"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you."

TAROT: 8 of Baskets / LENORMAND: Birds, Clover, Young Man / ADINKRA: Kuronti ne Akwamu (ABOVE QUOTATION BY PRESIDENT LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON)

My, how things can turn on a dime, change on a whim, shift with the tide!

Those of us who do this kind of work (which is to say, my sister and brother seers, mystics, visionaries, prognosticators) have seen this coming for a while. We knew the summer would be hot in every conceivable way, and we know that fall portends a different fall, of Shakespearean proportions. I have used the metaphor of the cornered rat before, in what I have said on YouTube and what I have written here in this space when describing 47. But the other familiar metaphor to do with vermin is the one about the tendency of rats on a ship to abandon that ship if it is sinking and on fire. Rats, it seems, are hardwired to choose the deep blue sea, when their choice is between it and the devil. I hope you follow my drift.

Tarot gives us the 8 of Baskets (Cups) from Nyasha Williams’ Black Tarot. In the traditional Rider-Waite system, this card is commonly called ‘the sad goodbye.’ As always, the Black Tarot gives the card a Black tweak, because there seems to be nothing at all sad about the goodbye this woman is bidding the eight baskets she leaves behind with not even a backwards glance or a farewell wave. She moves with such intentionality that you can almost see her locs waving in the breeze her departure is creating. It seems that this is the mindset with which 47’s loyal followers are abandoning him. What’s that expression that says so much with such sweet snark?

I LOVE THAT FOR HIM

You can check out your news sources for the details, but I am sure that, if you are my readers, you are already well aware. I will not elaborate here. I will say that, as much as I love this for him, I love it for us as well. Here’s the thing, though:

If you look closely at our 8 of Baskets card, you will see that, on the one hand, our character is very sure of what it is she is leaving. But, on the other hand, a muddy miasma swirls in front of her, which tells us that what she is walking towards is uncertain, potentially dangerous, and therefore her steps could well falter the farther away she gets from what it is she has chosen to desert. What’s to say her fear of what is next won’t cause her to run back to what she left in the first place? Attachment has a way of doing that.

To my way of thinking (and you need not agree) anyone who has been part of MAGA became so out of reasons that were never as pure as they claim (the price of eggs, more jobs, better borders.) All of those were smokescreen answers to cloak the real ones in some sort of respectability. I mean, we can ALL agree that that prices and jobs and borders are things every country can legitimately value. But when you scratch the surface of any of these reasons, you don’t have to dig too deep to come up with xenophobia, racism, and misogyny. Lyndon Baines Johnson knew his fellow white people very well. MAGA is glimpsing the truth in Johnson’s words now too, albeit a little late. They are the ones who have had their egos stroked and their pockets picked. They are starting to get that they’ve been had, taken, snookered, cheated, run amok, led astray, and they’re pissed. They are the 8 of Baskets, and though they don’t have locs (because God forbid) they can feel the wind whistle through their crewcuts and their mullets as they stampede out of the Trump Arena.

The question for the rest of us, who have grown in rage and resentment, in contempt and contumely for those who chose the MAGA path: how are we now to receive them?Because, we ought to receive them, to invite them in, but with the awareness that they are wounded, embarrassed, and rage-filled themselves, with no sense of what lies before them, as is true for the woman in our 8 of Baskets entering the muddy murk of whatever the future holds.

Lenormand gives us Birds, Clover, Young Man, acknowledging that (Birds) coming together in conversation (which requires as much listening as it does speaking) is called for; that the sooner (Clover) common ground is found, the better (also Clover.) The energy of the Young Man is powerful and palpable and can be channeled any number of ways. We must, as my mother would have said, “fix our faces” to receive them at our gates, help them heal what was broken in them in the first place to cause them to follow the Orange One, and show them that their real enemy is one common to us all, which is a system and a structure which would have us all stay asleep and unaware of charlatans and pickpockets and liars among us, in the form of people named Musk and Murdock, Vought and Vance, Tulsi and Thiel, Bannon and Bezos, Their numbers, as the Bible might have said…are LEGION.

When it comes to how to receive the newly-leaderless, what if the principles of the Adinkra symbol Kuronti ne Akwamu were exercised: the concepts of true democracy, shared ideas, collaboration? Let me hasten to add that this is largely the work of white people to do with other white people. Lots of the rest of us are sipping our water and minding our business, knowing that our insertion into the conversation at this point would be…unappreciated. Let Lyndon Johnson be your moderator. He knew what was what. He tried to tell y’all. So did we.

My hope is that the rudimentary work of re-education and rebuilding by and among and for white people will be done post-haste. The opportunity is ripening on the vine every moment. If it sits too long, this latest opportunity to create what the Founders identified as “a more perfect Union,” will sour and be lost.

I and mine will be waiting behind the door that is labeled “Advanced Course Work.” The door will swing open when the prerequisite labor has been done.

Amen and Ase,

Erika

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