They told us America was the Land of the Brave and Free.
What they didn't tell us is that it was only really true in stories made up for Movies and TV.
I always question why we seem so obsessed with America, and feel so strongly about what happens there. Racism, violent police, oppression, it's happening all over the world, but why does America pull at our hearts and minds so much?
I think maybe it's because we grow up on the America Dream.
We watch and want to be like their sports stars and play in their organisations, from Michael Jordan to Kobe Bryant to Muhammad Ali, from the UFC to the NFL and even the WWE. These heroic, larger than life American athletes.
We are, in a way, brainwashed by their movies. Hollywood, the place where stars are born! We marvel at their blockbusters and their comic books made into films. We love HBO, Netflix and Showtime.
And because of their movies and TV shows, we have a glorified imagine of their police as these cool, smooth, bantering 'Bad Boys.' FBI agents out to save the country. Secret agents fighting to save the world. Army forces on righteous missions to save 'Private Ryan,' and poor, powerless people from tyranny. These trained, honourable, fighting experts who only shoot bad guys, beat down evil villains and save the planet from alien threats. Whenever the world is in danger from a great power, don't worry, America will always save the day, and do it with a smile and a cigar.
We eat their Mcdonalds and drink their Starbucks. We know the words to their national anthem better then our own because our favourite artists always sing it- the "star spangled banner... the land of the Brave and home of the Free."
But that's all it is, a Dream. The reality is a song written to justify slavery. It's bad fast food and soda. It's Hollywood stars dying of overdoses.
Right now everything that we believe was great about America is being demystified, the Dream pulled back to show it was nothing but CGI and camera tricks.
Most don't even know that American bombed its own country to destroy Black Businesses threatening to prosper.
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Many seem to not know that Muhammad Ali was boo'd and still refused service in a white owned cafe even after he won the country an Olympic gold medal. And that they even tried to put him in prison for not wanting to go to war and kill for them.
We forget that Martin Luther King tried to show us his alternative Dream and they killed him for it, and then they killed Malcolm X. Then we're surprised they kill normal black men for using fake money and selling cigarettes.
We're obsessed with Hip Hop culture but we forget that it was born in the ghettos when America left their ethnics for dead. Their homes burned too, they were beaten and killed, but no one came to save them and no one marched for them. And then America only came back for those people when they created something that the American system realised they could make money off of and exploit. The truth is in all the real rappers lyrics, if you just stop dancing for a moment and listen.
And the righteous heroes, the cops and secret agents, turned out to be just actors playing parts in a movie. The real cops turned out to be mostly a legalised gang of bullies- untrained, loud, screaming, killers, who only seem to know how to hit first and make up evidence later.
They shoot and spray and gas. Instead of chasing bad guys through the crowds, making sure to keep the civilians safe, they are shooting into the crowd, seeing anyone who holds up a Justice Sign as the enemy, even though Justice is what they're supposed to stand for. It's like they're mad that the people are reminding them of the very word they have failed to live up. The police are supposed to bring 'Peace and Justice,' yet they beat those who march for it.
The movies always told us that the cops were there to 'Protect and Serve', but in reality the only people they seem to Protect are the ones who would be the villains in the very movies we grew up watching. And the only people they seem to Serve is their own lust to dominate and wield their bullet loaded power.
There are no Bad Boys, no A-Team, no Miami Vice, and definitely no Avengers, or X-Men coming to save the people, it was all propaganda.
The Boys in Blue will beat the Blue into you just for being Black.
Now you're Black and Blue but only because you were born Black.
America, lead by a leader who's speech only inspires chaos. A leader who is the very reflection of the very character the American movies always told us was the super Villain that we'd see get what was coming to them at the of the third act. And they always told us that they would be the ones to make that Villain pay.
We were kids believing in a Dream but now, as adults, we see the System that is America actually represents all the evil things they told us they would save us from. But, ironically, America created the people who now fight against that system. They made everyone believe in a Dream and now everyone is fighting for that Dream, against the very people who made it up to fool everyone into following them in the first place.
They told us America was the Land of the Brave and Free.
What they didn't tell us is that it was only really true in stories made up for Movies and TV. Emmanuel Adelekun
The Vivid Scribe
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