Sunday Reads: A tRump Wall Along the Trail of Tears…

Tuesday was like an emotional whiplash, driving to practice…I was crying for songs I heard on the radio, songs that really were not the kind to get weepy over. (I mean, John Mellencamp’s Check it Out?)

From Ellijay to Dalton, the original Trail of Tears…

I take a route that follows the exact path of the Trail of Tears, even passing by Chief Vann House that sits atop a hill overlooking a four corner stop that is home to two gas stations and a used car lot. This grand house that once belonged to James Vann, a member of the Cherokee elite. It was built in 1804…and in 1819 President James Monroe spent the night in this home of Cherokee honor. The Vann family continued to live there until February 1835, when James Vann’s eldest son Joseph…and his family were forcibly removed. Imagine, a family whose home once hosted the President of the United States, forced from that home by a different President…sixteen years later. And who was that President? Andrew Jackson, of course.

1830

• Jackson authorizes Indian Removal Act of 1830.

1835

• Jackson signs Treaty of New Echota with unrecognized leaders of Cherokee Nation, which allows him to force the Cherokees to move to land in what is now Oklahoma. 4,000 Native Americans die on this journey, also known as the Trail of Tears.

I wonder if Jackson would have called the number of deaths due to his Trail of Tears, “fake news” if Twitter was around back then?

But back to what I was saying….

While following this path of sorrow and death, that is constantly in my thoughts as I drive, I think about the horrors the Cherokee experienced so many years ago.

I think about the irony, that not a half a mile away from the Vann house, along the original route….the original round up route, there is this sign. Blatant. Hate filled. Disgusting.

You should see the other side of this sign, the tRump is surrounded by “patriotic” colored “bricks” of red, white and blue…to make a symbolic wall.

Yes, on this Trail of Tears, there is a wall of support for tRump. The twist of the screw is painful. This tRump supporter is so deplorable, he puts up a sign expressing bigoted racist views, on a road that many years ago…thousands of Native Americans died on while they were rounded up and kicked out of their own country.  And the frosting, the person responsible for this horrendous Act, is the one President that tRump admires most.

On Tuesday, it seemed to truly come into focus.

It was an anniversary, thousands were killed 17 years ago. The death totals from Hurricane Maria were finally making news, in fact it would only be a matter of 36 hours before tRump would tweet this disgusting shit:

There was only a sliver of a moon on Tuesday, it was the same orange color as the other bright star in the sky…Mars. The road was pitch black. I could see nothing at all, except for the area that my headlights illuminated. I was startled to see a horse and rider coming towards me on the right hand side of the road. This original road marking the Trail of tears.

The horse and the rider were all dark, nothing alerted me to their presence except for the whiteness of the rider’s bare feet. I know it is strange but those white bottoms of a shoe-less rider hit me like a slap across my face. The horse, saddled…not bare backed. The rider fully dressed including a cowboy hat, but riding barefoot? And my headlights reflecting back to me the whiteness of the soles of his feet.

The darkness surrounding this Trail of Tears. The darkness of the day, September 11th. The hate filled sign of a tRump Wall and an American Flag.  It seemed to echo back to the sliver of a blood orange moon…was it waning or waxing? I am so tired of the months that go by…watching everything going to hell. I just want to sleep. No more, please, no more.

This is an open thread…please post links to worldly events below.