man will run against an old White man and the winning old White man will run against the current old White man for President. The country is still atoning for the audacity of Democrats electing a Black man so, no female candidate this time. One of these days women will finally unite behind a woman and she’ll be the first female President. One day. Tulsi who?
Mike Pence, Vice POTUS, recently displayed a photo of his coronavirus task force team hard at wor…err…hard at a photo op. No women are pictured on this team of “experts.” Pence is a devout religious man. So religious that he won’t be alone in the company of other women even if it means excluding all women from his task force. So, even though there are many, many women out there who are actual experts in the field of contagions such as Ebola, influenza and surely by now coronavirus, none are on the Pence task force. Geez, do we still live in the Dark Ages? And by we, I mean them, we didn’t go through a Dark Ages until the Europeans showed up. As for all of the pale men, and Ben Carson, on the task force they’re there to…hmmm….no one knows why they are there because none of them have any experience with this kinda stuff. Maybe they all signed some kinda loyalty letter to Trump and drank the Kool-Aid to complete the pact so here they are. If you folks out there get confused by my constant references to Kool-Aid, search the name Jim Jones on your trusty phone. He also demanded total loyalty. Along with Kool-Aid.
I’ve come to realize that our President only addresses his supporters when he speaks to the “nation”. And while at the CDC he stated that his uncle was “very smart” so he himself “gets” contagious disease control. It’s rumored that Trump didn’t want to acknowledge actual coronavirus facts because it would damage his electability. Now it looks like he’s blaming the Obama Administration because Trumps own staff decimated and defunded the emergency response wing of the CDC set up by Obama for this purpose after H1N1. Get used to it, we’re on our own here. We skins are actually lucky because the IHS is already stepping up with testing. You go IHS.
William is a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians currently living in Albquerque, N.M.
