In the Land of the Assassins

Assassinations are always political. I was raised in Louisiana.  Huey P. Long, who had served as governor of Louisiana and then was elected senator of the state was assassinated in 1935 .I was seven years old.  Traumatized by this event, I became extremely nervous.  My mother started dosing me with an oral product called Liberty Tonic that my father sold from his car along with other items. No telling what was in this concoction, but the taste was so ghastly I tried hard not to have the nightmares that were plaguing me. These nightmares were accompanied by involuntary cries and whimpering that would bring my mother and another dose of the dreaded tonic.  I would insist that I was fine, but my mother knew I wasn’t. So did I. How could anybody be fine when the Armageddon was at hand? I knew this because of the way all of the adults in my world were acting following Huey P. Long’s assassination.  Especially my father.

The country was trying to come out of the Great Depression. We were cash poor but never hungry as we grew and raised most of what we ate.  The money my father made from his business helped. Others weren’t so lucky. The rich oil wells and refining capacities of the state were owned by Standard Oil.  Little of the oil money slipped outside of the coffers of the company owners and corrupt government officials.  Until Huey P. Long became governor in 1928. Then things started perking up.  Long taxed the big oil money and started building new roads.   He instituted new health care programs and best of all, new schools for both black and white kids.  Everybody I knew loved Huey P. Long. He was a man of the people, for all the people. I thought he must be like Jesus. When Long was assassinated my father withdrew. I had never seen him cry before. To me, that signified the end of the world.  Later I realized that assassinations kill more than the duly elected politician. They can also kill the hopes and dreams of ordinary people and plunge the nation (state, province) into despair.  In recent times the American people have become so used to political assassinations’ we hardly notice anymore, or remember …Malcom X, President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martian Luther King, and the ongoing almost daily assassinations of African Americans by US police.  Obama’s drone program and kill lists are the perfect assassination tools for modern times.

The shrill US demands for Trump’s blood are growing louder.  Trump is the opposite of my hero, Huey P. Long in most ways, but he will be the duly elected president. If the combined interests of the White House, CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the banking cabals can’t get Trump through the media, I worry  they are planning to bring him down in other ways. The three options they have are (a) to figure out a way to impeach Trump as soon as he takes office, (b) start a war with Russia that Trump would have to continue, (c) or kill him. Any of these three options will bring confusion, chaos and endless bloodshed, at home and abroad.  I pray to the Great Mother of us all that I am wrong in worrying about this so much.