america ,an abyss

 The world goes mad asking the jester to be king

And commands  the fool to be its educator.

The banshee screams in the wind gleeful of its own darkness

the light now gone from the dove's flight.

A small child  ran into a gorilla enclosure in an american zoo. Perhaps when he saw the great silverback ape, he thought of apes in his storybooks, apes who talk to people and converse with giraffes and ride bicycles and smile.. He is three years old.  As the ape grabbed him ,he cried  and screamed with fear, rightfully so as the giant ape began tossing him about like a rag doll. His mother was screaming and telling him to try to keep calm though she herself was emotionally falling apart.. The ape was in full agitated posture.The giant male ape would have eventually killed the child  for the ape can go go from docile to agitated to violent in a matter of seconds without provocation..The young boy and his family are black. The news  outlets took off with the story reporting it as news outlets always do; some fiction, some fact.. And the story began a life of its own with an uneducated woman starting a petition at change.org to basically have the mother hung by an online jury. Did this woman who wrote the petition, sheila hurt, really have any real knowledge of the existence of this ape before she wrote a petition to have the mother charged criminally? I think not.  As I flipped noncommittally through one tv channel after the other,I paused upon a news channel. I saw this uneducated heavy set woman give an inverview, and realized that those words she spoke were emanating from an uneducated mind with very little intelligence, but who seemed to have a vendetta for this woman and her child. It seemed to be the vendetta and not the fate of the ape that made her so indignant.  But noone in their online forums saw that. They joined in shouting the words, "hang the mother, take her children away, punish her, kill her, hang her as in america's pre-civil war days, a world then of slavery. "Criminally charge her", they all screamed with teeth bared..  They all shrieked their words in unison whilst  hiding behind their computer screens comfortable within the confines of  self-righteous walls. The woman and her family are black. That was all they needed to know in order to set the fire ablaze. , Slowly, I researched the threads that held their glue of hatred together.  I began to read those threads, the comments online. The vitrol and hatred and racist comments by people who would rather see a child die than an animal was mind boggling. A human life in america now has such little value to the american masses especially if they are of another colour or belief. The american racist names, "picininny, ghetto rat, welfare pig, etc, all came to rear its ugly head across the many computer screens. Assumptions,  terrible insulting assumptions were made becasue she was black. She worked for a living as did her mate. He once had a criminal record but turned his life around and was working a regular job. They were happy. he was happy at what he had become since his days when he had become "lost" somehow, and now was a person with a family, with a job and a home. But those on the internet would not believe that this doting hard working mother  had just turned her gaze for a second and her three year old slipped into an unsafe enclosure without her immediate knowledge.. The online crowd cried in unison with pitchforks and words that were like knives for the police to criminally charge her. They danced in the fire of their own hatred. They became a lynchmob. The zoo, others who were sane though few they were, should have known, should have assessed their enclosures and made them safer so children would only be able to see the animals and not so easily be able to slip into their habitats,  Zoos, after all, are mainly for children who love to see the animals they know so well from their storybooks come alive in real time. And at three, the world is a giant storybook. Perhaps the american online mob was envious of the wonder a child has about the animals  in a zoo. Perhaps they hated that family for being happy because they could no longer find that innocent wonder and happiness in their own lives. Perhaps they hated life and had become disillusioned with the real world they now found theselves in. The old assumptions that because the family was black and therefore were living on public assistance, were lazy, fat, procreating like rabbits came to rear its ugly head amongst young white college students,young white professionals, and middleaged professionals and professors of higher institutions of learning; those who should know better but do not. For years they hid their predjudice against people of another colour behind their suits and their briefcases greeting other professionals of another race with a smile in their corporate offices and classrooms; all the while hiding the  predjudice that was seething inside of their souls like slime begging to come to the surface of their words. The woman of the child and her family began to receive death threats fron online educated trolls who knew noone would know their names or their faces. They hid their predjudice behind calls of lament for the death of a silverback ape. However,before the news of this incident broke their online screens, they were frustrated because they had no vehicle to use for their predjudice. But now they did. Animal activists who were not scientists nor researchers and who knew nothing about the behavior of this species of ape jumped on the bandwagon of a petition written by an uneducated white woman who had a vengeance of some kind toward the mother and her family. She had her fifteen minutes of fame even though she did not  know what a silverback ape was when asked by a reporter. The confused look on her face said it all. The uncomfortable posture told volumes.without a word spoken by her.

It became truly frightening for me to see so much hatred directed at a black woman and her child. Within every nuance of the trolls terrible online posts, their predjudice showed, reeling america back to the days before martin luther king. I gazed out of a window within my soul and asked, "what has become of this society, this culture that prides itself on education, the arts,science and technology"?What has become of the american people that such bigotry and hatred toward people of another colour has become the norm in their daily life? America is culturally slipping into the days of yore, the time of great division that was america, the things they all should have learned from;  the days of slavery and plantations where one race ruled and ignorance was america's nemesis.  America is slipping like a giant ship edging its way ever so slowly as a society into the abyss. The terrible racist name calling from young college students, young and old professionals who can hide behind their computer screens with the name "anonymous"  relying on their nemesis ignorance as an ally with  latitude. They gleefully post their hatred and wrath on line knowing their colleagues will never know of their true beliefs and predjudices though educated they may be. They celebrate martin luther king day with their black colleagues all the while seething and nurturing the predjudice inside  them; .venting their true racist beliefs within the walls of likeminded friends and family. It makes me fear for the american society and culture as a whole. What are these students learning from their professors, from their managers and co-workers that so much virtol and hatred toward people of another race has come to the forefront of the american society? Are they truly angry about the death of an ape? No, but it gives them cover for their greater agenda ;terrible as that is. I thought that america as a culture and society had progressed beyond judging people based on the colour of their skin. But today, as I gazed outward even further, I became saddened and disillusioned that america, even educated america, is sliding into the abyss of predjudice and ignorance. America,I laughed sarcastically to myself, you have come so far.

The eddies of time flow through words that cannot be erased.

The syllables screech like nails upon a chalkboard.

the darkness of the abyss slowly blocking the light of all that is true and right.

The world goes mad asking the jester to be king

and the fool to be its educator;

philosophers of naught.