Any politics that fails to understand the rise of the right as an extension of the past, rather than its inversion, is both deeply flawed and dangerous.

• “Racism and the Wisconsin Idea,” The Boston Review, October 29, 2018

I tried to understand Mink. Identify with him - not possible. But at least understand him. He’s a Snopes, and anyone who’s read William Faulkner knows of the Snopes. It’s difficult not to prejudge the Snopes, but Mink Snopes captures the reader’s attention, depending on the reader’s identity.

Mink was a Mississippian tenant farmer, a survivor of the Civil War, only to discover himself among the Defeated. Living in the north, during the Clinton era, I’m witness to the defeated being arrested and handcuffed and shipped off to the northern boondocks, some newly cemented warehouses, lined with steel cages.

Mink, with wife and two children, isn’t likable; he looks similar to his villainous cousin, Flem Snopes, which is saying he looks as cold as ice. Only Flem’s one of the wealthiest men in all of Yoknapatawpha County. But neither are innocent. As I read Mink’s narrative, I’m aware of how much he despises blacks - just as much as Flem. But then, this is Frenchmen’s Bend - poor and white. It’s the South just after the Civil War.

I could understand why Mink murders his boss, the powerful and wealthy ranger, Jack Houston, who wielded power over Mink and his family. There was nothing about Houston that exemplified justice. There was nothing just about the powerful abusing power - charging Mink everything when Mink’s cow accidentally stepped onto Houston’s land. So he, Mink, fired the gun he hadn’t fired in four years. “What he would have liked to so would be to leave a printed placard on the breast itself: ‘This is what happens to the men who impound Mink Snopes’s cattle,’ with his name to it.”

I could see Jack Houston. I’ve seen plenty of Jack Houstons: neighbors, colleagues, politicians. Presidents, too.

I see Mink, too.

Something is identifiable in his story, and it’s suffering. For what it’s worth. The injustice inherent in the economic ordering of humanity into classes, and the accompanying racial ideology of white supremacy that further categorizes human beings into “races,” is the controlling narrative overall that necessitates an overhaul of the violence and a new way of being among other living beings in this world. However optimistic I try to be about the future, I can’t help but be aware, as I read Mink’s story of how he and his community in Frenchmen’s Bend have opted not just to live in the past, riding along side Robert E. Lee, the “greatest” US general ever, according to the current US president, Donald Trump, but to be corralled by the past. And if unable to free themselves from what is a hopeless cause, why would we expect Mink and his community to think about what justice might look like - except for that “justice” executed from the barrel of a gun?

There shouldn’t be either a Jack Houston or a Mink Snopes, let alone Flem Snopes - but for the misguided belief in racial superiority.

Mink is captured and eventually sent to Parchman Prison where, for 38 years, he waits on the powerful and wealthy cousin, Flem, to recognize him as family - and Family. Not a Negro, for heaven sake. Not a Negro. But his savior never arrives.

The final scene takes place at Flem’s mansion. Mink escapes the confines of prison only to arrive at a confrontation with his cousin.

“‘Look at me, Flem.’” And Flem does. “‘Look at me, Flem,’” and powerful and wealthy lays eyes on his kinsman, writes Faulkner, and Mink fires his gun at a representative of everything that “had lied to him.” Everything that had betrayed him.

In the end, no one wins. And the War continues.

I didn’t pay much attention to Donald Trump when he was a real estate man. I remember a clownish person on television, on some program called The Apprentice, where he pointed a finger at someone and said, “You’re fired!” A semi-entertainer.

Then came 2016 when I read how he insisted that the falsely accused black men, tagged the Central Park Five, charged and imprisoned for the brutal beating and rape of a white woman jogger, were as guilty as they come! In 2002, convictions against the men were vacated, charges dropped, yet for Trump, the men were down-right evil men! String them up!

Oh, that’s Donald Trump, I remember thinking. Then there were those towering phallic symbols, Trump Towers, defacing the urban landscape with the arrogant machismo of the filthy rich.

There was Barack Obama never born on US soil. He must have been born in one of those “shithole” countries, for sure.

Women can be grabbed by the p---y because they let you!

Fake news is ubiquitous, except on Fox News where “presidential adviser,” Sean Hannity, converses by phone with the president about the temperature of country, and neither of the two understands why a presidential briefing is prepared by the Intelligence community.

And yes, there’s a matter of obstructing justice. The President of the United States obstructing justice.

In the New Yorker, April 25, 2019 issue, staff writer, Adam Gopnik, argues in favor of impeaching Donald Trump. The Mueller Report shows, he writes, “that Donald Trump has contempt not just for the rule of law but for the idea of law.” Gopnik continues, we’re dealing with “a man who rose to power knowing only loyalty and subservience as a perceptible, institutional attitude; a man who, according to the Mueller Report asked the White House counsel to ‘do crazy shit’ and then asked him to lie about it; a man who repeatedly tried to obstruct not just an investigation into what he or his campaign might have done but the whole idea of an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.”

There are rules! There is the Constitution!

“What is at stake,” writes Gopnik, are those rules that are “meant to insure objective judgment and fair dealing no matter who the subject may be or how you feel about his or her conduct.”

This is about the Constitution and not politics.

“If we could conclude,” the Report says, “that the President was exonerated of the charge of obstruction, we would say so, but we can’t.” We can’t put aside the strong possibility that the President of the United States obstructed justice. But I can imagine how the spectacle of impeachment hearings could feed into Trump’s paranoia. Trump recognizes himself as under attack now, so he’ll make himself a martyr for under the lights and before the cameras. Show time!

On April 30, 2019, the Washington Post revealed that Mueller is suggesting actual obstruction of justice. There’s a letter from Special Counsel Robert Mueller!

The Attorney General’s four-page excuse-the-president-summary of the Mueller Report so upset Mueller that he responded immediately in writing to William Barr, yet another Trump stooge. The special counsel even phoned the man, basically say, well: What the hell - exonerate Trump! No! I said no such thing! I leave it to Congress!

Maybe Congress should at least inquire into whether or not to impeach Donald Trump?

As for politics, others argue for letting the people decide at the ballot box in 2020. If allowed, that is. If hundreds of names aren’t removed from voting lists or polls aren’t placed at inconvenient locations so as to deter voting altogether. But that’s another matter. Let’s pretend for the moment that every American who wants to vote will be able to vote, with no problems whatsoever. And they vote to toss Trump out of office, then, for Joe Lockhart, this would be good for “politics,” a sound, if not “fundamental realignment of American politics.”

In “There’s a Bigger Prize than Impeachment” (New York Times, Apr 22, 2019), Lockhart argues that if we allow Trump to continue on his way to destroying the Republican Party, which is increasingly becoming identified with Trumpism, then his fall at the ballot box is assured. Americans will have had enough Trump and company.

It’s a “dream scenario” for Democrats who’ll watch in the light of day as Trump in office cements “Trumpism’s hold on the Republican Party.”

Wait it out! Wait and see if Trump becomes completely unhinged and pursues the end of more social services, including Medicare and Medicaid. Wait some more to witness another set of vigilantes with guns and the entitlement of white supremacy pursue with intent to do violence against migrants, women and children seeking safety and compassion from this Christian nation. Wait to see if the government is shut down against because “the wall” hasn’t been built. Wait to witness another police shooting of an unarmed black man or woman. Or child.

More suffering is on America’s agenda, regardless of which party finally acts to impeach or wait and see.

When will this nation actually decide to zero in on the root cause of all this violence: mass shootings and police shootings; oil drilling and tar sands exploration; wars for control of the pipelines and cash flow; the rise of billionaires and the expansion of the wealth gap between those at the very top and those at the very bottom; and yes, presidential obstruction of government?

When will we learn how to recognize and confront distractions while maintaining our goal to eradicate injustice?

Congress in Washington or the People at the ballot box? Stand up for the rule of law (the Constitution) or engage in the play of politics?

We are not Trump, no more than we are Mink. Not that these are aberrations of humanity. Dreams of amassing huge fortunes on the high seas in ships headed for Africa are no aberration of humanity. And although there’s plenty of suffering to go around, thanks to capitalism and the racial ordering of the “superior” and “inferior,” in the end, the Trumps and cousins the Minks are not saviors of anything beneficial to the continuation of humanity. Their collective vision is but perceived enemies centered in the crosshairs of their rifles.

Despite this population, life goes on! It must! We must stay focused on the transformation of the either/or scenario that brings us here every election cycle, always having to decide between the lesser of the two evils. As if we have a choice. We don’t.

We must take control of the narrative for once and get beyond this madness.